According to the monotheistic tradition, god created the Earth and all the plants and animals which fill it prior to creating man in whom he endowed dominion over all the aforementioned creations. This concept of dominion is intimately tied to the idea that we humans were made in the image of the divine creator, which is to say that, in a microcosmic sense, god's dominion over all worldly and extraterrestrial creation is analogous to our "rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" (Genesis 1:26). We could easily point out the fact that, once again, monotheistic dogma reveals itself to stem from the minds of arrogant, simple men attempting to explain their wondrous control of planet Earth. However, it is just as simple to demonstrate that human beings possess anything but dominion over this planet.
Let us first look at our rule over the animal and plant life mentioned above. We will grant that in the year 2008, it would certainly seem as though mankind does indeed exact a significant degree of control over the rest of the Earth's flora and fauna. We have the power to genetically engineer livestock to better suit our dietary taste, the ability to slaughter creatures of any size using our advanced weapons, and even the capabilities to level entire habitats when we so choose. However, this control is a very recent development. Our present ability to manipulate plants and animals to suit our needs has been a long time coming, and for millions of years prior to this age people were nothing more than another type of creature struggling to compete with the myriad others. Early man was lucky to live into his ripe old thirties, and only did so through surviving his fair share of potentially fatal injuries (archeological evidence demonstrates that your average adult "caveman" usually suffered numerous fractures over the course of his/her life).
Even today, a solitary person stripped of the technology others developed over millennia stands little chance in a show down against most other animals; our bodies are soft, our muscles weak, and our agility and senses laughable. And even with all our modern technology at hand, man's dominion is at best transient and at worse a facade. We need only look to any one of the many instances in which a "domesticated" animal decides to show its true colors and attack its master.
As we turn to man's supposed "rule...over all the earth" in general, the monotheistic theory truly begins to buckle. If there is one thing than humans have failed to control, even today, it is the Earth itself. At present, we have zero ability to regulate climate or geologic phenomenon. Humans can only do their best to shield themselves from the onslaught of Mother Nature, and these efforts are by and large pathetic. The recent tragedy that was Hurricane Katrina provides a vivid reminder of our crippling limitations.
When one takes into account the existence of extraterrestrial threats, the situation becomes far grimmer. For example, were an asteroid of sufficient size to happen upon a course intersecting our orbit, mankind would be helpless to do anything but patiently await its destruction. Our chances of diverting the rock prior to collision are abysmal, and once it struck we would almost certainly go the way of the dinosaurs. Even if a few straggling tribes were capable of eking out a living, who could call such an existence evidence of dominion?
Yet, we really need not look to the catastrophic as evidence of the reality that man lives thoroughly under nature's thumb. Simply consider the fact that the Earth is 70% water; salt water no less! This means that the majority of the Earth is utterly uninhabitable by the human race; when taken into consideration, this fact makes it much more likely that god, if he exists, is either a fish or a sea mammal.
The final consideration takes us back to the issue of controlling animal species. It is no surprise that the authors of monotheism failed to consider the most glaring contradiction to their dominion theory, for said contradiction was unknown to mankind 2000 years ago. The existence of bacteria and viruses are highly suggestive that mankind is anything but the dominant species on earth. Not only are these creatures many times more versatile and adaptive than humans, they are capable of bringing entire continents to their knees. Only recently have scientists been able to wrest some control from the microvilli of the microscopic, and even so, our efforts fail more frequently than they succeed.
Before closing, we would like to address one counterpoint we foresee the believer raising. It is highly possible that our reading of this passage is skewed by god's lack of temporality. For, while god may not have endowed man with dominion over all of nature at his (man's) inception, perhaps there will come some time in the distant future when such unequivocal dominion shall be a reality. Certainly, god will still be "living" in the present a billion earth years from now. Thus, perhaps this dominion is more a promise than a present reality. In this regard, we the nonbelievers would level the following charge: how is it that god, in his infinite wisdom would fail to recognize that, unlike himself, his greatest creation is anything but timeless, and thus would go through a great deal of suffering at the hands of nature prior to realizing its ultimate dominion? Either he somehow failed to recognize this fact, and is thus reveals himself to be rather unintelligent, or he did perceive this unfortunate reality and yet proceeded in spite of it. If the latter turns out to be true, than god is not quite the loving father men like to imagine him to be.

As we have discussed in the last post, the atheist is often asked by the believer how he can possibly look at the complexity of the universe and imagine that it all came about by some sort of cosmic accident. As we have endeavored to point out, in regard to the universe itself, complexity is far more stable, and thus energetically inevitable than simplicity. And yet, if we are to be really honest with ourselves, the believer's question stems not only from the universe around him, but to an equal if not greater extent from his very existence. We humans, vain creatures that we are, find our bodies to be quite marvelous entities indeed; so marvelous that we find it hard to imagine they came to exist outside of some creator's grand scheme.

