Like any Christian (and indeed any theist), I believe that the world has been created by God, and hence "intelligently designed." The hallmark of intelligent design, however, is the claim that this can be shown scientifically; I'm dubious about that. ...As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go; hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life. What does have that implication is not evolutionary theory itself, but unguided evolution, the idea that neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing or orchestrating the course of evolution. But the scientific theory of evolution, sensibly enough, says nothing one way or the other about divine guidance. It doesn't say that evolution is divinely guided; it also doesn't say that it isn't. Like almost any theist, I reject unguided evolution; but the contemporary scientific theory of evolution just as such—apart from philosophical or theological add-ons—doesn't say that evolution is unguided. Like science in general, it makes no pronouncements on the existence or activity of God.[47]

Okay, let's take the plunge from 10,000 feet above to down here: "guided evolution" does not make any sense... Our corner of the universe is about 14 billion years old, our sun is nearly six billion years old and our planet is about 4.5 billion years old... The universe is expanding at a rate of knots...

If we were creationists, we would challenge the value and specific relationship of these figures to fit a 6000 years of the world and human existence with Noah's ark as the centre piece on the coffee table...  That's a completely goddist delusion.

If we're adherent to "intelligent design, we're impotent to note there are too many flaws in the universe and on our own small planet as well for this to be an intelligent construct. That's another complete goddist delusion.

Anyway, all the prospicious accidental "creation" since "day-dot" led to the evolution of a bipedus monkey about 3 million years ago that we call homo erectus to eventually lead to the homo cleverus (sapiens) monkey that we are today. And there were some notable failures on the way: Homo Neanderthalis and a few others on this recent line of homo "evolution"... There were also other species and groups of species, such as the dinosaurs, whose evolutionary line but disappeared in a flash (it took more than a million years for the dinosaurs to become extinct though) apart from a few remnants in birds and their far cousins such as crocs and lizards... And humans were not there then...

So according to the result, it appears that for the theists, their god — or gods — would have experimented in evolution rationale until it/she/he/they got it right... Well not quite right: humans are really unfinished uncouth farting beasts with a more complicated brain than a goldfish, but that's about it. Hence the concept of the original sin being wheeled in for good measure... Blimey! Who do they think we are? Dummies?... Sure...

Unguided evolution is far more rational in this context than having an all whatever god fiddling with himself out of boredom and producing massively imperfect creatures swimming in a massively too huge relative universe ballooning like exploding baggy pants... Our relationship to our immediate environment is bleedingly obvious, though most species on this earth have no specific intimate relationship with us — humans — us of the superior intellect, the intellect we suspect we have. That "superior" intellect gives us thick ankles — a euphemism to explain that we think we're shit-hot... We believe we're fallen angels rather than fumbling monkeys... I ask you...

Hey? What is wrong with a bit of progressive randomity in evolution? Nothing. What is wrong with a "guided" evolution? Everything! It does not make any sense at all... The intent, the purpose, the end game are completely illogical. 

That a god spent a lot of his perfection to create imperfection and give us the task to climb the ladder of pseudo-perfection to claim an eternal seat at an eternal banquet makes as much sense as the theory of nothing. 

But this sneaky concept of salvation is very attractive though... many people fall for it. It's easy to believe.  We live in the "age of Deceit"... We're swimin' in deceit...

There's the trap! Humans still in their pyjamas, are luring themselves with the comfortable concept of eternity to dismiss a relative world in which as individuals we spend on average 77 years alive and that's it... So we have to find a rational for the "that's it" factor... We invent a lure: god. 

But in this invention we have also to find a reason to explain the imperfections of our imperfect world created by a perfect god: The infirm, the sick, the mad, the destruction, the aggression, the stupid, the "natural" disasters... Thus we invent the "evil", the devil, a nasty creature (born from god, nothing less) that we associate with the darkness, while we associate the light with god... Gooodo... All very reassuring, but totally false and completely ignoramus of reality. The illusion of god, yaweh, allah or whatever is only our silly reassurance against... whatever difficulty life is throwing at us, from the moment we exist... We have to manage pain... Reality can be painful... But we socially streamline our performance in order to define our "social" duties to develop better comforts... We are a social species — we depend on one another for survival, stylistic and basic — and getting more so together as we augment our numbers on this planet. In order for this social structure to sustain or thrive, we need to more-than-less be able to be kind to "others" of our kind, until we snap. But our social duties, humanistic duties, do not have to be derived from a silly belief. Yet silly beliefs can help tame the beasts: Santa Claus knows whether we've been good or bad and presies should come accordingly... I wish.

Meanwhile WE ( too many of us) DON'T WANT TO KNOW the non-spiritual relative reality... Because... it's hard not to have a belief of some "superior being" dictating our behaviour and it's bloody hard to be 100 per cent responsible for what we are and do. So we don't want to know the REAL world...

