The Malevolent Designer: Why Nature's God is not Good, richly illustrated by my good friend and companion in life, the artist Catherine Hounslow-Webber, is a sequel to my popular book, The Unintelligent Designer: Exposing the Intelligent Design Hoax.
This book, with a close look at the realities of nature, shows why any creative entity who designed much of nature could not honestly be regarded as resembling the notional Abrahamic god, whom we are expected to believe, despite the evidence of its resemblance to an irascible Bronze Age Middle-Eastern tribal warlord in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, and the fear, amounting to a psychotic phobia, it evokes in the minds of devotees, is nevertheless an all-loving, maximally good god.
The book takes the reader through a whole range of parasite-host relationships, from the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) to parasitic plants, explaining how parasites are often equipped with mechanism to make them more effective at making their hosts sick and finding their way into new victims. The concluding chapter looks at ways in which any such designer has already given some species a much superior system such as the immune system of sharks, the cancer-avoiding system in elephants and the superior eyes and respiratory systems of birds, yet neglected to give other species those same systems, instead handicapping them with inferior 'designs'.
 |
| Great Spotted Cuckoo, Clamator glandarius © Catherine Hounslow-Webber |
Even the defence of ignorance or incompetence is closed to such a god!
At every turn, one can legitimately ask of Creationists, why is evolution by natural selection the only explanation for this that doesn't leave your putative designer god looking like a sadistic, pestilential, genocidal, misanthropic god who seems to take pleasure in designing ever-more creative ways to make its creation suffer?
Yet creationist dogma forbids them from blaming it all on a natural process over which their god had no control or influence. How odd that supposed devotees of this god have no compunction about presenting it in such a poor light in order to feel more important in the grand scheme of things than they really are!
If you prefer a rose-coloured, Panglossian view of Nature, where everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, then this book is not for you. It will shatter your wilfully ignorant delusion. If, however, you want to find out how nature really works in all its breath-taking magnificence, then this book will show you the true nature of Nature - uncaring, undirected, amoral and the worst of all models for a just, caring and compassionate human society. A world which simply refuses to conform to the dogma religious fundamentalism tries to impose on it.
"we're made in his image"
ReplyDeleteMy brother tore his anterior cruciate ligament. Result: $25,000 surgery, a week of pain as the machine moved his knee, months of physical therapy, in the end he got about 70% of his mobility back.
My dog tore hers, we opted to go the expensive route, got her TPLO surgery, $5000. https://www.topdoghealth.com/library/orthopedic-surgery/articles-surgery/tibial-plateau-leveling-osteotomy-tplo/
She had to wear a cone of shame for two week and was on restricted activity (walk on leash only, no running) for two months. A year later (or ten) you couldn't tell she'd injured the knee. The vet who did the surgery on her said another patient of his was a championship retriever dog. 6 months after the surgery the dog was back winning meets at the national level.
Suuure "Intelligently designed strucures" :-)