would you believe it had an intelligent designer or that it evolved through a series of random events?
This was someone else’s answer to a skeptic, but I thought I would ask it, as I think it deserves some attention.
The Argument From Design is often stated by analogy, in this analogy we find a computer chip in the forest. I know, who would be looking through the forest. I normal look to see what has washed up on the beach. For the sake of this argument, and since Jim Darwin has alluded to wanting his afterlife to be like spending time at the beach, let’s move the argument to the beach. Hey and while we are at it, who takes a chip to the beach? I’ll use a pocket watch. People are always losing those. If you find this less valid than a chip in the forest, please feel free to point that out as well.
So, imagine that one has found a watch on the beach. Does one assume that it was created by a watchmaker, or that it evolved naturally? Of course one assumes a watchmaker.
Yet like the watch, the universe is intricate and complex; so, the argument goes, the universe too must have a creator.
The Watchmaker analogy suffers from three particular flaws, over and above those common to all Arguments By Design. Firstly, a watchmaker creates watches from pre-existing materials, whereas God is claimed to have created the universe from nothing. These two sorts of creation are clearly fundamentally different, and the analogy is therefore rather weak.
Secondly, a watchmaker makes watches, but there are many other things in the world. If we walked further along the beach and found a nuclear reactor, we wouldn’t assume it was created by the watchmaker. The argument would therefore suggest a multitude of creators, each responsible for a different part of creation (or a different universe, if you allow the possibility that there might be more than one).
Finally, in the first part of the watchmaker argument we conclude that the watch is not part of nature because it is ordered, and therefore stands out from the randomness of nature. Yet in the second part of the argument, we start from the position that the universe is obviously not random, but shows elements of order. The Watchmaker argument is thus internally inconsistent.
Apart from logical inconsistencies in the watchmaker argument, it’s worth pointing out that biological systems and mechanical systems behave very differently. What’s unlikely for a pile of gears (or diode filled silicon) is not necessarily unlikely for a mixture of biological molecules.
OK, I went a little long. I admit I will get slammed ahead of time.
JUANA
great thought provoker
I would think that whom ever lost the it is going to be pi-st when they find out.
Read “The Blind Watchmaker” by Richard Dawkins. I have read it, damn fine reading. Your analogy is false since the chip is non-living, and a cell is living.
Anybody worth arguing with has heard this a hundred times.
*STANDING OVATION*
I see rationality has taken a hold of you as well my freind. If interested, please check my profile for a question regarding the age of the earth, and see how I have also put to ruins the mathematical extrapolations that the earth only had two residents in the year 4300BC…..
You’ve convinced me to deny God, and become an atheist.
Do you feel good now?
I believe in evolution. I think there may be a God. I think there must be a way to incorporate the two. The universe is way too complicated for a simple mind like mine. I think there must be life somewhere out there in the universe. Did the beings there evolve too? Maybe we will never know for sure until after we die.
Living cellular beings are far more complex than a writswatch, and yet atheists are eager to attribute evolution to life as we know it. It is a closing of the heart at fault, not a lack of evidence from we Creationists.
Hmmm, Mouth running, brain in neutral.
Living cells are not comparable to a watch, a computer chip, or any other mechanical construct as they do not possess life.
Another Strawman Argument brought to you by………..
Well the only problem is that the steps to how things evolved is laid out in the fossil records. It is pretty simple to see that less complicated creatures came first and so on. Sure you can quibble about the minor details and science does, but life got more complex as time went on.
Your argument of a watch doesn’t match because it is wholly without context. There are no less complicated things that are capable of self replication and adaptation that lead to the watch. It is a machine that was not capable of changing itself to match conditions.
Wow, you are so far off with this analogy, it is scary. Imagine you are on a beach and you find this watch. You study the watch scientifically and find out the beach randomly creates watches all the time. Then what would you believe? Your analogy is way off base because A. you can prove a watchmaker exists, B. you can prove that other watches are made by watch makers, C. watches aren’t natural, they have to be made, D. watches aren’t made up of naturally occurring elements and parts, and E. watches can’t reproduce to create new watches that might be different form the first.
This sounds like some argument you heard from a church, like the “it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”