Your last question is totally irrelevant to this. Very interesting that you would go that direction. Why is that?
The 2nd to last is a bit better because out of the 4 metaphysical possibilities for a prime cause, Christian falls in the category of 'everything came from a personal intelligent creator' (that's metaphysics in the philosphic sense, the same as you found 'closed system of natural cause and effect' to be. 'Closed system...' is more clear than naturalistic uniformitarianism, but is the same).
There is nothing absurd about saying that it is more sense that an infinite being put earth and moon in place than chancing it to a Katrina. I do not accept your meaning of absurdity and you have no corner on that. What is absurd to me is to see people driving cars down the street who actually believe that the 20 areas identified in THE PRIVILEGED PLANET can just happen to harmonize and integrate the first time and every time with their mountains of 00s it takes to express improbability. And those people are driving cars are in the lane opposite me! Crikey!
Speaking of the moon, do you really want anyone to know you said the other planets do nothing for us? that you said it out loud? Nonsense. Look merely at the gravitational range we live in. Gonzalez and Richards put it this way: imagine a tape measure across our galaxy. The level of gravitational pull is at a certain marked inch. A change one inch either direction is disaster. The moon does nothing?
sorry I don't accept your definition of pointless about the painting. It is exactly the declaration of Scripture; the heavens are his handicraft. I did not ask you, however, to accept that analogy while you thought the world was 'a closed system of natural causes and effects.' That would be pointless. I don't accept that it is closed. God acts in it as he wants to communicate what he wants. He does so to communicate how we may be redeemed, not only for eternal life but for grace and virtue in this life. Instead of being the beasts that T. Huxley thought would be so groovy to be.
This world is not just a mass. It was to be a home and there are "parents" so to speak (taking a few steps down the path of the Christian concept of the Trinity). There was love and communication in the Trinity before the foundation of the world, and it was intended to be here and now as well.
If you have trouble with the livability of this world, it is partly because it is distorted; it has been since the human rebellion egged on by Satan. It is not as created originally. But even so, if you read a history of science like THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE you will see many times that gifts of God through science have made the world pretty nice. Also the broader doctrines of Christianity have engendered medicine, improvements for women and servants, etc., that would otherwise not be there.
The last time I looked at an electricity satelite image taken at night, there were few blacked out areas. It has made things very livable. What "on earth" do you mean by vast majority inhabitable?
Going back to the physics barrier to understanding in the first paragraph, I think it is a trick of that kind of naturalism, to make it impossible to consider the activity of God by the shear force and repetition of physics formulas. As Lewis said in "Religion and Science" in GOD IN THE DOCK:
"Modern science has shown there's no such thing" said my scientist friend about the supernatural.
"But don't you see," said I, "That science never could show anything of the sort?"
"Why on earth not?"
"Because science studies Nature. And the question is whether anything besides Nature exists--anything "outside". How could you find that out by studying simply Nature?"
Then Lewis gives the daily-nickel-in-the-drawer analogy. Ie, what if a person plans to put a nickel in his desk drawer each day. On the 3rd day he has 3, etc., infinitum. "Natural laws are like that provided there's no interference... If there was anything outside Nature, and if it interfered--then the events which the scientist expected wouldn't follow. That would be what we (Christians) call a miracle. In one sense, it wouldn't break the laws of Nature, but those laws can't tell you if Someone will interfere. A child might come take a nickel. A thief might come take them all. Someone tired of change clanging around in their pocket might decide to empty their pocket.
His point was, no scientific law will tell you Someone can't interfere with the daily placement of the nickel. You'd have to ask a psychologist or a parent or a detective that question. Not a scientist.
lain: 
