One of the most common arguments for intelligent design is the declaration that the world is so wonderful that God must have created it. As John Rutter put it, "For each perfect gift of thine to our race so freely given...Lord of all, to thee we raise this, our joyful hymn of praise."
There are indeed many wonderful things in this world. But sometimes I suspect our perspective is warped because we live in the relatively safe and pleasant confines of the modern world. How wonderful is the natural order of things, really? In earlier eras, humans usually died by age thirty or so. Something like fifty percent of our young didn't survive. Many, many people died long, suffering deaths from horrible diseases. Our teeth rotted out of our heads, causing us excruciating pain. We were ripped apart and eaten by other animals. And so forth and so on.
Are these really the "perfect gifts" a god would bestow upon his creation?
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