The Watchmaker

[jmercer]

It is far from simple. It is not, however, more complex than what is involved with biology, as you are begging it to be.

Well, let's examine this a bit closer.

Watches require:

1) Evolution from a single primitive cell species to complex, multi-celled, conscious and thinking tool-using beings over millions of years.
2) Complex, multi-celled, conscious and thinking tool-using beings to determine and document the physics and physical principles required to create a watch over centuries of effort.
3) Complex, multi-celled, conscious and thinking tool-using beings to develop metallurgical materials suitable for watchmaking over centuries of effort.
4) Complex, multi-celled, conscious and thinking tool-using beings to develop tools over multiple years suitable for watchmaking.
5) Complex, multi-celled, conscious and thinking tool-using beings to design a working watch.
6) Complex, multi-celled, conscious and thinking tool-using beings to create the watch.

The most primitive cells (discounting viruses) require:

1) The right environment, including proper chemistry, temperature and other circumstances.
2) An enormous amount of time for the above to succeed in generating the most basic form of life.

Oh. Wait a minute.

So, making a watch requires the single cell to evolve into a complex organism that can create the watch? Gee, that would make the single cell an early, simpler part of the process, wouldn't it?

So, while the mechanism of a watch may be simpler than the mechanism in a single cell, the complexity comes into play from all of the circumstances required to create a watch versus a single cell. Hence the "Watchmaker' scenario is essentially a strawman for Intelligent Design.

 

[Lothian]

How does 'God' not beg the same question? What came before God?

I am reliably informed that god comes under a different set of rules and therefore did not need a predecessor or a designer.

I didn’t clarify but I presume that god comes under different rules because she is imaginary and not real.

 

[KingMerv00]

How does 'God' not beg the same question? What came before God?

I think Tai is having serious problems not knowing how the universe began. He simply NEEDS God to terminate infinite regress, he won't let it go.

 

[jmercer]

I think Tai is having serious problems not knowing how the universe began. He simply NEEDS God to terminate infinite regress, he won't let it go.

Agreed.

 

[Apathia]

I propose the Scissors-Rock-Paper Model of the Universe, self contained, no regress or ultimate cause necessary.
(Scissors cuts paper, rock breaks scissors, but paper covers rock.)

 

[Meadmaker]

Funny that, your earlier posts and a number of your later posts indicate that you’re a Christian fundamentalist, at least to an large extent. If you’ve changed since then, it hasn’t been apparent.

Funny, and in fact, extremely funny. 22 years ago, I was a Catholic, but I've never been a Christian since. I have attended Unitarian churches and Buddhist temples. I am currently a member of a Reform Jewish synagogue, and I participate in Jewish ritual both there and in my home. I'm also an atheist, although I sometimes describe myself as either an agnostic or a pantheist, depending on context.

I have defended, and will continue to defend, religious people and ideas. From that, you and a few others have concluded that I must be religious myself. You're wrong. (But you did inspire my sig.)

So the only experimental information you have is four decades old. And you say you’re up on biology?

When it comes to the question of the formation of the first cells from pre-biotic components, there is no new experimental data. It just doesn't exist. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but as it turns out, I'm not.

You're still 0 for 3, although the ignorance is debatable. However, the specific question that led to the charge of ignorance was relating to experimental evidence of cell formation. I am indeed ignorant of any such experimental evidence, but I believe that is caused by the fact that there is no such evidence.

Facts would help your case. Do you have any?

I also noticed you’ve still avoided responding to, what I take, as the primary response to you in my last post.

Two things: First, the atheists have been very much involved in the secularist agenda very apparent in the United States. Second, last I checked, Europe was part of the world.

 

[Meadmaker]

Randfan cited himself as an example of someone who was persuaded against ID, and in so doing provided valuable insight into what makes a persuasive argument. He noted that the important thing is that the person who persuaded him took him seriously, listened, and made him think. That's really the key, isn't it?

Hyparxis noted that there is a lot of background knowledge required to really understand evolution. That would appear to be an obstacle to persuading uneducated people, and it is, but I don't think it's an insurmountable obstacle. Perhaps more on that later. For now, I think the important element of that observation is that you shouldn't think that evolution is obviously correct, or that anyone who doesn't buy into it must be some sort of uneducated hick. Really, it's hard stuff. The question is whether it can be simplified to the point of making someone understanding it without a degree in biology or mathematics.

With that said, I want to go back and analyze some attempts to counter "The Watchmaker". I'll start at the beginning.

You could begin by pointing out that watches don't tend to reproduce themselves, which makes them a piss-poor analogy for evolution.

This argument seems to me to fall into a couple of traps. First, it might not be obvious that the reproduction is a key difference between the watch and the cell. It is, because evolution allows something that starts out as simple to produce slightly imperfect copies of itself, and those copies may be more complex than the original. So, this isn't truly a flaw in the argument, but it might appear so.

The real problem is that the reproduction requires a level of complexity itself. The simplest thing that we know that reproduces itself is a cell. Behe's "contribution" to ID literature was noting that even at the cellular level, life is incredibly complex. That was the theme of "Darwin's Black Box". So, this argument is basically saying that reproduction allows something that is not much like a watch to evolve into something that has the complexity of a watch.