Well this statement is relative of course, some people, including scientists, are working hard at finding out the bits that increase our rational knowledge, from black holes, atoms to quarks and other bizos — but it's a hard slog... As soon as we invent a purpose or an intent, outside the relative rational values of what we observe, our understanding crashes because we don't want to accept the non-purpose of it all.

And that is the key, my key. The key for many atheists... Atheists don't have faith in anything, including the infallibility of the mind... We can create our own purpose to suit a relative moment and we can be wrong, but, hell, never as wrong as the goddists are...

From the first amino-acids in the soup in which chemical reactions complexed the amino acids into proteins, bits self-created ways "to be-and-not-be". RNA, DNA... More complexities developed the process further. An accidental but necessary ability for this process to survive was to feel and react to the environment, an ability that relatively defined evolution and devolution. The bits that could "survive" their amino-acid line character in a changing environment of this little planet were adapting to these changes. Many other lines of bits did not make it... This reactivity of "life" and the environment CHANGED THE ENVIRONMENT as well. The early atmosphere of the Earth would have been poisonous to us, while for some species, say, sulphur dioxide would have been food.

Life in the soup we now call "the sea" thus started probably before 3.6 billions years ago... It had many evolutionary and devolutionary trends... Self-destruction included. Those lines that survived best made it, still with the individual "be-and-not-be" timeline ingrained in the process, while those lines of complexity that did not adapt or those that "did devolution" became extinct... Life became about change and adaptation to change... Modification of energy and specific constructs of matter... Awareness of individuals in their space-time position IS NOT NECESSARY but it can help... It took a billion years to first self-complex the structural process at monocellullar level. After that it became more complex as it entered the construct of multicellular organisms.  Changes in the environment (from within or outside the individuals of the line of species, including cosmic changes) would instil a new step, either favourable to survival or not. 

The process involves the fabrication and acquisition of other amino acids and proteins to continue. Should there be no "food" available and the process "dies"...  Thus there is a chain of event, in which "life as a whole" (if there is such a thingy — there could have been several original life-lines of amino-acids) has to "sacrifice" individuals of some species in order for individuals of other species to survive their "be-and-not-be" timeline. Of course there is no intent in the "sacrifice", just a process of whomever/whatever that can survive, will take over other's proteins — and those who become fodder are fodder but these can defend themselves by becoming "numerous".

We know of the complexity of genes, that are in themselves very strong chemical structures that possess this individual "be-and-not-be" trend. We know how genes specify and eventually deteriorate as they copy themselves to grow an individual's complex structure. We know too that cancerous cells have lost (or never gained) the "not-be" part of the genetic make-up... But this "eternal" property creates havoc. The cells survive well but the finely tuned structure disintegrate as these "cancerous cells do not have the ability to create a defined structure, just a "blob". Nonsensical development takes over. We know by precise observation that cancerous cells lack the terminators at the ends of their genes. While normal cells have only a limited duplicating "life" (x 50 approx) because the terminators eventually induce self-degeneration (not-be), the cancer cells can divide ad infinitum without structural needs — as long as "food is available".  Planet earth was lucky that cells developed the "be-and-not-be" conundrum, otherwise the planet "be" would be now known as planet "Blob".

Involved in the process of surviving are many molecules and at any point in time the chemical processes can go "wrong" though in general they are extremely hard-wired to maintain a line of powerful integrity in the repeat (construction of another/others) of chemical individuals. 

The sexuation of species came early in the sea as complexity cannot (couldn't) develop beyond a certain point in simple duplication of cells. There was no need for this "evolutionary step", except that IT HAPPENED... chemical circumstances made it happen.

Before this separation of reproductive "purpose", there were also sympathetic alliance between various cellular species. The mitochondrion in eucaryotic cells, for example has been though to be from a different species that found a host for the benefit of the host and of itself and developed an important role as power producer within the cells... In plants the mitochondrion is often non existent and  the role of power-plant for the cell is provided by chlorophyll, another possible "alien" to the original cell...

One of the major development in this context is the ability of complex individuals in many lines of evolution (including plants) to feel and react with the environmental factors. This leads also to speciation where individuals of the same species recognise each other to a point, and reject other species for procreation, relatively. But the animal kingdom in which a centralised nervous system of feel and reactive action has also developed a sense of "being" by memory. Awareness of "being" is the delta of memory of "events"... Many animals are aware of their existence — and most will do anything in their relative power to protect this awareness. Hunger is part of memory, for example...

Memory-complex helps store reactive behaviour to specific environmental factors. Humans are the same. Our memory eventually defines whom we think we are. But as I have mentioned many times before, our memory processing power is bigger than our survival need. This gives us quite a bit too much slack — the ability of stylistic creative thought, including lies such as invention of religious beliefs. 

When our memory looses its ability to be above a certain level of performance, we become less able to take care of ourselves. We know this too well. And then we die. That's life.

There is no shame in having been and be gone forever. That's being an atheist.