Conquer Club

Anyone know how to counter William Paley's watch theory? In my opinion God doesn't exist so I have to prove this theory wrong. Any help?

firth4eva wrote:Anyone know how to counter William Paley's watch theory? In my opinion God doesn't exist so I have to prove this theory wrong. Any help?

And what is that theory?

If someone found a watch in the middle of a field they would know that it didn't just appear. Someone would have had to have designed and made it. Just as a watch needs a watch maker a universe needs a universe maker. God must have made the universe

Very brief and maybe not entirely accurate but that's what i remember.

Let's see...

Counteranalogy:
If someone sees a tree in the middle of an otherwise empty field they would know that it didn't just appear there, someone would have had to design it and make it, just as a watch needs a watchmaker the tree needs a treemaker. God must have made that tree and put it there.

Sounds silly? Yes it is, it's meant to be. As we know, the tree will have grown from a small seed. The analogy rests on the faulty assumption that things can only come from more complex things. While that is true pretty much wherever humans and human artifacts are involved, it's rather a stretch to apply it to nature and the universe. In nature, everything living starts as a single cell, pretty humble beginning for something that becomes as complex as an animal or a plant.
Applied to the universe you might want to point out that there are some theories that see the universe as starting as a singularity, all matter and the dimensions condensed to an infinitely dense point with nothing existing outside of this point, our four dimensions "breaking loose" and starting the universe mostly as we see it. There're indications that physical constants have changed from what they were several billion years ago. Not very good design if the basic building blocks go and change themselves over time imo.

Then you can also argue against calling the beginning of the universe 'god', pointing out that there's no necessity of giving this unknown beginning such a loaded name as that.

And you can argue against the assumption that while the universe had to be created by some intelligent being, the being that created it is simply assumed to exist. Where did this being come from? Why can this being just exist without having an external beginning if the universe can not? God creates more new questions while answering none, he's the metaphysical equivalent of 'Because!'.

If you have the time, you could wade through some of the Creationist/Evolutionist thread.

First, let me clarify that as a Christian, I do believe in God, but here are some ideas on how to approach it.

Basically, you need a couple of things.

First, the orginal "Athiest" idea (for lack of a better term at the moment) was to say that everything was 100% random ... and the counter was, as you pointed out, the probability that a bunch of watch parts could be dropped in a field in a form to make a watch is so astronomically inprobable as to be "impossible".

The counter
1. given millenia of time such a random event COULD have happened. Improbability is not the same as impossible.

Talking about the origin of earth, you don't need a whole animal, you need building blocks of proteins which would, given the right combinations of heat and so forth would eventually form more complex forms.. (excuse my inexactitude, I am working off the top of my head) which eventually would form something like slime mold then blue green algae (I believe that is the order, but could be wrong). Anyway, the thing is that once the initial step is completed, it is no longer 100% random.

In each step, there is a greater propensity to the next step than there was to reach the original step. That is, it is more likely for existing proteins to combine than for proteins to begin fresh from mineral material. ... and once certain combinations are formed, the chance of them reaching something like life increases... etc.

Once you have that initial life step, then it becomes a progression of mutations and such.

But, the key is that other than the initial steps, they are not random. The probability is still extremely high. But, you have infinit time with which to work, so theoretically, it "could" happen.

Anyway, that's about as far as I can go right now. IF I think of anything else, I will come back.

MeDeFe wrote:Then you can also argue against calling the beginning of the universe 'god', pointing out that there's no necessity of giving this unknown beginning such a loaded name as that.

And you can argue against the assumption that while the universe had to be created by some intelligent being, the being that created it is simply assumed to exist. Where did this being come from? Why can this being just exist without having an external beginning if the universe can not? God creates more new questions while answering none, he's the metaphysical equivalent of 'Because!'.

These are my favourites. The others tend to descend into anti-scientific arguments about semantics.

MeDeFe wrote:Then you can also argue against calling the beginning of the universe 'god', pointing out that there's no necessity of giving this unknown beginning such a loaded name as that.

Whenever I make the cosmological argument, I prefer to prove the existence of "the supernatural" rather than "God."

MeDeFe wrote:And you can argue against the assumption that while the universe had to be created by some intelligent being, the being that created it is simply assumed to exist. Where did this being come from? Why can this being just exist without having an external beginning if the universe can not?

Because the universe obeys natural laws, the universe is finite. We certainly know, through the empirical evidence, that the universe had a beginning. The very fact that this "intelligent being" created something from nothing implies that it operates beyond natural law and logic (ie supernatural). Therefore, it is not necessary that this being be finite. The Universe, on the other hand, must be.

