A question for athiests?

Question

There is a big ship, it contains different goods on board. There is no one to steer it, no one maintaining it. Yet, this ship keeps going back and forth; it even traverses big waves on the oceans; it stops at the locations that it is supposed to stop at; it continues in the direction that it is supposed to head. This ship has no captain and no one planning its trips.

Is this possible?

If you can't imagine one ship running without some one looking after its affairs. Can you imagine this whole world, which runs exactly and precisely, there is no one who looks after it, and no one owns it.

Answer 1

Anyone who believes in intelligent design hasn't looked closely enough at the design. The planet suffers sudden earthquakes and volcano eruptions and tsunamis. Human bodies have knees that are prone to going bad and then there's my personal favorite, the appendix, which serves no purpose other than to potentially develop an infection and kill you. The animal kingdom (too often including people) is incredibly savage, divided up into devouring and devoured. Never mind the world of microbes, which cause mass epidemics and death among all life forms: plants, animals and humans.

The world is many things, but exact and precise it is not. It demonstrates far more evidence supporting chaos theory than it does supporting the notion of any god.

Answer 2

are you saying this world is not a mess? yes there is apparent order, but there also is quite a lot of apparent disorder. If somebody actually is in control of all of this, I don't think she's the kind of person that can be limited by words, or pleased by rituals. It doesn't take an atheist to figure out that this world is not planned in any way that a human being would consider a sensible planning. This means that if there is somebody behind it, this person would be so far beyond our comprehension that even though we may feel humbled by the fact that the world exists, there is really no point in trying to express our humility, because we do not understand the first thing about why the world exists. To say "thank you for your carefully planned world, creator" is not less hybris than to say "I don't see any planning in this world, therefore I conclude it's not planned". The fact that we don't know why the world exists (otherwise we wouldn't keep arguing about it) means it's rather presumtuous to be thankful for it. Yes, also to be spiteful for it, obviously. But if you understand why:

"In the beginning the universe was created. This has made many people angry and has been widely considered a bad move."

is absurd, you'll also understand why it's absurd to be grateful for it.

Answer 3

This is the same logic as "the watchmaker" argument for Christian fundamentalist creationism. Throw a bunch of watch parts into a tumbler, mix them thoroughly, and a watch will never be created. Thus there must have been an intelligent designer and creator of the watch. How much moreso for the universe?

The logical fallacy in both of those arguments is the assumption that the watch, or the ports, were the goals, rationally determined by an intelligent entity. Atheists and agnostics argue that the universe, and evolution, have no such goals. Like balls falling off a truck and rolling down a bumpy hill, Three or four might land in a perfect line, or forming the corners of a perfect parallelogram. One might argue that it took an intelligence to place the balls so accurately, but clearly that is not true. It was not the truck drivers' goal to place balls in a perfect geometric pattern. They landed that way by pure chance, but created the illusion that an intelligence had to place them that way.

This is an oversimplified example to demonstrate that complexity and precision do not necessarily entail a creator. If we find five rocks in the desert that form a perfect pentagram, we might think someone must have been there before us and placed them that way. But perhaps they just fell that way, or were formed that way. Indeed, if you examine a large pile of pebbles, it is almost certain that you will find pebbles in possition to perfectly form lines, squares, cubes, etc.

Perhaps there is no intelligent design, no planner, no one guiding the universe, just as there is no designer of snowflakes, yet they form perfect, intricate hexagonal patterns. Pehaps what we observe is just the way things have "fallen together" over billions of years. They happened to fall together in just such a way as to support human life and intelligence, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. Nor would we be able to hypothesize the existence of God to explain all this complexity.

Perhaps there is an invisible designer and controller of the universe who has never made his/her/it's presence verifiably and undeniably known to the world. We cannot know for sure, but it seems likely that if such an intelligent creator existed, we would have incontrovertible evidence by now.

Answer 4

It's pretty screwed up how most of the people are basically making fun of the question. The ship heads where it's supposed to go because the current pulls it that way. What happens in the world happens because WE make it happen.

The ship is a small part of the world..and it was made it out of simple materials.
The world contains everything we need, and was supposedly made without anything..Does that make sense?

First of all..There's drought, floods, wildfires.. if the world was that orderly, would innocent people and creatures die from things that aren't their fault?

Second of all..There's also the homeless and poor..who mostly spend their day sleeping on a dumpster, starving.

Answer 5

I don't know if I'm the athiest. I might be athier than a lot of people, but there may well be others who are athier than me.

However: What steering, maitenance, stopping at ports, or navigation have you observed the planet undergoing?

As far as I know, the planet has simply followed the path set by orbital dynamics during the stellar evolution of the solar system. Do you have evidence that differs from this?

There's no more steering or stopping than there is for a big poo swirling in the toilet bowl. Surely you're not suggesting that someone is aboard steering the poo.

Answer 6

I'm not an athiest, but I want to answer anyway:

Your analogy doesn't work because there are no natural laws in place to keep a big ship traversing the ocean and making drop offs and different locations, etc.

There are proveable laws of physics that can explain why planets spin and why life grows and why the nitrogen cycle keeps going.

I do believe God is in charge of all that, but He also set up pretty clear laws to show how they work.

There's nothing like natural laws showing how ships go around making their deliveries. Obviously people have to control them.

Your allegory doesn't apply for that reason.

Answer 7

The "ship with no captain" analogy is just as flawed as the "watchmaker" analogy. Also, maybe the ship has an artificial intelligence to help steer and maintain it? And there are certain things that "look after it." it's called Nature, you know, wind, rain, and the like, that is what maintains this world, as well as the laws of Nature, (such as, what must come up must come down, Newtons Laws, and any such laws of science) govern this world much like the Christian God maintains the world in Christians eyes.

Answer 8

Here is your logic in reverse. If you can imagine God being eternal with no creator. Why can you not imagine that the universe or rather matter (which can not be desrtoyed only changed) is eternal with no creator. I also find no evidence that this "SHIP" runs exactly and precisely. It is chaos and order. I would not say that they are balanced yet both are there. One needs the other. Out of Chaos comes order.

Answer 9

Oh my god, I mean, oh your god! The world is run by leaders, you freakin' dee-dee-dee, it doesn't need a god. And yeah, people do own the earth! My family owns a piece of land in California, the company my dad works for owns huge tracts of land all along the west coast! And yeah, people look after the earth! What do you think environmentalists are for? Freakin' idiots! Lemme spell this out for you: WE ARE ATHEISTS. WE DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. SO STOP TRYING TO TELL US WE ARE WRONG. People made up all that bible and koran crap because they couldn't explain how the world was created or how it worked. And now, even though we have modern science to prove we are right, you still hang on to your feeble beliefs. F*** OFF.

Answer 10

"...supposed to stop at; it continues in the direction that it is supposed to head."
-- This is where you are getting tripped up. The earth is not SUPPOSED to do anything. It follows the laws of physics. If you had said that the boat floats around according to the currents your analogy would be better.

Can you imagine this whole world, which runs exactly and precisely, there is no one who looks after it, and no one owns it.
- Yes.