There is no RationalWiki without you. We are a small non-profit with no staff—we are hundreds of volunteers who document pseudoscience and crankery around the world every day. We will never allow ads because we must remain independent. We cannot rely on big donors with corresponding big agendas. We are not the largest website around, but we believe we play an important role in defending truth and objectivity. |
Fighting pseudoscience isn't free. We are 100% user-supported! Help and donate $5, $10, $20 or whatever you can today with ![]() ![]() |
Essay:Complexity limits an Omnipotent Deity
I have read numerous articles on sites such as Conservapedia and CreationWiki to get a feel for how insane the far-right has gotten. I am very much anti-religion or, more to the point, anti-organized religion.
Things like Intelligent Design really get my goat. I hate the hypocrisy and the false pretenses. However, all their talk of complexity and its need for a creator got me thinking. I’ll have to thank them for that at least. It occurred to me that complexity was the worst case that they could make. In that moment I had an epiphany: Why Bother?
The case for why an omnipotent deity would care about insignificant nobodies such as us has been made before. However, my idea was a tad different. Why did I have a liver to filter the things I put in my body? Why am I not some homogenous goo?
Why did I need a filter? Why did I need blood to carry oxygen to my cells? Why am I made up of cells? Why is there oxygen? Why does the universe need its fundamental laws of physics? An omnipotent deity shouldn't be constrained by the need to have things “just right”. Shouldn’t I just be able to “live”?
On a more fundamental level shouldn’t I just be the soul/spirit energy/whatever that they say that I am? Ultimately I wonder: Why Bother?