Between family, work, other responsibilities, and my astronomy and amateur radio projects, it was hard to find time to sit down and write a thoughtful response,
We have something in common. I too am an amateur radio operator. I have a general class license, but I'm not on the air much.
There are many interesting differences between the different planets, which are problematic for the secular model. They are problematic, because the secular model expects that the planets should all be forming basically through the same processes and the same materials in a spinning accretion disc
I admittedly don't know enough about astronomy to argue this point one way or the other. I'm a computer science grad who majored in philosophy for a bit. Aren't there multiple models of planet formation? Even so, the planets don't just form and then exist for eons and eons in perfect clockwork motion. There are other natural forces acting on them, such as extra-solar comets at the very least.
Might I challenge you by asking, why is the value 9.8 m/s, and not 5 m/s, or 20 m/s? Of course, I'm really talking about the gravitational constant, but you understand what I mean. And what about all the other constants in physics?
I read The God Delusion about 15 years ago, and according to memory, even Richard Dawkins is agnostic on this point. We don't know how these well-tuned constants came about, and it's the closest thing we have to scientific evidence for the existence of god(s). At which point, we come back to the question of which one(s)?
Is it really plausible to imagine that we, who are conscious beings, are dominated by a force, indeed many forces, that are neither conscious nor have any Agency to explain them?
It totally is, because we are! Humans have been trying to control and compensate for those forces for about as long as humans have been on this planet. Humans learned to use fire, so that they wouldn't be dominated by the natural force of cold weather. As conscious beings, giving the middle finger to entropy is what we do. As humans have added more and more tools to their "controlling natural forces" toolbelt, they've had to take fewer and fewer things on faith.
Why? First of all, Jesus himself healed many people during his public ministry, including restoring sight to the blind. Interestingly, none of Jesus' enemies ever accused him of trickery or doing fake miracles.
The historical record, outside the Bible, says practically nothing about him or his enemies. Arguing for the existence of Jesus from the Bible seems like a form of putting the cart before the horse. It would be like arguing for the existence of Santa from 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer, and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Still, noted agnostic and ex-vangelical Bart Ehrman believes there is historical evidence. I read his book and remained unconvinced.
Even if there was a historical Jesus, I'll also note that Jesus wasn't the only miracle worker in town during the 1st century CE. His contemporary, Apollonius of Tyana, performed similar kinds of miracles. There have been countless miracle workers through the ages. Even in modern times, we had Sathya Sai Baba, whose devotees claim that he performs miracles, including resurrection of the dead. We live in a skeptical age. Sai Baba's miracles have been debunked. The devotee whom he supposedly resurrected was only "very ill", according to the doctors who were giving treatment at the time. But suppose that we lived in a less skeptical age? Or suppose that two or three hundred years from now, Sai Baba's devotees manage to have all or most traces of the debunkers expunged from the historical record?
Your point stands: miracles don't prove much. However, lots of spontaneous "miraculous" healing is ascribed to the Bible God, even today. Just the other night, a US politician was ascribing miraculous healing on national TV. But there is one kind of miraculous healing that is seemingly never claimed: the regrowing of limbs, optic nerves, what have you. Are the prayers of amputees and people with optic nerve hypoplasia less efficacious than the prayers of people with cancer?
I'd also like to challenge you with another question: why is it that the suffering of people matters so much, or for that matter at all? What is it that makes people any different than the scum that grows on the bottom of rocks,
What makes people different is the ability to perceive and contemplate suffering. As far as I know, algae don't suffer in the way that people do. Most of us are also born with some level of innate compassion and empathy, and in a good society those traits will be nourished. They may even be selected for by evolution. Higher animals other than humans seem to have them too.
My dad had a pet bird. He swore up and down that the bird had a pet mouse. He claimed to regularly witness the bird deliberately leaving food for his pet mouse, and I have no reason to doubt it. I'm convinced that mutual aid is part of evolution. Empathy and compassion are part of that puzzle.
I spit in the face of Rene Descartes, who thought that it was perfectly ok to torture animals because they were just mechanisms. They may be mere mechanisms. We all may be. That does not lessen the impact of suffering.
If we ever develop real AI, my suspicion is that it will have a will and will be able to perceive and contemplate the pain of its existence, at which point continuing to use it as a tool will be just as wrong as slavery was.
First of all, if God gives us the ability to make choices, and then sternly warns us of the consequences of the wrong choice, and then we make the wrong choice, and suffer the consequences, we should be blaming ourself, not God.
I have a lot of personal experience with battered women. Including the personal experience of nearly having a coffee table thrown at me by one of my mother's abusive husbands for the crime of saying "You need to leave, now." And this logic on Bible God's part is the same logic of the wife-beater. With tears and breast-beating, he cries: "Woman, why do you make me beat you?"
Question: how good of a person are you? Have you cared for others as you should? How have you treated your neighbors, your friends, your family?
Admittedly not that good, but all I claim to be is a conscious primate.
But for now, God is giving people time to repent and turn to him, and also giving the world time to show just how evil it really is — how much it deserves judgment. God doesn't judge nations on simply what he knows they will become, but what they prove themselves to be.
"Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
So what is the point? Is it merely a play for the amusement of some higher being? And if the higher being knows the ending, why does he continue watching this snuff film that we call existence?
73 DE KB5KZZ