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The watch analogy
- Thread starter REstudent2010
- Start date
Since cars & car parts don't sexually reproduce, they won't behave like living organisms.
What is violating what law?
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Or, in this case, it's hard to understand something when you don't have the intellectual capacity to grasp the concepts involved. Don't sweat it though - there's a lot of people in your position.
You can go back to sleep now.
I wasn't the one to come up with it - I heard it from someone else, but I do think it's an interesting point.
Personally, I don't put a whole lot of stock in people's inference of design if they can't tell me how we would be able to tell that a thing isn't designed.
Which law of science? The second law of thermodynamics? It doesn't - as was pointed out before, the Earth's not a closed system. Also, "complexity" and "decreased entropy" aren't synonymous.
BTW - if there is a God that both exists external to the universe and is active within the universe, then the universe itself isn't a closed system either.
IF_u_knew
Curious
Isaiah 45 ... I think that the "concept" you are referring to is realized in this chapter. particularly verse 7 ... :shout is about right.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Ah, another believer who knows what god is doing. Is there no limits to this hubris?
Of course not.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
As a theist I have to say... the watchmaker argument is unconvincing bunk.
IMHO If you need logical loop-d-loops to have faith... you don't have faith you have dogma.
wa:do
IMHO If you need logical loop-d-loops to have faith... you don't have faith you have dogma.
wa:do
Skwim
Veteran Member
Heck, just have religious faith and you've got dogma somewhere.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Dogma should be seen like quick lime in concrete... you need a little of it but be careful or you'll get burned by it.
Too much of it and you ruin the formula.
wa:do
Surely God has better ways to show his worth than making himself indistinguishable from those who only say foolish things.
For if the didn't, there would be no point in caring about him. Don't you agree?
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
Hi, REstudent. The watchmaker analogy is a powerful argument for design from intelligence, but it does not address the alternative--that complex designs can also arise from natural selection. Darwin did not come up with the idea of common descent. What he added to our understanding of natural "design" was the concept of natural selection. Those self-replicating processes that are favored by their natural environment tend to overwhelm the ones that are not.
There is one big difference between design from intelligence and design from natural selection. Intelligent designers optimize their designs by eliminating unnecessary features. If some feature of a design is not contributing anything to the overall goal, intelligent designers tend to simplify the design by removing the unnecessary features. Design from natural selection does not work that way. If some feature plays no negative role in survival, then there is no reason why it should disappear quickly. That is why living animals have vestigial organs. It is why often very complex natural designs--for example, the design of the human eye or the location of the prostate in human males--are not the most efficient possible designs. Natural designs tend to be riddled with inefficiencies, because those inefficiencies take time to erode away. There is no intelligent engineer pondering the inefficiencies and redesigning the mechanism to make a quantum leap in improvement. Natural designs, unlike intelligent designs, tend to be far more intricate, inefficient, and complex than intelligent ones. They are works in progress. They move forward through the slow process of erosion--what some have termed "survival of the fittest". But what is "fittest" is always changing, because the environment that selects for efficient designs is itself always changing.
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touggstore
New Member
Cosmology & evolution, for example, are stochastic processes. Making a watch is not.
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
The study of Chaos has demonstrated how complex structures can be formed with out design.
Chaos inevitable leads to complex patterns and structures, as found in nature.
Chaos inevitable leads to complex patterns and structures, as found in nature.
Morse
To Extinguish
Could you elaborate? Provide a more in depth explanation, some links perhaps? I'm not saying your wrong, just curious as to the argument behind your stance and where you're pulling information from.
Regards,
Morse
outhouse
Atheistically
WELCOME!!!!
If one looks at the universe and all that is in it, sun,s, planets, black holes all gravity that holds everything together it would seem so complicated nature surley could not have done all this itself but yet it has. We witness the different states of planetary evolution.
Everytime man has a question he cannot figure out we imagine the most likely answer.
every primitive tribe on the planet has a belief or spirit, fire spirits, rain spirits, smoke that carries the bad spirits away ect ect. there are no tribes that dont have odball whacky beliefs. the further away from civilization the tribes are the more odball there bliefs are.
Key word is Imagaination fills in the blanks in our minds.
Evolution is an observation of facts to make it a scientific theory
with human evolution we have a clear picture of what happened. We not only have a clear picture but we have cousins, uncles, aunts and great grand paraents.
There is no debate about evolution, the only people that object are those that hold on to 2000 year old beliefs.
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
Terrywoodenpic
Oldest Heretic
The BBC did a programme covering the subject, with in the past week. which was very interesting. It put up a very convincing argument that Complex functions like evolution can be explained by Chaos theory. and was able to demonstrate pratical experiments that showed the formation of complex patterns/structures in nature
Morse
To Extinguish
Thanks! I'll be sure to watch it.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
The watch analogy is one of the most thoughtless arguments for God. Essentially it calls us to look around and without reflection marvel at the beauty of nature.
The thing is we know that there is a watch and we know that there are watchmakers.
Conversely, we know that there is a watch that we found, but we don't know that there's a God, only that there is a watchmaker.