Please compare these two arguments?

Question

"You wouldn't find a painting and think that the painting decided on its own colors. Of course, an outside source must color it. The universe has many colors, therefore there must be a master artist."

and

"You wouldn't find a watch and think that the watch build itself. The watch is complex and must have been built. The universe is also very complex, therefore it must have a master builder."

Is color as much proof of God as complexity? Is one more convincing?

((I'm not saying either is good, logical, or rational.))

Answer 1

They're pretty similar, though I've never heard the painting one.

They are both flawed in exactly the same way, as they confuse naturally occurring things with man-made things.

That is, paintings and watches are created by people, who made them intentionally.

Trees, rocks, and termites were not. Thus, they both beg the question, that is, they assume that the naturally-occurring things were created by an intelligent being, which is the very point they are supposed to prove.

All that said, at least the watch one (complexity) has some logic to it -- it IS hard to grasp how a complex thing that works well came to be without a smart builder, as it were; whereas color just seems like something that doesn't require an intelligence to explain it.

But that may simply because the color one seems odd to me as I've never encountered it before.

Answer 2

In both examples a simple object is compared with the universe. An 'obvious remark' ( obvious for most of us ) is made about the simple object, and then 'by analogy' also made on the universe.

Colors are 'less artificial' than a watch.
A watch is clearly made by someone, something that has colors not, you can say that the moon didnt decide its own color. The second argument is more convincing.

( but i dont agree at all just trying to answer yoyr question).

update:

Suppose i found a little bottle.
I opened the bottle and out of the bottle floats a little god, therefore god exists.

Answer 3

The problem with this argument is that it doesn't address the fact that we have boundless amounts of information that shows that evolution is clearly working on the earth.

If I saw a piece of paper lying on the ground with beautiful markings on it, I would initially think someone intelligent was responsible, but would look closely. If after close inspection, I noticed that there were drops coming from the roof, and that there were different colored minerals up there, I might wonder whether the art was created by the water depositing colorful minerals onto the paper, and not by a mysterious stranger.

Science can explain progression of species with data. The theory of a God running things, has no documentation, other than books written by men who made a living from the concept of God. No matter what religion they were a part of.

Answer 4

Color is a metaphor for richness of life and star stuff (the elements we're made of). Complexity are the laws of physics we have created to describe the universe in terms we can understand.

The God I have in mind here is a deist god, one that began the process, and used the laws of physics to paint the canvass of creation. As Galileo said, "Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe."

.

Answer 5

Consider this argument. An archaeologist digs up a triangular stone that appears to have regular marks on it and they conclude that it is an arrowhead that a human being constructed. They base this conclusion on the facts that the markings are consistent with arrowheads made by primitive tribes today, that they know of no natural phenomenon that would account for the regularity and the shaping and sharpened edges. Perhaps they have seen cave drawings or something like that which have pictures of primitive people using bows and arrows to bolster their contention. The type of rock, maybe flint or obsidian, is a type that has been historically used to make arrowheads. So they see this stone and have a high degree of certainty that it's purpose was to be the tip of an arrow used with a bow for hunting.

Then an archaeologist digs up a fossilized bone. The bone served a purpose in a living animal. It contains a DNA code so highly sophisticated that in the 21st century we can barely figure out how it works and even then we are only scratching the surface of understanding how a chemical code can contain so much information and cause matter to behave in the way that it does.

At the moment of conception, a fertilized human egg is about the size of a pinhead. Yet it contains information equivalent to about six billion "chemical letters." This is enough information to fill 1000 books, 500 pages thick with print so small you would need a microscope to read it!

Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, each is in effect a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up of 100,000,000,000 atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world.

The "simple cell" turns out to be a miniaturized city of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design, including automated assembly plants and processing units featuring robot machines (protein molecules with as many as 3,000 atoms each in three-dimensional configurations) manufacturing hundreds of thousands of specific types of products. The system design exploits artificial languages and decoding systems, memory banks for information storage, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of components, error correction techniques and proofreading devices for quality control.

