RANDOM LINK OF THE DAY. God's Hamster. An Argument to Show Why You Can't Completely Rule Out Intelligent Design.

<Get "Madame Sosostris" by Damozel | I am the creator of a little hamster world, inhabited by a single dwarf hamster called Ezzeray (a name bestowed on her by the beloved stepdaughter, Emma).  Hamsters, unlike other rodents, do not care for the company of others, including other hamsters.  But they are capable of having a very limited sort of personal relationship with their human lovers.   

I love my little hammette, but could she ever love me? Answer (of course):  No. 

I don't have a ham-cam of my own, so I am going to use the footage I found at YouTube  (posted by yongseoksong and discovered via Cute Overload). Watch the footage, then ponder the following analogy (bearing in mind that I am not ENTIRELY serious.  But not entirely not serious either.)

1. The hamster lives in a world created---"intelligently" designed--- for her by her owner.
2. The hamster, due to very limited sight, is incapable of seeing her owner or perceiving the owner except in parts (the feeding or teasing hand; the hand that inexplicably sweeps away the precious food supply hoarded in the cage to replace it with a cleaner world the hamster never wanted; the distant, booming voice, making sounds that can't be understood or comprehended and that the hamster must learn to ignore.
3. The regular replenishment of food and water supplies which may appear at irregular intervals and which appear to the hamster to be a condition of her existence (and "natural") but which depend on forces she is incapable as a hamster of comprehending or even recognizing. The teasing hand that reaches in and offers treats may also, arbitrarily withdraw them. 
4. The hamster, inhabiting a cage made of glass and wire,  is aware of this as the world and also of a larger world beyond (the room in which the cage is located).  The hamster may dimly infer----my first two hamsters were born explorers---a world beyond the room beyond the house in which the cage is located and could of course walk out into it any time if they can find a way out of their "reality" into the larger and larger ones.  (But could they survive?)
5. The hamster perceives the hand that feeds her as a threat and as the same "enemy" that also (for her own good, though she is incapable of knowing this) laid waste to her carefully constructed tunnels and food hoards during the periodic cleaning of the cage.  She might try to defend her home by biting the hand that feeds her.
6. Occasionally, inexplicably, the hand reaches in and removes her from her cage against her wishes.  The hamster, sensing this event, tries fruitlessly to hide in tunnels made from toilet paper tubes and in the little plastic house provided to her with the cage.  The hand can always find her, wherever she hides; how?  How does the hand know that she is hiding on the top of the stairs? How can she be seen by something she can't see?  How can she be moved by forces she doesn't understand.
7. The hand anticipates her intentions before she is fully aware of them.  Against her wishes, it blocks her progress toward the edge of the bed (an enormous precipice) and returns her to the place she started from.  She doesn't understand that it's for her own good; she wants to go to the edge.  Or she isn't even aware that this is what she is doing; she is simply impelled by desires she can't analyze to move forward.  Being blocked is stressful for her.  She shows signs of frustration.  I can't explain to her why I'm removing her from her path.
8. The hamster is alive; capable of forming intentions of a sort; and endowed with sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.  She came into this world not knowing why or how and is unaware that her life expectancy (assuming all goes well) is probably at most three years. She lives her complete life in a span of time against which mine would seem an eternity (even though it isn't).   
9. I am aware, and the hamster is not, of her needs.  I am also aware of impulses---such as the impulse to escape and explore---which would lead to her early death through attacks by monsters she is also not capable of understanding (three cats).  I can perceive her wishes by sounds and movements she is unaware convey them.  I can perceive that for some of them to be implemented would not be in her interests. She cannot know or understand this.
10. Since she is not capable of perceiving me or understanding my intervention in her existence, she's not capable of drawing any inferences about it or me.  I am a vague force in her life that mainly leaves her alone but that sometimes intervenes.  She is only aware of me when I intervene directly.   Since she can't understand how this comes about or what my intentions are, the only way she can learn to connect with me is by repeated contact.  For example, her predecessor hamster became quite fond of sitting on my shoulder or in may lap.  But I was still the big thing that sometimes invaded his cage and when he finally began to die, I couldn't do a thing to prevent it.  That is the law of nature:  his and mine. 

Is it possible that there are beings to whom we stand in the approximate relationship of hamsters to humans?  That we don't know they are there because we lack the equipment to perceive/understand them?  That we see them as forces of nature (because, of course, they are) but constantly misunderstand what we see, mistaking effects for causes?  That they can see us and intervene in our lives without being able to communicate with us directly?  That they "intelligently designed" the part of the universe that we mistake for "the universe"? That they stand in some direct relationship to us and even perhaps feel fond of us, but without being able to tell us so?

Etcetera.  I'm sure you can take it from there.

Logicians will spot the fallacies in this analogy.  Christian theologians will spot the fly in the frankincense:  it doesn't point toward a single God or a single intelligence, it doesn't point to a single entity that created the universe (but only proposes that some corners of the universe might be created); and that it doesn't get you anywhere near the sort of God that Christians expect you to believe in and believe in yourself.   It also doesn't address mortality or explain what happens to the hamster or her keeper after their respective deaths.  It doesn't explain Jesus or deal with the notion that God created human beings in his image (though the Catholics say it is the soul or pneuma only in which we resemble God). 

It does raise the possibility that there may be mysteries beyond mysteries and that what we perceive may not after all be the true boundary of what actually exists.  It doesn't rule out evolution, but it does posit some sort of connection between one form of being and another.   

I find it comforting in a way;  to be God's hamster, or the hamster of God's hamster, seems better to me than to believe I don't have any resources except those right in front of my eyes, even if it turns out that my personal God is mortal, occasionally neglectful---something awful could happen while God is preoccupied with matters my hamster brain can't begin to grasp--- and isn't bothered about how long I live or when or how I die or even if it turns out that God is something quite different from what we imagine (or that Christ meant something quite different from what people assume).