A response to the puddle problem


              I have been following the apologetics community on social media, and I have seen that channels like Capturing Christianity have been having discussions on Intelligent Design, and some detractors have been bringing up the “puddle problem” objection to intelligent design. I’m sure there are plenty of people who will be writing responses to this themselves, but I wanted to add my own two cents to the problem.
              The puddle problem is a response to the Teleological Fine Tuning Argument for the existence of God. It says that humans are merely products (puddles) of the natural forces of the universe around us (the hole we find ourselves in). It is presented as an alternative to the claim that the universe is fine tuned for life by an outside mind. I may be misrepresenting, but it seems to me like the puddle problem totally misrepresents the Teleological argument. I think it totally disregards the evidence that leads us to the Fine Tuning Argument.
              I think we need to examine that evidence. Starting at the Kalam Cosmological argument, we have a very strong indication that the universe had a beginning (Big Bang) and we see that the fundamental constants of the universe need to be what they are with very little margin for error for life to even have the possibility of life. In life, we also see the appearance of information in DNA and the appearance of design in the molecular machinery in cells and how all of the organ systems in larger animals have to work together flawlessly for life to work.
              Now, obviously there could be a more detailed discussion here, and maybe I will write one up, but I wanted to at least write this as a discussion starter to show that the puddle problem isn’t some smoking gun for the teleological problem, rather something of a straw man argument, at least how I have heard it presented so far. God bless and have a good rest of your day.

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