Can anyone defend this argument?
What fallacy, if any, is committed?
2007-08-20 04:51:19 · 20 answers · asked by Eleventy 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
To spell out the full argument,
"A watch is complex. A watch is designed and built by a maker. The universe is complex. The universe must be designed and built."
Which contains a very glaring logical error of assigning a commutative property without foundation. Equivalent to:
"Rock Hudson was a man. Rock Hudson was homosexual. Jesus was a man. Therefore, Jesus was homosexual."
2007-08-20 05:01:24 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 5⤊ 0⤋
There is a fine line between an analogy and a fallacy. The strawman that you have built here *is* a fallacy, but the real argument has an important difference.
The arguement is that my house looks designed, not because it is naturally efficient system or that it came about by fortuitous accident, but rather, it looks designed because it was designed. In the same manner, the uninverse looks designed, not because it is naturally efficient or that some cosmic accident, but because it was created to be such.
This is basically a counter to the "apparent design" group of thinking common among anti-thiests. We have no problem accepting that a chair was created, even if we have never seen the chairmaker. Archaeologists easily accept things as created despite not knowing how it was created, by whom or for what purpose (a la Stonehenge).
The fallacies you are looking for are "Straw Man" (in the case of your argument) and a variance of the "slippery slope" fallacy (in the case of the original presenter, whose post I also read). Keep in mind, however, that being a fallacy does not make it wrong, it just makes it not necessarily logically provable.
2007-08-20 05:03:32 · answer #2 · answered by nbrs6121 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Fallacy: A house cannot reproduce and therefor it's offspring cannot deviate from itself. A house is simply not comparable to a biological entity.
Fallacy: This argument seems to forget the fact that Darwin came along and solved this problem with the theory of natural selection. He believed that there indeed must be a designer and natural selection is that "designer".
Evolution does not happen by accident. It happens through natural selection.
2007-08-20 04:59:12 · answer #3 · answered by A 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
NO one could defend that argument. It doesn't even deserve to be called an argument.
And the first fallacy is this; if the house, being designed, proves the existence of god, then god himself was designed. Who or what designed god?
And so on...
2007-08-20 04:54:09 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 8⤊ 0⤋
"Religious" people never make any sense, and you can't disabuse them of their misconceptions, because they don't understand sense either. They only respond to statements that are specifically calculated to resonate with their programming.
To be fair, the argument usually runs something like: "A house is evidence of a designer and builder, and so is the human body." Their error is that they're "anthropomorphizing" the universe. They're confusing the products of human skill and ingenuity with the phenomena of nature. It's really a very primitive, animistic point-of-view that can't conceive how a complex biological system could occur without an "intelligence" of some sort willing it into being.
2007-08-20 04:58:13 · answer #5 · answered by jonjon418 6 · 4⤊ 0⤋
a house that is designedneeds a designer
next several assumtions are made ( i dont know wich one ) here are the options
every designer needs a designer
every designer needs a creator
every creator needs a designer
every creator except god needs a creator
every designer except god needs a designer
the fallacy made is that you take ( no matter what option you select ) the limit without proving convergence.
2007-08-20 05:05:39 · answer #6 · answered by gjmb1960 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Who created the creator. If something cannot come from nothing, God cannot be an exception.
If everything has been designed, how intelligently would certainly be debatable.
Looks like he should have asked some humans for help.
2007-08-20 04:54:41 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋
People designed your house
If god had designed your house you would be sitting in an empty lot. God had nothing to do with it.
2007-08-20 04:55:31 · answer #8 · answered by e13333 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
The fact that your house was designed only proves that an architect exists, not God.
2007-08-20 04:55:20 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 1⤋
How about "I answered the phone, therefore God exists." It makes as much sense.
So who/what designed God?
2007-08-20 04:58:57 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