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Watchmaker Argument - Discussion

maquiscat said:
That can be a Down the Rabbit Hole type answer or a Temporal Loop one. If we assume the VR possibly, we effectively come back to square one. Are they in turn also in a VR, that created a VR? How far does that travel? The later can be an effective perpetual motion machine. Life (not necessarily limited to humans) might evolve to the point of a linked singular mind (the individuals now akin to cells in a body) that at the end of time, goes back and creates it's beginning with the big bang and manipulating events to result in itself. The possibilities are endless.

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Special pleading.

If you can posit an infinite regress for a designer, then you can posit an infinite regress for the things claimed to be designed.
 
JustHanging said:
Not it doesn't. You have no idea what the probabilities are.

Or maybe I'm wrong, by all means provide us with the probabilities. Not broad unprovable generalizations, but the actual numbers you used in both cases to arrive at your claim.
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Mistype. I meant in possibility. A possible thing might not be a probable thing, but is still possible.

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Overitall said:
That’s probably why the designer is called God. His existence isn’t depended on the existence of something else.
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But everything complex requires a designer, according to the OP.
 
jimbo said:
Would it matter if God was called Homer instead?
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Probably not. We give names to people and things. So whatever conveys your understanding will work. We (Christians) call God our Father even though technically we have a biological father.
 
maquiscat said:
Not necessarily. My Ouroboros example aside, God can still come from outside our known existence.
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The premise is: "Something can't come from nothing." It says nothing about whether it came from a known existence.

Special pleading. Or make a new argument.
 
Overitall said:
I don’t know if God is complex.
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A complex design needs a designer, implying the ability of said designer to design complexity, ergo the designer is complex.
 
JustHanging said:
Special pleading.

If you can posit an infinite regress for a designer, then you can posit an infinite regress for the things claimed to be designed.
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I'm not making a claim that any of these are true. I'm only looking at possibilities, noting that there is much that we still don't know, and it is within this area that we lack knowledge that the answer is found. Furthermore, even infinity can be relative. To an ant, the desert can be an infinite expanse. Just because a terminus is outside our comprehension, does not mean it doesn't exist.

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maquiscat said:
Mistype. I meant in possibility.
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Fair enough. :)

A possible thing might not be a probable thing, but is still possible.
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But your argument is that ID is the more probable explanation (see bolded):

maquiscat said:
It holds water in probability. ID does nothing to denote number or gender of said creators. Even if we go with the VR idea of our reality, the designers still fit the definition of deities, relative to us. The complexity and interaction of...well everything, certainly argues towards ID, but just because the odds of it all happening randomly are 1 in 10^100, doesn't mean that one time can't have occured.
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Overitall said:
Probably not. We give names to people and things. So whatever conveys your understanding will work. We (Christians) call God our Father even though technically we have a biological father.
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I'd say that technically God doesn't even have a gender per sé. If God decided to make women first, we'd probably be calling Her Goddess, and have historically had matriarchal societies.

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Dragonfly said:
That which is complex, requires a design, which obviously implies something designed it.
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Nope. There is nothing obvious about that implication. Complexity does NOT imply a "mind" must have created it. Evolution explains things just fine.

Overitall said:
That’s probably why the designer is called God. His existence isn’t depended on the existence of something else.
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Overitall said:
I don’t know if God is complex.
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Huh? You don't know if God who designed a complex universe is complex? Well...
- if he IS complex, then according to OP and yourself, there must be some designer who designed God.
- and if God is NOT complex, that breaks down your whole theory since you just admitted a simple thing can create complex things. So, we don't need a "designer" then.
 
Dragonfly said:
Watchmaker analogy - Wikipedia

Or: Teleological argument - Wikipedia

So let's boil it down to the simplest form for the discussion. At least to start.

The concept is rather clear:



That which is complex, requires a design, which obviously implies something designed it.

A watch doesn't exist without a designer.
Therefore the Universe couldn't exist without a designer.

