Can someone please explain to me how watch parts are a good analogy for evolution?

Answer 1

Ok, I think you're referring to the watchmaker analogy which is actually an argument against evolution and for intelligent design. The idea is that when you look at a watch, the fact that its inner workings are so complicated make it obvious that it could not have occurred without a watchmaker making it happen. By the same token, the universe is so complicated in design, it must have been designed by a "creator." To get a more in depth explanation, look up "William Paley" who made it famous.

Answer 2

It's not a good analogy for evolution. The watch stays the same.

But it is a good analogy for the complex, highly interdependent state of nature. Either we are considerably weaker than whatever started out in nature and survived without balance, or a very delicate ecosystem sprang up from nothing.

As I understand it, some scientists are trying to get away from the idea that anything has an origin and are leaning toward saying the earth always existed, or at the very least are trying to get away from the big bang theory of the origin of earth.

The big bang was taught as factual when I was in high school. And I was taught that life sprang from electricity. Which sounds like a cute trick, until you consider that it has nothing to live off of. Life needs a food source. How do you get that from a single amoeba?

I found it curious that people who laughed at the idea that all human life came from one female, would consider that all forms of life came from a single amoeba. But that's just me.

Anyway, I think a great deal of the resistance to science was born of that sort of dogma. The big bang is not factual, and I think the effort to force some of us to believe it and choose it over God just turned some away from science as some sort of anti-God rhetoric.

I think if students were allowed to just study what we know and can replicate and leave the posturing about the origin of the universe to the individual to decide there wouldn't be a problem.

Our university biology text equates creation with Roman mythology. Is that what science is about?

Answer 3

As someone who has studied both language and philosophy, I can say with some expertise and absent of ego that it is a very bad analogy. It is true that both biological organisms and mechanical devices are complex; however, mechanical devices are not self-replicating, and have always been complex. Biological organisms started in very simple forms, and grew complex based off of the pressures and opportunities placed upon them by their environment. Biological changes take place over time, and with multiple failures along the way. The analogy for the spontaneously formed mechanical device lacks the factors of time or multiple trials.

Technology makes a better analogy, as it also started with very rudimentary forms, and through trial and error, became more complex and successful. The machines did not do this themselves, but that is one of the important differences between being alive, and being a complex machine that has no mechanisms for independent reproduction.

Once machines begin having sex, and cease believing that they were ever created by people, then this will be a good analogy.

Answer 4

The idea behind the analogy is: If you picked up a working watch and opened it up to see what made it work, you would never look at the intricate and detailed parts and think, "Wow! this must have just happened by accident!"
You would see the way the components work together and assume someone with intelligence had designed and fashioned the watch. You would know there had to be a watchmaker.
In the same way, science is revealing that the world and its inhabitants can not have come about by accident, that it has been intelligently designed and not come about as a result of evolution. Microbiology in particular has made some astonishing discoveries to this effect.

Answer 5

as a results of fact neither evolution nor creation could be repeated, consequently, there is not any component putting that right into a try scientifically. i do no longer think of information help lots the two. enable put in this type, if the pobability of a few incident is ninety 9.9999999% then there continues to be 0.0000001% that doesn't take place, and how do all of us comprehend that may not so? Majority are no longer consistently genuine. seem on the election of president of the U. S. and you stumble on out that majority are incorrect. So, there continues to be a threat that a minority are genuine. sure, it relatively is genuine that a single cellular to grow to be a complicated animal is fairly much impossible, yet with a real situation, issues can take place. seem at us. do no longer we come from a single cellular? a fertilised embryo, after 9 months, a infant is born. regardless of the shown fact that, that doesn't say that the full human evolution is miniaturised like that. besides, we won't be able to shop debating something we are able to basically wager and with out stable obvious.

Answer 6

It is a horrible analogy. They claim that a watch shows that there must be a designer. So man shows there must be a God. And that a watch can't evolve since the pieces of a watch don't do anything without the entire unit.

Basically it is someone who knows nothing about evolution or science trying to be clever.

Answer 7

I think watch parts are a bad analogy for evolution, great for intelligent design though!

Answer 8

Umm...

Well, according to the book Longitude, the clock and watch design went through many changes. Each change resulted in a series of actual production models being created and being in use for years until they broke down. By then there would be a much newer design that would work even better and was based off of trial and error...

That is the best I can do. Maybe if you got me a bigger shovel?

Answer 9

Its the other way round.
Evolution depends on chance. the coming together of different parts of things in such a way as to produce a different thing.
to get from microbe to elephant to bird.
Just try tossing the ten or so parts of say, a meat mincer, up in the air. Just when after how many throws will those parts come down in the right order and sequence to make the mincer a working 'whole'.
virtually never.
Try explaining the eye through evolution.
Lots of parts to make it. but unless it is COMPLETE, it cannot function. So what does the creature do during that long time, waiting for its eyes to work?

Answer 10

Put all the bits and pieces of the watch into a paper bag, keep shaking until all the parts come together as a working Timex.

same thing as a junk yard full of parts of things; a good hurricane to stir things up and there should be a fully assembled 747 when the storm clears.