Is suffering a proof against intelligent design?

score:3

Accepted answer

No

I don't really have references for this I will just answer it by logic alone. The atheist is making quite a few assumptions to make the leap from suffering to no Intelligent Designer (or indeed God).

e.g.

  1. The Designer's morals are the same as his, and by extension the Designer's desire is to have no unnecessary suffering (from a mortal point of view).

Actually, we have no idea what the motives of the Designer is. We have our own idea of what is right and wrong but it might not be the same as the Designer's. There is no reason to be sure that they don't want people to suffer. It certainly doesn't preclude their existence.

  1. Life on Earth is a major part of existence

However, assuming that there is an afterlife, an eternal one in fact, one's life on Earth is just an insignificantly tiny part of our overall existence, being less than a 100 years out of, well, infinity! Trillions of epochs from now, that short period of suffering will seem like less than that itch you scratched when you were 3.

  1. It is within the Designer's ability to prevent suffering.

But the Designer might not be the almighty/all-knowing God of the Bible that we're so familiar with. The point of Intelligent Design "theory" is that it's more of a generic theory stating that an entity powerful and intelligent enough to create a planet or universe and life, did so. They may have been able to invent sophisticated life-forms, but not been able to rid them of all "bugs", as it were. Just because they can create life doesn't mean they can wave a magic wand and make all disease disappear.

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