Now let's go back to the arrowhead. Consider the evidence used to determine that it was an object with an intelligent designer responsible for it's coming into being. What's the difference between the arrowhead and a single cell in a fossil?

1. We don't see mankind creating life so we don't have a current example to compare the fossil with.

2. Life is so common that even though a thorough study of the complexities of it elicit such remarks as "miraculous" we just shrug it off.

3. We have a competing theory that seems to be reasonable and have some evidence to support it to explain the origin of life in all of it's complex and interdepedent forms.

But when we go back to the coded information contained in the design somehow there is a logical disconnect because in order to accept that idea as a competing theory we would have to postulate an intelligence and technology far greater than our own or a supernatural being and since we don't have one on display the evidence is discounted even though when fairly considered it is overwhelming in pointing to this conclusion.

It's like finding a babies toy rattle and recognizing that an intelligence designed it and finding the space shuttle and atributing it to chance, only the space shuttle is more like a toy rattle in comparison to the design of a single living cell.

Answer 6

Alright, they aren't very good arguments. Perhaps they are new to the faith, or young. Perhaps they don't want to truely look for God's existance, just accept anything as good enough. God is very complex, and at the same time, simple. God created science and all of it's laws. There is no reason why science cannot exist alongside God. The two have not conflicted, if looked at in the correct way.

Answer 7

Of course, these arguments fall apart when one continues to follow the logic... who created the watchmaker, who created the creator... etc. It is a dead end.

I prefer the complexity over the wonder of colors, but neither work at all. It's just the god of the gaps...

Answer 8

It does bring valid points and I don't think one is more rational or more convincing than the other. On the other hand, it shows humanity's crutch on supernatural forces rather than seeking a logical explanation as to why something is that way. It truly does show our true colors.

Answer 9

those examples exhibit which you do not totally comprehend what evolution is. i think of which you have become caught up interior the seize that many Christian leaders and creation "scientists" are attempting to weave: that each and all the surprising the universe in basic terms geared up itself. and that isn't what got here approximately. in case you're happy with the conclusions you draw from those 2 examples, which illustrate extremely not something interior the eyes of actual scientists... then so be it.

Answer 10

I think that is very sad that people exist who do not have the intellectual capacity to differentiate between human artifacts and the emergent properties of self-organizing complex systems, as a result of totally natural processes.

Both of those are examples of a logical fallacy (flaw in thinking) known as the "Argument From Incredulity"... which is a sub-category of the "Argumentum ad Ignorantiam" (Argument From Ignorance). It is also known as the 'Divine Fallacy'. It goes something like this: "I can't conceive of (or imagine) how this might have come to be; therefore, God did it."

That does not point to a limitation of science, or of nature... rather, it illuminates a limitation of YOUR knowledge and/or intellect. Also, it is intellectually dishonest, since it does not (as scientists do) ACKNOWLEDGE the limitation of knowledge... it merely invokes the fanciful idea of a supernatural creator-entity to manifest the ILLUSION that your ideas correlate to 'facts'. Finally... it reveals that you presume, for yourself, a form of omniscience... thinking that goes like this: "If this were understandable, then I should be able to understand (or imagine) it. I do NOT (can not) understand (or imagine) it... therefore it is NOT understandable... and since it is NOT understandable (by me), it logically follows that it cannot be 'true'. Therefore... God did it." (See? Right back to the Argument from Incredulity.)

'Faith' (wishful, magical thinking) is a substitute for evidence.

'Belief' (the internalized 'certainty' that you are privy to the 'truth' pertaining to some fundamental aspect of existence and/or reality) is a substitute for knowledge... i.e., the ILLUSION of knowledge.

faith + belief = self-delusion and willful ignorance

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"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance... it is the illusion of knowledge." ~ Daniel Boorstin
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"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion." ~ Robert M. Pirsig

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GxA8_NIxQZc