To quote William Paley:
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. (...) There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (...) Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.
I think this is the gist of it :
1. When I see a watch I know intuitively that it was made by a human being.
2. Why do I have this intuition? The complexity of the watch is that which intuitively suggest an intelligent designer.
3. Similarly the complexity of nature should intuitively suggest to us such a designer.
4. Since this designer is clearly NOT a human therefore it must be someone else i.e. God.
Ok now the problems:
The first proposition is sound.
The second proposition: The complexity of the watch is that which intuitively suggests an intelligent designer. Who says that it is the complexity of the watch which suggest to me that it is made by an intelligent designer. Perhaps it is my prior experience with watches and things crafted by man? Would a cave man instantly recognize the watch as intelligently and purposefully designed? Would an alien? I'm not sure...
The third proposition: Similarly the complexity of nature should intuitively suggest to us such a designer. A few problems: Firstly if it's so intuitive why the need for the watch analogy in the first place? I should just KNOW in a flash of intuition! Maybe it's my תאוות for sex and drugs which are blinding me and the watch will knock some sense into me....
Wikipedia suggests that the watch is merely a rhetorical device in which case the argument boils down to: "You know nature is designed because it's complex. THE END" which is a blatant non-sequitir. One has to explain WHY complexity automatically suggests design...
But another question! If everything is designed either by God or Man then how is it that it is so easy for Paley, in the quote above, to distinguish between rock and watch. According to his own logic I should NOT be able to distinguish between the two because they are BOTH products of design. Either God's or man's. Have you my dear theist, ever seen an un-designed thing? You have? Then you've seen something not designed by God? A little kefira-dick don't you think?
I suppose you could say maybe that only organisms are designed. (Even though that would be kefira-dick) You have to admit they are more complex than rocks....
In which case the argument is I can intuitively discern watches from rocks the same way as I can discern kangaroos from rocks.... I guess that could be sound if there weren't all the other objections...
The Fourth Proposition: Since this designer is clearly NOT a human therefore it must be someone else i.e. God. Or martians.
"Silly, atheist! Where did the martians come from!?" "hmmmm maybe from the same place God came from...."
Also - how do we know the designer is not a human? What in our intuition allows us to discern between man-made design and God-made design? In fact if we take the analogy seriously it is actually suggesting that nature shows signs of being man-made not God made. We simply have no rock stamped MADE BY GOD to compare nature to...
I guess you could say because we know from elsewhere that man doesn't know how to manufacture orangutans...
AND FINALLY:
Intuition is sometimes rubbish. Humans see designs in french toast, clouds and ink splotches.... Wouldn't put too much faith in it...
The watchmaker argument is an appeal to emotions, an elegant statement about the complexity of nature which some cannot but attribute to God. But it is not logic nor should it be presented as such. To stand in awe of the universe and see a maker behind it is fine. However to call that science or logic is just incorrect.
Read the Wikipedia article for a fuller discussion....
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9 comments:
"The complexity of the watch is that which intuitively suggest an intelligent designer."
Wrong. Straw man alert.
The complexity and purposefulness of the watch proves that it was created by an intelligent designer. We never witness a complex mechanism with many parts all working efficiently for a certain purpose form spontaneously. There is always a designer. Therefore life, in which every organelle in every cell is a complex machine, must have been created by God.
>Wrong. Straw man alert.
>The complexity and purposefulness of the watch proves that it was created by an intelligent designer.
You have to prove that and THAT is what the analogy is supposed to do so you can't have that which you're trying to prove be the given in your argument.
>We never witness a complex mechanism with many parts all working efficiently for a certain purpose form spontaneously.
Unless you say that organisms are products of spontaneity. Once again you're using the end of the arguments to justify the beginning...
All we know about complexity is that things that look man made are usually man made...
I'm not following you. We know that we never see an object which is complex and purposeful appear without an intelligent designer creating it. Tornados don't build houses. Throwing a bottle of ink on the wall never created a poem.
>We know that we never see an object which is complex and purposeful appear without an intelligent designer creating it.
How do we know? Do organisms look complex and purposeful? Yes. Do they have a designer? Don't know. A watch we KNOW has a designer from our empirical experience with watches, humans, and watchmaking but an organism? How do we know? EXPLAIN how WE KNOW that complexity = design.
>Tornados don't build houses. Throwing a bottle of ink on the wall never created a poem.
Strawman. No one ever claimed that complexity arises INSTANTLY. Un-designed complexity could come from MILLIONS of TRILLIONS of tornadoes bowing debris around and MILLIONS of TRILLIONS of bottles of ink being thrown against the wall. And when you get to infinity un-designed complexity is INEVITABLE as per the infinite monkey theorem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
"And when you get to infinity un-designed complexity is INEVITABLE as per the infinite monkey theorem."
That doesn't really matter. Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys the size of atoms typing from now until the heat death of the universe, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be many orders of magnitude less than one in 10183,800. As Kittel and Kroemer put it, "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event…", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers." This is from their textbook on thermodynamics, the field whose statistical foundations motivated the first known expositions of typing monkeys.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem#Probabilities
If that is true of Hamlet being created by chance, how much more it applies to author of Hamlet, William Shakespeare, having been created by chance. Hence we know that there is a God.
>That doesn't really matter. Even if the observable universe were filled with monkeys the size of atoms typing from now until the heat death of the universe, their total probability to produce a single instance of Hamlet would still be many orders of magnitude less than one in 10183,800.
Irrelevant, I'm talking about infinite monkeys, not monkeys = to the atoms in the universe. There is a big difference.
A good question would be if the universe, or the MULTIVERSE is infinite (infinite in time or in size)? If it is then it would be strange NOT to see complexity.
Then we have to wonder which is a better answer to said complexity Infinity or God? I don't know the answer to that question..
If the universe/multiverse is not infinite then I'm not sure what the chances would be of complex developing and it would be very difficult to calculate... but either way, NOBODY says ONE tornado made a house, so for the sake of intellectual honesty it behooves you to drop this strawman of tornadoes and ink bottles which I've seen you use more than once on the blogosphere....
Also natural selection is not completely random... hence the word SELECTION...
"Then we have to wonder which is a better answer to said complexity Infinity or God? I don't know the answer to that question.."
I do.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test
Even the simplest living things are complex beyond human comprehension. A complex and purposeful machine, such as a pump, is obviously the work of an intelligent designer. Therefore surely the human heart, for example, is clearly the work of a supremely intelligent being.
You're merely repeating yourself without any explanation..
>A complex and purposeful machine, such as a pump, is obviously the work of an intelligent designer.
You're just restating the watchmaker analogy, so it seems we've merely come full circle without you addressing my points...
Your point has been fully addressed. You believe that if the universe is infinite then anything, however improbable, can and must happen and an infinite number of times.
I am stating that common sense tells us to accept that things are what they clearly appear to be unless very strong evidence indicates otherwise.
Let me give you an example.
How do I know that my wife is really my wife, not a clever impostor posing as my wife? After all, if the universe is infinite then anything, however improbable, can and must happen and an infinite number of times. Simple: common sense tells me to accept that things are what they clearly appear to be unless very strong evidence indicates otherwise. People who do in fact repeatedly fingerprint their family members to reassure themselves of these people's identities are regarded as mentally ill.
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