If you find a pair of Adidas slides in a barren desert, nobody in their right mind will argue that it has a creator and intended purpose. However people to this very day are still arguing whether magnificent celestial objects in the vast and largely empty universe that follow specific physical laws with ultra precision order and timing with conscious beings as inhabitants (at least on earth) has any creator and intended purposes.
Probably not the best place for this kind of comment…
Also, like most analogies, this one leaks. Even if our species dies off, whatever discovers our remains has direct, tangible evidence to fall back on: the shoes were likely created by the creatures who have evidence of living on the same planet.
I find good evidence for some kind of creator (Aquinas' "five ways" make a compelling case based purely on reason), but at the end of the day this tells us nothing about "intended purposes". At that point we are relying on fallible human interpretation, which history shows is a path fraught with dragons.
I mean... even as an Atheist my self I would think it would be much easier to believe in a god to explain where things came from (but of course that asks where did god come from) than the near mystical start of the universe and asking how that started in the first place.
Like it completely boggles my mind to try to think about how everything started, even if some theories are true and the Big Bang was not the start at some point you would think something had to be a start to "stuff".
Also frankly... religion brings comfort to a lot of people and as long as someone is not using it to harm someone else (like deny rights) than I don't think we should downplay or attack someone for believing in something that makes the hard parts (like the inevitability of death) easier to deal with.
We like to think that infinity or at least something very old and very large could allow this to randomly get there eventually. But no, it's not that big and not that old and the math just doesn't have enough dice rolls to get us here to where we are right now.
If those slides fit my foot and keep the desert sand from burning my feet, wouldn’t I understand their purpose and think they were made by someone? In fact all adidas slides have a creator, so I think I’m missing your point.
