"A watch requires a designer. Therefore, the universe requires a designer."?

Question

Can anyone defend this argument? Connect the two statements?

Is anyone reading the question? It is not an agree or disagree.

Answer 1

It is a *good* argument, but not 100% definitive in the minds of some...

Let's start with an intriguing mathematical reality:
If you had an infinite number of monkeys...each with a typewriter in front of them...and an infinite amount of time...and each monkey was randomly bashing keys...

There is a mathematical truth and reality that one of those monkeys would type the complete works of William Shakespeare...without a single mistake.

To envision this and imagine it to happen is absolutely mind-boggling.

But the truth of this is hidden in the mathematical principle of "infinity"...

And although the "odds" of something like this happening are MUCH LESS than 1 in a googolplex
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googolplex)
...yet the odds are NOT zero.

Therefore, since there are an infinite number of monkeys and the odds are not zero, then one monkey WOULD type out the complete works of William Shakespeare without a single mistake.

Now then...
The universe is SO complex, that the odds of it "randomly" forming and "evolving" to the point in which it currently is...would be much less than the odds of a monkey typing the entire works of William Shakespeare.

For instance...consider the complexity of a watch...
Now...take ALL of the elements necessary to make a watch. And I don't mean the "elemental parts" of a watch, like the battery, screws, and gears...but the actual elements of carbon, hydrogen, etc...

And put all those elements necessary to make a watch into a jar...and shake the jar. Would the elements form a battery...a screw...and gears...and would they align and form a watch...and a watch that actually works and keeps time?

What if you had an INFINITE number of jars full of these elements...and "shook" them....for an infinite amount of time?

The answer is...*maybe*. There is almost a 0% chance that the elements would form a watch. The odds, however, would be MUCH less than 1 in a googolplex...but *perhaps* not zero.

Now some would conclude: no, this is absolutely impossible! There is no way that a working watch would be "formed"...and there is no way that a monkey would type the complete works of William Shakespeare without a mistake...!

Thus, they conclude that a watch MUST have a designer and a builder....

And because the universe is *almost* infinitely more complex than a simple man-made watch, it therefore reasons that the universe also had a designer and builder...

In scientific terms, one element of this logic involves "irreducible complexity"...which would suggest that the necessary "jumps" that evolutionary theory demands are IMPOSSIBLE...and cannot be explained by genetic mutations, genetic drift, recombination, or any other natural process, etc.

And this is especially true now that science supports the existence of the "Cambrian explosion" long ago...

-
BUT...it gets even MORE interesting...as science has unveiled much more in the past 20 years! Science has all but proven the concept of the Big Bang. And it has also all but proven the theory of relativity. Combining these two "theories" leads to a very startling and unexpected truth:
The universe had a beginning!

And because it had a beginning, this means that at one point it did not exist. In other words, the universe came from "nothing".

So now...let's go back to the watch analogy...

If you had an INFINITE number of jars filled with NOTHING, what are the odds that you could shake them...and form a watch out of NOTHING...?

Answer: ZERO.

...and there is also a ZERO percent chance that the universe formed from NOTHING!

Therefore, the universe (scientifically speaking) has a Creator - a Designer...and a Builder...!

Many scientists are becoming theists BECAUSE of science...and all the discoveries of science in the past 20 years...

-

If this AT ALL interested you, you should consider reading "The Case For A Creator" by Lee Strobel.

This book doesn't go through this argument above, but it does talk about the Cambrian explosion, the Big Bang, and the theory of relativity...among many other interesting scientific discoveries which debunk Darwinian thought.

Microevolution is a fact and truth, but macroevolution has all but been proven completely false and impossible by science. And even if macroevolution IS true, it is still true that the universe had a beginning...and all that we know and see came from NOTHING!

THAT...is astonishing....and mind-boggling!

...and it REQUIRES a Creator and Designer...whom we call "God".
-

Answer 2

I can't connect these statements because one, "the universe requires a designer," is not supported by the first statement in any way and it can be said, fairly, to be completely untrue - the truth of the statement is, at its least, highly improbable. A much more plausible theory of the universe is that it is itself an infinity and that it's "design" is ever-changing according to it's own nature.

(These are a very interesting form of question... keep it up. You get a star.)

[][][] r u randy? [][][]
.

Answer 3

The universe is vastly unknown, but I could answer this question off of what we know of best. Life.

To form a protein in the presence of all amino acids, let's say 400 amino acids in length, and given 20 amino acids, assuming they all go together with no problem, the chances of forming a particular protein are roughly 20^400, and the probability that all necessary functional proteins for life to form in one place are 10^40,000. The former is a lesser probability than winning the lottery every consecutive week for 11 years, and the latter, make that 100 years. If someone won the lottery week after week like that, no exceptions (even one week without winning in that time would throw everything off), would you suspect it to be merely coincidence, or would you suspect that the outcome was fixed, or should I say "designed"? Using these same figures, if you had all the parts to a watch, and threw them up in the air, the chance of it coming down as a fully assembled watch exceeds the chance of life forming. Therefore, with such low probabilities, it seems to me that we were intended, and designed.

As far as the universe itself, I rarely see the watch maker argument used for that, usually it is used for life, so I hope my answer offers some insight.

EDIT: I just want to add something to yachadhoo's post below, which I thought was great by the way. Anyway, the universe hasn't had infinite time nor infinite matter to work with. There are an estimated 10^80 atoms in the universe, and about 15 billion years of time, which are still insignificant compared to what I wrote above.

Answer 4

An old and well-known argument, with old and well-known flaws. Such a putative designer could be malevolent, for example. Or there could be a whole group of designers. Or it could be designed for the sake of the bacteria who will feast on all our corpses some day.

Etc.
.

Answer 5

You can't just take the pieces of a watch and lay them out and expect them to become a working watch, can you? You can't even, for instance, put all the pieces into a box, shake it up, and ever expect to open the box and find a perfectly working watch in there. It needs a designer to put the watch together. So how can you expect a perfectly working universe to come about unless it had a designer, someone to put it together?

Answer 6

Are you talking about since we live and die, we have the idea of time (watch). That time doesn't actually exist outside of us. Because of this idea of time, we have beginnings and ends which means a creator has to start a beginning. That actually everything has always existed. No beginning or ends. That is called the Alpha and Omega and the Bible talks of it from thousands of years ago. It is not a new thought. It is God.

Answer 7

Yes, and yes. As long as humans are the only conscious observers of this Universe(that we know of), then there will always be the need for a Designer, since this is how the human mind is programmed.

Answer 8

A deist statement?

Answer 9

I'm not sure that it absolutely is required to have a designer!

Answer 10

Sure. And my car runs on gasoline, therefore the Niagra falls runs on gasoline.

I don't know where they went to college Eleventy, but it scares me even worse how few can spot a basic logical error.