PLAYER57832 wrote:The counter
1. given millenia of time such a random event COULD have happened. Improbability is not the same as impossible.

And millenia isn't even that much, try 13,4 billion years.

MeDeFe wrote:Let's see...

Counteranalogy:
If someone sees a tree in the middle of an otherwise empty field they would know that it didn't just appear there, someone would have had to design it and make it, just as a watch needs a watchmaker the tree needs a treemaker. God must have made that tree and put it there.

Sounds silly? Yes it is, it's meant to be. As we know, the tree will have grown from a small seed. The analogy rests on the faulty assumption that things can only come from more complex things. While that is true pretty much wherever humans and human artifacts are involved, it's rather a stretch to apply it to nature and the universe. In nature, everything living starts as a single cell, pretty humble beginning for something that becomes as complex as an animal or a plant.
Applied to the universe you might want to point out that there are some theories that see the universe as starting as a singularity, all matter and the dimensions condensed to an infinitely dense point with nothing existing outside of this point, our four dimensions "breaking loose" and starting the universe mostly as we see it. There're indications that physical constants have changed from what they were several billion years ago. Not very good design if the basic building blocks go and change themselves over time imo.

Then you can also argue against calling the beginning of the universe 'god', pointing out that there's no necessity of giving this unknown beginning such a loaded name as that.

And you can argue against the assumption that while the universe had to be created by some intelligent being, the being that created it is simply assumed to exist. Where did this being come from? Why can this being just exist without having an external beginning if the universe can not? God creates more new questions while answering none, he's the metaphysical equivalent of 'Because!'.

Yeah but where did the tree's seed come from smarty pants?

"if theres proof of design in the universe, there must be a designer (creator). That creator is believed to be God"

i think you should think of it like a tree chart (this is hard to explain)
there have been trillions of branches going off and only 1 or 2 are perfect or just right to survive, its natural selection. we're that one in a trillion. if we werent, we wouldnt be here to argue this point.

Gregrios wrote:
Yeah but where did the tree's seed come from smarty pants?

Magic! Right, right?

I believe the most common refutation rests on the concept of infinite regress.

MeDeFe wrote:If someone sees a tree in the middle of an otherwise empty field they would know that it didn't just appear there, someone would have had to design it and make it, just as a watch needs a watchmaker the tree needs a treemaker. God must have made that tree and put it there.

Sounds silly? Yes it is, it's meant to be. As we know, the tree will have grown from a small seed. The analogy rests on the faulty assumption that things can only come from more complex things. While that is true pretty much wherever humans and human artifacts are involved, it's rather a stretch to apply it to nature and the universe. In nature, everything living starts as a single cell, pretty humble beginning for something that becomes as complex as an animal or a plant.
Applied to the universe you might want to point out that there are some theories that see the universe as starting as a singularity, all matter and the dimensions condensed to an infinitely dense point with nothing existing outside of this point, our four dimensions "breaking loose" and starting the universe mostly as we see it. There're indications that physical constants have changed from what they were several billion years ago. Not very good design if the basic building blocks go and change themselves over time imo.

MeDeFe, my past contacts with you have led me to the conclusion that you are logical and extremely intelligent, so I've got to conclude that you were tired when you wrote this. It is a study in question begging.

The whole point of the "watch" argument is that inasmuch as things in nature, like the tree, or the human body, or the entire ecosystem of the planet, are like the watch, in that everything works together, the speaker says that it is a logical conclusion that these natural things also had an intelligent, purposeful designer. You can't refute that by taking it as a given that the natural things did not have such a designer. That's the very point in question.

The fact that the tree came from a seed is irrelevant. The blueprint for the design of the tree is in the seed, in an even more intricate mechanism. The argument obviously is that the intelligent designer designed the whole system, seed and all.

I'm not even necessarily advocating the "watch" argument, as I don't think you can "prove" anything, but this supposed refutation does not work.

Firth another counter-argument: saying something is so complex it has to be designed is wrong, because the "designer" has to be even more complex, logically only complicating the situation

t-o-m wrote:

"if theres proof of design in the universe, there must be a designer (creator). That creator is believed to be God"

i think you should think of it like a tree chart (this is hard to explain)
there have been trillions of branches going off and only 1 or 2 are perfect or just right to survive, its natural selection. we're that one in a trillion. if we werent, we wouldnt be here to argue this point.

