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God and an Asteroid Strike

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 A fellow who shall remain anonymous here, whom I encountered on Facebook, made what appears to have been a theistic argument about the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. I reproduce it in full below. 

 Doesn't it strike you as ridiculously unlikely that that asteroid that struck the Earth 66 million years ago was so incredibly (and unlikely) propitious, fortunate and lucky for humanity, that it was ENTIRELY NATURALLY OCCURRING?....To me, it screams, "ARTIFICE!!!".

 Many other posters replied. Since this is my blog dammit, I'll reproduce only my own reply to that.  (Recall that I'm a theist, though not one who allows that fact to drug my critical reasoning faculties entirely). 

 Are you trying to use this as an argument for a supernatural designer and/or providential force? Or an idle statistical exercise? Or something else (maybe involving space aliens treating earth as a protected reserve or laboratory?) If this is intended as an argument for theism, and for a God who prefers mammals over large reptiles, I have to say it seems pretty lame. It entails the idea that God was so arranging things that large brained mammals would eventually develop, start asking cosmic questions, and worship Him. But ... really? Why can we not suppose that on an alternative timeline without an asteroid strike large-brained reptiles would eventually have evolved, started asking cosmic questions, and worship Him? Why would God prefer one of those results to the other?
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  1. HenrySeptember 8, 2018 at 5:13 AM

    Couldn't large-brained mammals have evolved without the disappearance of dinosaurs?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChristopherSeptember 8, 2018 at 8:10 AM

    Depends on how good small mammals TASTE to dinosaurs, I suppose. If the ecological niche of mammals was to serve as small and small brained hors d'oerves (sp?) for thunder lizards, and that was an equilibrium condition (the mammals reproducing just enough to continue serving as hors d'oerves) then it presumably required some sort of drastic shake-up of equilibrium to produce such as us. Without that shake-up, the regnant theology would have held that the Lizard God lovingly designed mammals to be so delicious for His scaly worshippers.

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