Before getting to the fallacies inherent in this line of thinking, it should first be pointed out that said theory is so rife with selfish motivation it almost need not be considered. Human beings spend very little time marveling at the complexity of a rooster or a palm tree. Likewise, we rarely concern ourselves with the possibility that the universe in its entirety was created so as to provide a home for black holes (which I should say are equally if not more impressive entities than human beings). Granted, all of the non-human pieces of the universe are supposedly part of God's overarching creation. However, the general religious theory holds that this myriad of parts exists merely to support and supplement human life, thus suggesting that ultimately it is the wonder known as man which begs the issue of a creator. This would be akin to one particular American citizen imagining that the entire historical course of the particular land mass now known as America was but a lead up to his personal, somehow uniquely significant existence. Such a theory is so obviously, pathetically arrogant that one could easily dismiss it as a vain mussing unworthy of logical consideration. Yet, for the sake of argument, we will consider just such a position.

We first must clearly establish two essential elements of the theory to be evaluated. First, man is such a wondrously complex, functional unit that he simply can not be explained, or is at least best explained by the actions of an intentioned creator. Secondly, this creator is an omnipotent being, perfect himself, and in accordance with his omnipotence, the greatest engineer the universe has ever or could ever know. One may take issue with the second essential element, claiming that he could easily imagine a supreme being who is not omnipotent, but only powerful enough to create the universe and man. This is most certainly true, but since this is not the supreme being passed down by religious dogma, nor the creator who plays a functional role in people's lives, it need not be considered at this juncture.

Unfortunately for the theist, the two elements which, supposedly when taken together logically point to the necessity of a creator, in fact do just the opposite. Let us first consider the marvelous complexity of man. Proponents of the intelligent design (ID) theory (which it should be noted is really no more than an idea) point to human experience with complexity as evidence for design. For example, we all know that working television sets do not simply come to be. The probability that all the requisite components of a television set would simply fall together, and in the proper configuration without the goading of an external agent, such as a TV manufacturer, is absurdly unlikely. Likewise, why would one ever imagine that the pieces of a human being would just fall into place, and in working order, without an equally necessary designing force. First of all, the ID theorist fails to recognize that evolutionary biology has provided a perfectly feasible and logical external agent: all those natural forces which exist outside of an organism or population of organisms. No one pretends that the individual cells of an organism simply coalesce into its ultimate form; rather a billions of years long process of external and internal (for let us not forget that organic compounds, unlike the parts of a TV, interact with each other according to their respective properties) influence gradually shapes the ultimate product.

Yet more important than the above consideration is the fact that the complexity of a television set is a glaring demonstration of the limitations of its designer. The skill of a designer is found not only in his producing a functional object but also in the deftness with which he produces it. Who is the more skilled engineer, he who makes a toaster of 300 parts or he who produces one made of only 3? Clearly the latter, assuming that the toast is equally delicious. Apparently, there are two ways to go about making a toaster, and one of these is one hundred times more efficient. More importantly, the latter design has 297 less pieces to be worried about replacing or fixing. Every engineer knows that the more parts a machine has, the more likely it is to break, for not only must he worry about the failure of each and every part, but also the failure of each and every connection between adjacent pieces. The complexity of the human body, which is millions of times more complex than my example toaster, begs a creator only when we are assuming that this creator's skill is in many ways limited. The omnipotent creator is capable of doing anything, and in recognizing the dangers of overly complex machinations, would logically design his ultimate project to be as simple as possible.

It makes sense to imagine that the incredible complexity of the human body was the best that nature, a nonthinking force, could come up with, especially considering that the building blocks of life must interact with each other in ever more complex manners rather than morph into simpler structures possessing more complex functions. However, to imagine that a omnipotent, thinking entity's best shot at the human body would be as convoluted as it presently is would be utterly absurd. If the creator truly were all powerful, a man would likely be no more than a solid figure with an attached soul. Thus, in regard to man's complexity, we must either accept the reality that such complexity is much more likely to come about by accident rather than intention, or endow our creator with limitations and flaws. Neither of these outcomes sits particularly well with religious dogma.

Lastly, it should be pointed at out that, if one attempts to cast his vanity aside, he will quickly realize that the human body is really not that much of a marvel. Modern medicine provides plenty of examples of just how flawed our bodies really are. Take birth defects for example. How can we call our bodies miraculously well designed when the reality is that they very frequently come out wrong. If one were to lump all birth defects together, she would quickly see that the odds of developing as one should are just as good if not worse than ending up with some horrible defect. Further, in the event that one does survive prenatal development unscathed, there are a myriad of conditions she can acquire in postnatal life which demonstrate the body's propensity for "screwing up." Autoimmune diseases, inflammatory disorders, cancers, and sensory deficits name only a few categories of diseases in which one's own body turns on itself and wreaks havoc from inside out. The point is this: if a manufacture produced a product with as high a malfunction rate as the human body, you would be hard pressed to find anyone preaching the godlike merits of his company. Rather, we would probably consider the manufacture a dolt and his products, well, crap. This is not to say that I consider the human body crap, however, if this thing we call man is the best that a supposedly all-powerful being could come up with, than I'd like to make a return.