"A watch, computer, and car have a lot of order and were all designed. Therefore everything that has order also has a designer."
How does one justify this conclusion from this premise?
2007-10-19 03:39:42 · 14 answers · asked by Eleventy 6 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Why do you conclude a watch has to have a designer?
Couldn't it just have occurred by some little understood natural phenomenon?
2007-10-19 03:52:45 · answer #1 · answered by wefmeister 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
It's actually a pretty legitimate case of inductive reasoning. The problem is with the premises. Here's the basic idea:
Premise 1: There is a set of things which we can conclusively determine was designed. (Human-made objects).
Premise 2: We cannot conclusively determine whether or not things that aren't man-made aren't designed.
Conclusion: Therefore, the only cases where we can determine whether or not something was designed are ALL cases where the thing was designed.
Inductive step: From this it is reasonable to infer that all things were designed.
It's similar to an inference that, since the light has always turned on when I flip the switch, the light always will turn on when I flip the switch.
The problem is in premise 2. The requirement for a conclusive determination about whether or not non-human made things were designed is excessive. We can incrementally confirm a lack of design, and this should be sufficient.
2007-10-19 04:00:39 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
One Doesn't.
Evolution is in effect a simple mathematical learning algorithm where the biological population "learns" to adapt to the environment . Each selection event ( birth or death ) has the potential for transferring a single bit of information from the environment into the biological system.
Each of us has perhaps quadrillions of ancestors, so even if natural selection was only extremely slightly efficient we would still have accumulated more than enough information into the biological system to account for the information stored in our genome.
The information in the local environment is also the result of selection phenomena but in this case the selection mechanism is our own existence which has selected a locally complex region capable of supporting our evolution.
Complexity is always the result of a selection mechanism selecting local complexity from global variance.
Design simply can not account for complexity. This is because design algorithms require the designer to be at least as complex as the designed object. Rather than accounting for the problem of complexity, design just creates a larger problem.
2007-10-19 04:57:16 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
The problem is, of course, that evolution is counterintuitive, and the AfD is the expression of this. Our brains, used as they are to activities in the 'normal' world, revolt at the idea of a natural process that creates order.
We're much more used to things falling apart, and disorder increasing. Entropy seems natural to us - which of course it is.
It feels utterly wrong to us that there should be a natural process that goes directly against this tendency, and the fact that it's so slow that we never normally see it operating only confirms this feeling.
But it's there, and it can be demonstrated. We're surrounded by the result of billions of years of the process. In the lab and in software simulations it works perfectly every time. We've just begun to make use of evolutionary algorithms to solve problems our minds can't crack.
It takes a lot of energy, and huge quantities of time, but evolution can solve almost any problem - via the simple expedient of trying everything until something works, and discarding whatever doesn't.
It's like playing the lottery for millions of years: if it was free, and you could live that long, you'd be a multimillionaire many times over - it's just inevitable.
CD
2007-10-19 03:54:28 · answer #4 · answered by Super Atheist 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Designed by what? In essence it's true - everything has a designer.
But does that designer have consciousness? Energy works in predicatble ways, and its effects can be inferred to bring order. As Albert Einstein said:
"how much choice did God have?"
If a molecule finds another molecule by chance, and it becomes something else through various coincidences, and this form makes it attractive to something else, does it imply design or just simple physics?
2007-10-19 03:51:08 · answer #5 · answered by Equinox 5 · 2⤊ 0⤋
If you decide on an outcome before you perform your analysis you can always find some way (no matter how absurd it might seem to anyone else) to justify your conclusion.
2007-10-19 03:52:39 · answer #6 · answered by qxzqxzqxz 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Entropy helps support this idea, in my opinion.
Why don't things fall together? They tend to fall apart. Physically, things can fall together, but they tend not to.
I think the argument is flawed. Of course that really only means the argument is flawed.
2007-10-19 03:45:46 · answer #7 · answered by super Bobo 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Non sequiter.
All it argues is that EVERYTHING (exept whatever god(s) the person using it happens to follow, which are naturally exempt) has a creator because things that humans create had human creators. Clearly a false conclusion.
2007-10-19 03:44:29 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
Using the same magic that God used to create the universe?
I mean, if he created everything, then he can create a logical system where that argument works formally. Therefore, God exists.
2007-10-19 03:52:20 · answer #9 · answered by Doc Occam 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I just can't get past how everything needs a designer... except a designer. Hmmm... seems to void the arguement don't you think?
2007-10-19 03:44:26 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 5⤊ 1⤋