Debunking Christianity: Richard Carrier on the Argument From the Scale of the Universe

Just found out this great example of a "hand-waving" argument. 

For what it's worth, at least I'm not the only one who thinks Jeff Lowder's arguments don't work against my particular arguments. Here's Carrier from page 290 of my anthology, The End of Christianity:

We cannot predict from “a very powerful self-existent being created life by design” that he would do this by creating trillions of galaxies and billions of light years of empty intergalactic space and then sit around and twiddle his thumbs for ten billion years before finally deciding to create life in just one tiny place. That’s not even expected at all, much less with 100 percent certainty.16

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16. See extensive analysis of this point in: Nicholas Everitt, The Non-Existence of God (New York: Routledge, 2003), 213–26; and John Loftus, Why I Became an Atheist: Personal Reflections and Additional Arguments (Trafford Publishing, 2008), 95–110.

This is hand-waving at its best. People who make such "arguments" cannot tell you how they know that  that there a better design is possible.  The Bible does not tell us that God did not not create life anywhere else  in the universe. The Bible does not tell us  one way or the other. It's silly to think that the size of the universe and the time scales involved is not part of the design. Richard Carrier and John Loftus' expectations are ill-informed. It takes time to bake a cake with the chef's intervening throughout the process. Why would the universe and the story of humanity be any different. The Bible tells us that it's not a surprisxe to God and that God has been doing a lot more than just "twiddling his thumbs".

Debunking Christianity: Richard Carrier on the Argument From the Scale of the Universe