The Perfect Machine

"We are supposed to believe that God made our bodies as a perfect machine...but that machine does not always work so well."


You can see the bitterness in her eyes...I highly suspect she has a relative or friend who suffered or suffers from cancer-mostly because of her irrational forcing of the word cancer, and not allowing Ray to address the whole issue of suffering (including cancer). For that I am very sorry; she looks to be a very unhappy person and I pray she will someday meet the Healer of broken hearts and physical suffering.


It's a common argument: "How do you explain cancer?" means "If God made our bodies and they're so amazingly designed, then we should never be sick or in pain."


Judging from her final reaction, she certainly did not accept "We live in a fallen world" as the answer. All her life she will probably still think it reasonable that since everything is not perfect, it must not have been created.


I will try to present that argument in full light. Take a look at your computer. Is it shiny and new and perfect? Is it glitchy and causes you to imagine throwing the printer through the monitor? Either way, imagine a computer expert eyeing the machine and noticing that it doesn't always perform the desired task. Instead of suggesting it has a virus, or it is old or needs to be updated or repaired, he asserts, "I don't think this was even designed...judging from all of it's problems, it must have been a piece of junk on the ground that no one even worked on."


You would say to him, "No, you can't say that about a computer. It has taken a lot of ingenuity, creativity, and hard work to make a computer do what it does: displaying color and movement on the screen, storing information and recording and emitting sound-even with all of it's issues, the technology was obviously designed."


When faced with scientific knowledge about humans, animals, and ecosystems that are more complex and wonderful than our man-made machines, then, how can we respond any other way than that it must have been designed?


When atheists say that we Christians think that our world is perfect, they are setting up a straw man argument and knocking it down with ease. No, we don't believe that-we are not so naive. But it was once that way. Has everyone forgotten the story of Adam and Eve? God's intention was a paradise, sinless, flawless, and full of his presence. It is now tainted with sin and suffering and darkness. But can you make a planet? Can you design a human body? Can you breathe into dirt and make it come alive?


No, of course not. It must be easier to believe that those things can evolve from nothing, even though we can't create them. They magically "came into existence". Just like the broken down computers that have glitches and crash for no apparent reason must not have been designed at all. Just keep in mind how incredible we are. When you cut your finger, think of how hard your body works to heal the cut so you don't bleed to death. When you think of people whose brains never fully developed, think about the fact that the person's eyes are more a more advanced lens system than any camera we can manufacture. Reason compels us to believe that this is a beautiful, incredibly designed universe, but stained with the horrors of sin. This has been MY "rational response". :)