So, do we base Christianity on the existence of a divine creator or on the crucified Christ? While the first is triumphant in power the second is triumphant in weakness. A reading of the New Testament will convince us that the writers were Christian not because they believed in a supernatural creator but because they saw true humanity in the man Jesus. Anything else is a distraction.

The argument from design ends up with a monotheism that threatens humanity in its omnipotency. Such a god could equally be the god of Islam or Christianity. However, Christianity proclaims that if we have seen the Son we have seen the Father and this can only happen, not by our own effort but by the power of the Spirit.

The monotheism promoted by this author is a stranger to Christianity.

What if we have never seen the son or the father?
Why should we believe in a book written, and rewritten, by fellow humans?

How did mankind manage in the thousands of years before a man called Jesus was supposedly born?
Far more humans believe in Allah than in the Christian God, how do you know the Christian God is the true God?

I'm scratching my head to understand the previous comment from Sells.

If we ask a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Sufi, or other believer, "Did your God create the Sun" and they answer Yes, then surely they share the same God. Does that make monotheism a bad thing?

I saw the TV program on ABC and felt similar disappointment I believe this author was trying to express. All of the scientists and others given the opportunity to express an opinion basically agreed there appears to be a cosmic design and anything is possible in this infinite Universe, except the possibility God created it.

The ancient Vedic texts which pre-date the Old Testament and Judaism describe the Cosmos and its creation in a similar way as the quantum physicists. The ancient texts describe 'God' as being everything there is, everything there isn't (e.g., dark energy & dark matter); everything there will and won't be; instantaneously self creating, ever present and ever aware (e.g. the observer required by quantum physics). The description includes a proviso that full comprehension of 'god' is not possible by the human mind and therefore god is impossible to describe with 100% accuracy as the scientists are finding is the situation with their universe.

As long as people including scientists use a limited anthropomorphic picture of God, somehow creating the Universe from outside the universe, the argument against such a creation is pretty valid. However if the ancients are correct and the Universe itself, including everything in it, which also includes each one of us as individuals, is God... then what's left to argue; or better still why argue, just get on with Life which was also the point expressed by the scientists.

Perhaps the ancients and the current scientific thought have it right but its an inconvenient Truth.

Perhaps the real problem is not about sharing the proof 'God' created the Universe (or scientifically the perfect set of conditions and design for us to exist) but more about stepping on the toes of the main religions by undermining the basis of their belief system.

I also watched Catalyst the other night and was pleasantly surprised to hear Paul Davies almost echo ideas I floated only days before:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16942&page=0

Specifically, I said:
"Where my position radically differs is while I acknowledge that "we are on our own in a meaningless universe", this only 'necessarily' obtains in 'our' past/present, and not in the future. The future is maleable. We can construct a premeditated future and continue to improve it.
This doesn't only mean we may build an impressive legacy, but remain in a meaningless universe. The future is infinite and I am sceptical of our linear conception of time, within which we live in an eternal present. I suspect this not so, at least not for all time, and if not it changes everything. The future can redeem the past, perhaps even modify it; hindsight becomes 'retroactive'.

Davies' reasons for positing something similar are different--he's trying to explain the universe's "fine tuning" as retroactive tinkering, whereas I'm theorising mystical experience/epistemology (equally hard to explain) as emanating in the future. I see the past as barren/primordial in both cosmic and human terms, such that our Buddhas, Christs and Kants, if they were possessed of extra-mundane insights, were informed not via some omniscient being, but via a super-evolved intelligence/mode of existence in the future.
These possibly amount to the same thing, except that "God" tends to indicate universals which don't hold-up over time. The teachings of Christ were historically-specific rather than universal; if they were "divinely/retroactively inspired, this wisdom was properly tailored to time and situation.
Our current situation is entirely different and classical teachings are inappropriate. We now live on a fragile and crowded planet, and humanist ethics must expand to respect and protect all life.
Similarly our Enlightenment economics, conceived when expanding markets seemed almost infinite, should be reigned in and put on a renewable footing.
Given the phenomenal universe and mysteries such as consciousness, conscience and wisdom, it's fair enough to speculate on intelligent design/intervention, but it's inappropriate and dangerous to worship antiquated thinking as source and staple when it doesn't address current exigencies.

But what about the paradoxical nature of Quantum Reality as signalled by Einstein's archetypal equation E=MC2 - the all-the-way-down-the-line religious and cultural significance of which is described in this essay.

http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/christ_equals_emsquared.html

Or the fact that all of the seemingly solid "order" is just a temporary seemingly solidified pattern in the universal checkerboard or the universal chaos - as described here:
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/mirrorandcheckerboard995.html

And what about the fact that death really does rule to here or that the manifest universe is a gigantic death machine which is completely indifferent to the well-being or survival of any (temporary) "created" form. Countless billions of "created" biological entities get snuffed in every moment.

But what are we as human beings, and what is the nature of the evolutionary process that we are involved in as described here:
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/evolutionmansacrificeworld.html

None of the usual Christian "explanations" come anywhere near to describing the reality of our situation as described in this essay:
http://sacredcamelgardens.com/wordpress/the-unique-potential-of-man

Each action produces a reaction, so if someone created this world, then that action of creating would necessarily impact and modify that creator. As a minimum, that creating-entity would turn by that act from a potential-creator into an actual-creator. Further, earlier that entity couldn't be the actual-creator [of this world] while later that entity couldn't be its potential-creator. In conclusion, if someone created this world (or at least the conditions for it to develop) - then s/he/it is limited, thus not God!

So what about the fine tuning?

Option 1 is that there is a creator, other than God.

If so, then that creator should not be worshipped, but instead be either politely thanked, angrily cursed, or simply ignored. While that creator could be infinitely more capable and knowledgeable than us, from a spiritual point they cannot be higher than us, who while feeble in a worldly sense, have the potential to reach God (which that creator may not even have).

Option 2 is that other forms of life, non-human but nonetheless no lesser, are possible with different combination of parameters, thus the world is not statistically surprising.

Option 3 is that when and where conditions are right and humans are formed, then we experience the world through them and while such forms are unavailable, we are oblivious to the world as in deep dreamless sleep. Worlds may come and go, but we would only notice those worlds and times where and when the conditions are human-ripe and surprisingly say: "What a coincidence!".

Option 4 is that the objective world does not really exist, but instead we mentally generate the experience of ourselves as human because that is the experience that we happen to need most at this time for our spiritual development and the cosmic tuning-parameters are then chosen accordingly.