[GunRunner]

Visualize a golf ball, now imagine a marble next to the golf ball. Now take the marble and place it 700 miles from the golf ball.

That is the scale of the distance between the Sun and Proxima Centauri. Now multiply that by 300 billion stars with similar distances between them to represent the Milky Way. Now multiply that by 100 billion for the number of galaxies in the observable universe.

It seems silly and subjective to think that one tiny chemical reaction on a poppy seed next to the original golf ball is the reason for the entire structure.

[Heartlander]

You are obviously free to believe what you want – and if you believe; the universe popped into existence from natural causes (natural processes created natural processes), we just got lucky with the initial conditions and constants that allow for life, we got lucky again and life somehow formed naturally, we exist now thru a process of error accumulation and blind luck (neo-darwinism), and human consciousness is ultimately the result of mindlessness – fine – believe what you want… but again, there are consequences to those beliefs:

The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called “ethical principles.” The question is not whether biology—specifically, our evolution—is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible.

Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will…. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance.

Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place.
- Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, The Evolution of Ethics

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly.
1) No gods worth having exist.
2) No life after death exists.
3) No ultimate foundation for ethics exists.
4) No ultimate meaning in life exists.
5) Human free will is nonexistent.
- William Provine (from Darwin Day speech)

Personally, I do not see how anyone can live in harmony with these beliefs. I would agree with Sir Arthur Balfour and William J Murray:

…that if we would maintain the value of our highest beliefs and emotions, we must find for them a congruous origin. Beauty must be more than accident. The source of morality must be moral. The source of knowledge must be rational.
- Sir Arthur Balfour

“If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place.”
- William J Murray