That is a decent analogy for the classic argument for evolution without God, except that in nature, you cannot talk about "perfection", rather "survival". And, what survives is as much accidental as selected. Australia ended up with marsupials, the rest of the world with mammals dominating.

Also, even the most Atheistic Evolutionist will say that these events are not random. There are patterns to mutations, various changes, as I mentioned previously in this thread.

Another factor not yet mentioned is that no paleontologist currently talks about a smooth path to evolution. Instead, they talk of very,very long periods -- hundreds of thousands of years -- of relatively little change interrupted by a catostrophic event that killed off large portions of the population. It might have been immediate or occured over the course of a few hundred years (geologically "immediate"). Only a few species were left, species that previously might not have been able to compete against all the other species. Now, because there was so much space, so many "niches" for them to fill, they spread out and diversified "quickly" (a few thousand years to tens of thousands of years).

This changes the probabilities a great deal. Or, to put it another way ... it is unlikely that human beings would have or even could have evolved were it not for the dinosaur die-off. Early humans had a hard enough time surviving as it is, never mind having to deal with T-Rex and their lot!

firth4eva wrote:Anyone know how to counter William Paley's watch theory? In my opinion God doesn't exist so I have to prove this theory wrong. Any help?

Atheists often say that they won't believe in God unless they have proof.

So, until you can counter the watch theory, I think you should believe in God.

Hey, I'm taking a page out of the atheists' book. I never thought I'd see the day when that would happen.

David Hume, in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, argues essentally against this analogy.


--Andy

Neoteny wrote:I believe the most common refutation rests on the concept of infinite regress.

If you go and look at my "Limeric" thread, you'll find this put in comic form.
I stand by the version there (which I can't be bothered to revisit), but it goes something like this...

A theology student called Rod
was thought by his tutors quite odd.
In the midst of a lecture
He was heard to conjecture:
I wonder, who was it then who made God?

For the hard-of-understanding, this is the ultimate refutation of the "watchmaker" question. For anyone who still doesn't get it ( like the hundreds of people who've appeared at my various front doors, usually in pairs), here we go.

I walk along the road and i find a watch.

I say "Wow, nice watch, somebody must have made it."

Then I realise the world is much more complex than just a watch. So I can't say "the universe just happens to be like it is", because it is far more complex than the watch.

So ( the Jehovah's Witnesses and other fundamentalists ) say, therefore there must be a universe-maker, just as we conjectured from the watch that there must be a watch-maker.

A convincing argument. But, as the limerick will tell you humorously, and I am now saying in a much less funny, but more specific way:

A watch implies a watchmaker.

A Universe implies a Universe-maker. ("GOD")

A God implies a God-Maker, since God is so much more complex than a Universe.

(Note to those who have been following the thread and wondering what "infinite regression" is - this implies a god-maker-maker, and so forth)

And, on a side-issue, nothing about the "watchmaker" argument gives any more evidence for a Christian God than any other.

I personally, from evidence that is scattered around the off-topic forum, am coming to believe that the universe was formed from the first union of the Holy Wolf and the Holy Banana.

AndyDufresne wrote:David Hume, in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, argues essentally against this analogy.


--Andy

Some of his points:
# For the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order and purpose are observed only when they result from design. But order is observed regularly, resulting from presumably mindless processes like snowflake or crystal generation. Design accounts for only a tiny part of our experience with order and "purpose".
# Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy: because of our experience with objects, we can recognise human-designed ones, comparing for example a pile of stones and a brick wall. But in order to point to a designed Universe, we would need to have an experience of a range of different universes. As we only experience one, the analogy cannot be applied. We must ask therefore if it is right to compare the world to a machine — as in Paley's watchmaker argument — when perhaps it would be better described as a giant inert animal.
# Even if the design argument is completely successful, it could not (in and of itself) establish a robust theism; one could easily reach the conclusion that the universe's configuration is the result of some morally ambiguous, possibly unintelligent agent or agents whose method bears only a remote similarity to human design. In this way it could be asked if the designer was God, or further still, who designed the designer?
# If a well-ordered natural world requires a special designer, then God's mind (being so well-ordered) also requires a special designer. And then this designer would likewise need a designer, and so on ad infinitum. We could respond by resting content with an inexplicably self-ordered divine mind but then why not rest content with an inexplicably self-ordered natural world?
# Often, what appears to be purpose, where it looks like object X has feature F in order to secure some outcome O, is better explained by a filtering process: that is, object X wouldn't be around did it not possess feature F, and outcome O is only interesting to us as a human projection of goals onto nature. This mechanical explanation of teleology anticipated natural selection. (see also Anthropic principle)