First question right from the gate, if you presume the concept has merit, that a design implies a designer, why then jump to the conclusion (in the case of the universe/life as we know it) that the designer must be one specific "god"? Or any "god"/"gods" at all?

Does the watchmaker analogy (in terms of God/universe/life) hold water, or fall apart rather quickly?
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Intelligent design should imply plenty of life all over the Universe.

We can assume intelligent life in every galaxy. How many galaxies are there and how can we communicate with intelligent life in a different galaxy? They may be more advanced than us, but the light from their civilization may be not be visible to us for a few more hundred or thousand years.
 
maquiscat said:
I'm not making a claim that any of these are true. I'm only looking at possibilities, noting that there is much that we still don't know, and it is within this area that we lack knowledge that the answer is found.
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None of that changes the fact that the argument requires special pleading. The premise says nothing about possibilities, or about things we don't know. It makes a simple statement:

"Something can't come from nothing."

That is either true or false. Currently theists are arguing that this premise is true, but then use special pleading to say god might have come from nothing. If not, they would have to include a provable premise in the argument stating where god came from.

Furthermore, even infinity can be relative. To an ant, the desert can be an infinite expanse. Just because a terminus is outside our comprehension, does not mean it doesn't exist.
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That's nice, but the ant would be wrong. When we use the word infinity, can we agree to use it's mathematical definition?
 
JustHanging said:
The premise is: "Something can't come from nothing." It says nothing about whether it came from a known existence.

Special pleading. Or make a new argument.
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By some people's logic, if it can't be proved, it doesn't exist, therefore is nothing. It doesn't matter if it really exists. All things discovered, existed before they were discovered. But they were considered at the time to not have existed. A designer won't have come from nothing, but because we haven't discovered that source, it is considered nothing.

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From our very limited experience as humans it’s obvious that as complexity in design increases, the absolute need for multiple designers increases as well.

Think Space Shuttle for example. Would you sign up to fly in the Space Shuttle if there was only one designer of that entire operation? It’s virtually impossible to even conceive of the idea that one person could put that whole thing together.

Now consider the Universe. Consider the possibility of more than one universe.

Why, if we’re going to insist there’s intelligent design of something of a concept that grand and complex, do we also chose to insist just ONE entity designed it?

You know, besides the fact that a few books written 1000's of years ago state something along those lines.
 
maquiscat said:
I'd say that technically God doesn't even have a gender per sé. If God decided to make women first, we'd probably be calling Her Goddess, and have historically had matriarchal societies.

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True. Whatever you call it, it would still not be what you call us.
 
JustHanging said:
But your argument is that ID is the more probable explanation (see bolded):
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Indeed. To me, design fits what I see way better than random chance making things as complicated and interactive as the universe so far discovered. I'm just not so wedded to the idea as to dismiss the possibility that it was purely random. For all we know a gazillion other Universes have started and failed, or developed randomly in ways ours did not.

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maquiscat said:
By some people's logic, if it can't be proved, it doesn't exist, therefore is nothing.
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"Some people's logic" has nothing to do with anything.

It doesn't matter if it really exists. All things discovered, existed before they were discovered. But they were considered at the time to not have existed. A designer won't have come from nothing, but because we haven't discovered that source, it is considered nothing.
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Again, that isn't the premise. The premise is: "Something can't come from nothing." Notice that it says nothing about "Other peoples logic" or "things exist before they are discovered".

By making all these explanations to try and get around the special pleading, you are admitting that the premise is wrong, and thus the argument is invalid.
 
Took a licking, didn't keep on ticking

Dragonfly said:
Watchmaker analogy - Wikipedia

Or: Teleological argument - Wikipedia

So let's boil it down to the simplest form for the discussion. At least to start.

The concept is rather clear:

That which is complex, requires a design, which obviously implies something designed it.

A watch doesn't exist without a designer.

Therefore the Universe couldn't exist without a designer.
…
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watch doesn't exist without - True, as far as we (humanity) know. We have experience of watches & watchmakers, we know that the parts of a watch don't self-assemble.

