Can you find a watch on the beach? Did the universe create it by shaking billions of years through determinism/causality or was it created by an intelligent being. Show me how to create a watch without intelligence and then you have something. The watch, the car, the computer, etc where all created by intelligence.
Actually, human intelligence is exquisitely explained by the theory of evolution by natural selection. Not all organisms are animals, not all animals have brains, not all animal brains are equally intelligent. But those species that demonstrate “higher” intelligence universally hale from an evolutionary lineage the shows progressive development to that intelligence.
We are extremely impressed with our own intelligence and the ability with which it endows us for watchmaking, etc. But intelligence, I would argue, is not nearly so special as we like to think it is.
Were I to find a watch on a beach, yeah, I’d say “this was probably made by an intelligence,” but, more specifically, I’d say, “this was probably made by a HUMAN.”
Are bees intelligent? No. Not, at least, in the context of this conversation and in the sense that Paley used it in his analogy. But if I had no idea of what bees or beehives were and I were walking along a beach and came across some honeycomb, I could reasonably say, “This might be the product of intelligence.” But I’d be wrong. A bee is not as (humanly) intelligent as me or my dog or even an octopus. But that doesn’t matter. Bees are bloody BRILLIANT at making honeycomb.
Now, you might argue that the bee’s brain was designed by some intelligence (let’s just call it God, cuz by any definition, that’s what it would be), but that does not remove the simplicity of the bee’s brain from constructing the relative perfection and complexity of honeycomb.
And let’s not even get into the apparent “complexity” and “intelligent design” of snowflakes.
My point is, when we say “intelligence,” we really mean “human-like intelligence.” And then, thinking our type of intelligence is the cat’s meow, some people think that we were designed, and the universe was designed, by some God with a super-dooper version of our own intelligence. Which is like elephants thinking that the universe must have been designed by some god with a super-dooper nose (which would make them Hindus, I think).
But, getting back to the original matter at hand, I submit that, for all their amazingness (and they are amazing), our brains and intelligence are merely naturally evolved features and any watches we make are artifacts of that evolution, like bees’ honeycombs.
People who claim the universe was designed by an intelligence by contrasting things designed by humans with things not designed by humans are making a logical error because ALL of those things must (supposedly) have been designed by the same intelligent being, God. If that is so, than neither you nor I, nor William Paley, nor anyone else has ever, EVER seen anything that is not intelligently designed. And, if that is the case, then we don’t know what lack of design looks like. We have nothing to compare design with. It’s a meaningless argument.
I’m not saying it proves there is no God. It’s just that it is utterly useless as evidence FOR God.
