#17 Theism and the Weight of Time

Why I struggle with the argument from design

I am not a militant atheist. But from time to time, I encounter a particular argument from friends—delivered with sincerity, even emotion—that I find difficult to accept.

The argument goes something like this:
Look at this amazing world we live in. Its beauty, its complexity, its intricacy—surely it must be evidence of a supreme being, an intelligent designer. The world could not possibly exist without one.

It’s an argument that has a certain intuitive appeal. I admire it, I respect it, and in some ways, I even envy it. But when I look more closely, the reasoning does not hold up.


The Weight of Deep Time

Science and paleontology tell a different story. The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens dates back about 300,000 years. That may seem like a long time—until we place it against Earth’s history.

Life has existed here for roughly 3.7 billion years before the appearance of humans. That is an unfathomable stretch of time—millions upon millions of species evolving, flourishing, and going extinct long before we arrived.

So if one accepts the theistic premise, what does that mean? That a supreme being spent 3.7 billion years preparing the Earth for the arrival of humanity—His special creature, made in His image? I doubt most believers would be comfortable with that implication. It makes the story less one of design, and more one of delay.


The Marvel and the Delusion

This is why the argument from design feels weak to me. The marvels of the world are not evidence of God. They are evidence of nature itself: blind, iterative, relentless, and indifferent.

And yet—I do not dismiss the theistic impulse. I admire its confidence, I respect the comfort it gives, and I even feel a pang of envy at times. But I cannot share it. For me, it is a beautiful delusion, one I would never try to argue someone out of.

This essay, then, is not a refutation aimed at others. It is simply my own attempt to clarify the issue for myself.

This article resonates with themes explored in The Metropolis Organism — a video series examining cities as literal biological systems, where human beings function not as masters, but as necessary organelles in a living urban body.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  #5 Beneath the Skin: A Humbling View of Human Control What if our sense of agency is just a flicker atop a biochemical ocean? We live under the illusion that we are in control — of our lives, our bodies, even our civilization. But pause for a moment and ask: what truly keeps us alive? It is not our intellect. It is not our willpower. It is what goes on beneath our skin. Each second, millions of molecular interactions quietly coordinate to keep us breathing, digesting, healing, thinking. These processes don’t wait for our permission. We don’t direct them. Most of us barely understand them. And even with the full machinery of modern civilization — its labs, technologies, and medical systems — we are only beginning to scratch the surface of how our own metabolism works. If we ask what governs this invisible activity, we arrive at DNA: a vast archive of instructions refined over billions of years. DNA doesn’t consult us. It doesn’t explain itself. Yet it builds and sustains us from w...
Read more

The City as an Organism

Image
  THE CITY IS AN ORGANISM A Manifesto by Frank Vitale A city is a living organism. This is not metaphor. It is biology reframed. It is not a view from inside the human mind. It is a view from outside it — from the perspective of science, where there are no subjects, only systems. From this vantage, cities emerge as living systems — not designed, but evolved. Not symbolic, but structural. They metabolize. They circulate. They replicate. They adapt. Their cells are not brick or steel — but flows. Energy, information, waste, intention. Their organs: transport, governance, communication, trade. Their capillaries: conduits, cables, pipes. Their metabolism: electric, algorithmic, continuous. And humans? Humans are necessary, but unremarkable, organelles — functional, interchangeable, increasingly automated. We are not the city’s authors. We are its substrate. We have never governed it. We are and have always been part of its structure, symbiotic participants in a lineage older than our ...
Read more
Image
  Blog post #10,   Sailing Past Reason On Living with Contradiction in the Face of Determinism and Free Will There is a contradiction at the heart of being human. Science tells us that we are determined. Atoms don’t choose. Chemical reactions don’t have intentions. The brain is made of atoms and chemistry. Therefore, in a scientifically coherent view of the world, human thought and action — like everything else — is the result of causes, not choices. And yet, I choose. I weigh options. I imagine futures. I regret the past. I hold others accountable for what they do, and I expect them to do the same to me. Every fiber of my lived experience insists that something is up to me — that I am an agent in the world, not just a node in a flowchart. So which is it? Am I free or am I determined? The honest answer is: both . And that answer is a problem. The Logic Break If logic demands consistency, then to say that I am both determined and free is to violate logic. And if I accept ...
Read more