Universe couldn't exist without a designer - This is a statement full of assumptions. One, we only have experience of the universe we live in, unlike our experience with watches & watchmakers. & therefore, we don't know what the natural properties of a universe are. In other words, we don't know that a universe (like a watch) is something that is designed, nor something that is made. If a universe is self-organizing, the entire analogy falls apart.

& as noted in the Wikipedia article on Watchmaker, the universe is organic & alive, watches are neither - they are made objects, & not alive. So the analogy has problems - are the two components sufficiently alike that an analogy can shed light on their similarities & differences? I don't think so - the processes & ordinary routines the entities pass through in the normal course are not comparable. & so the analogy fails - it merely obscures important information, which is the direct opposite of the desired outcome.
 
Slavister said:
Nope. There is nothing obvious about that implication. Complexity does NOT imply a "mind" must have created it. Evolution explains things just fine.





Huh? You don't know if God who designed a complex universe is complex? Well...
- if he IS complex, then according to OP and yourself, there must be some designer who designed God.
- and if God is NOT complex, that breaks down your whole theory since you just admitted a simple thing can create complex things. So, we don't need a "designer" then.
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Regardless of whether I agree with your stance on the over all subject, this was just beautiful logic based upon his assertions.

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maquiscat said:
Indeed. To me, design fits what I see way better than random chance making things as complicated and interactive as the universe so far discovered.
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You are describing a probability, not a possibility. You are saying one way "fits better". What numbers did you use to arrive at your conclusion?

(ie it's possible that Harry Potter created the Universe.)
 
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JustHanging said:
None of that changes the fact that the argument requires special pleading. The premise says nothing about possibilities, or about things we don't know. It makes a simple statement:

"Something can't come from nothing."

That is either true or false. Currently theists are arguing that this premise is true, but then use special pleading to say god might have come from nothing. If not, they would have to include a provable premise in the argument stating where god came from.
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My argument stems from the idea that the premise is either faulty or relative, however you might wish to view it. Just because it is assumed that nothing is there due to lack of evidence, does not make the nothing reality.

That's nice, but the ant would be wrong. When we use the word infinity, can we agree to use it's mathematical definition?
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We can, but that doesn't mean it doesn't get applied to that which actually isn't infinite. The claim is that the universe is infinite, but is it really? The same can be claimed of God's abilities, but are they. I am noting that while we cannot currently conceive a limit, it does not prove the limit is not there.

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Overitall said:
That’s probably why the designer is called God. His existence isn’t depended on the existence of something else.
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That is a fallacy called special pleading. The premise is: "That which is complex, requires a design."

Yet you are saying that your God doesn't require a designer, so the premise isn't true, and thus the Watchmaker argument invalid.
 
Dragonfly said:
Think Space Shuttle for example. Would you sign up to fly in the Space Shuttle if there was only one designer of that entire operation? It’s virtually impossible to even conceive of the idea that one person could put that whole thing together.
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The lack of ability to conceive of such a thing has no impact upon it's reality. A dog probably can't conceive of the idea that all those little lights in the night sky are actually other sun's far far away, and yet that is reality

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maquiscat said:
My argument stems from the idea that the premise is either faulty or relative,
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Then the premise is false, and the argument invalid. That's the way logic works.

Just because it is assumed that nothing is there due to lack of evidence, does not make the nothing reality.
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That has nothing to do with the premise being false, and thus the argument invalid.

We can, but that doesn't mean it doesn't get applied to that which actually isn't infinite. The claim is that the universe is infinite, but is it really? The same can be claimed of God's abilities, but are they. I am noting that while we cannot currently conceive a limit, it does not prove the limit is not there.
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This is all interesting, but has nothing to do with making the argument valid. If the premise is false, then the argument is invalid. Period. You have admitted the premise is false, thus you have admitted the argument is invalid.

Do you have a new argument using the above as it's premises?
 
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