Unfortunately, to make the argument work, you would have to have something that isn't nearly as complex as a watch, but is capable of reproduction. To the best of my knowledge, you can't come up with such a system using today's knowledge of biology. As a result, all this argument does is move you to the simplest reproducing cell, and "The Watchmaker" says that the cell is still very much like a watch. Therefore, there's no refutation here.

A noble effort, but ultimately ineffective. Also, the vulgarity is all well and good among friends, but let Randfan's conversion serve as a warning. Anything that makes your contempt obvious turns off a potential convert.

 

[KingMerv00]

Unfortunately, to make the argument work, you would have to have something that isn't nearly as complex as a watch, but is capable of reproduction. To the best of my knowledge, you can't come up with such a system using today's knowledge of biology. As a result, all this argument does is move you to the simplest reproducing cell, and "The Watchmaker" says that the cell is still very much like a watch. Therefore, there's no refutation here.

What about prions? I don't think we have the ability to make prions in a lab but that is only a limitation of technology.

 

[Correa Neto]

I can't help but think the "you can't make a bacteria at a lab" argument is flawed, ingorant and in some cases used dishonestly.

The IDer or creationist who raises this line wants us, with the limitations of our current technology, to make a living organism out of chemicals, but they conveniently ignore the fact that it took a lot of time through trial-and-errors for the chemical soup to become something that could be called a simple living unicellular creature. The whole proccess probably took some tens or hundreds of millions of years!

I guess that even if we could simulate the process at some übersupercomputer, the IDer would say "oh, its just a simulation, its not true" or "see? You designed it"...

And even if we could manufacture a critter out of chemicals, they would just say we can't build the atoms that compose the chemicals or make some sort of Frankoid appeal to TLOP.

Bottomline: some die-hard believers will never give up.

 

[Foster Zygote]

I can't help but think the "you can't make a bacteria at a lab" argument is flawed, ingorant and in some cases used dishonestly.

The IDer or creationist who raises this line wants us, with the limitations of our current technology, to make a living organism out of chemicals, but they conveniently ignore the fact that it took a lot of time through trial-and-errors for the chemical soup to become something that could be called a simple living unicellular creature. The whole proccess probably took some tens or hundreds of millions of years!

I guess that even if we could simulate the process at some übersupercomputer, the IDer would say "oh, its just a simulation, its not true" or "see? You designed it"...

And even if we could manufacture a critter out of chemicals, they would just say we can't build the atoms that compose the chemicals or make some sort of Frankoid appeal to TLOP.

Bottomline: some die-hard believers will never give up.

They also ignore the fact that the first "organisms" were no doubt simply molecules that could make copies of themselves. Cells came much later.

 

[Meadmaker]

What about prions? I don't think we have the ability to make prions in a lab but that is only a limitation of technology.

Can't say I know much about prions, but they need a host system to reproduce, don't they? Like viruses. That's why I didn't include them, because the entire system of virus+host is still as complex as a watch.

On the other hand, this is a good approach. ID is an argument from ignorance. It says, "We can't see how it happened by itself, so there must have been a designer at work." At the present time, the first part can't be contradicted. We really don't know how it happened by itself. A really lousy argument is to say, "There is no God so it must have happened naturally." Not very convincing. On the other hand, one could say "We don't know how it happened, but we have many candidates for testing. One of them might work." The more possibilities that can't be dismissed easily, the more likely someone might say that perhaps there is some other way than design.

 

[Meadmaker]

I can't help but think the "you can't make a bacteria at a lab" argument is flawed, ingorant and in some cases used dishonestly.

They're saying, "I'll believe it when I see it."

They're very selective in applying skepticism, but they are applying skepticism.

Bottomline: some die-hard believers will never give up.

Undoubtedly. However, that doesn't bother me. I just want to get enough that they can't win the election.

 

[KingMerv00]

I think the issue here is one of parsimony.

We have seen nature generate "impossible" things before. Things that seemed absolutely designed. We shouldn't act too surprised when we find out life is just another one of those things.

Throwing in an intelligent designer is adding to the problem, not subtracting.

 

[Lothian]

I can't help but think the "you can't make a bacteria at a lab" argument is flawed, ingorant and in some cases used dishonestly.

Indeed you can’t predict this weeks lottery numbers in a lab either, but someone somewhere will.

As you say the process took 100’s of millions of years. I would add to that and say it took 100’s of millions of years on a billion planets. The ‘labs’ on Mars and Venus haven’t done it yet.

We only needed one to strike lucky, and naturally it is only someone that has struck lucky that can ponder how lucky they were, but like the lottery,someone somewhere was going to win.

 

[Meadmaker]

Indeed you can’t predict this weeks lottery numbers in a lab either, but someone somewhere will.

As you say the process took 100’s of millions of years. I would add to that and say it took 100’s of millions of years on a billion planets. The ‘labs’ on Mars and Venus haven’t done it yet.

We only needed one to strike lucky, and naturally it is only someone that has struck lucky that can ponder how lucky they were, but like the lottery,someone somewhere was going to win.

This whole line of argument makes perfect sense....if there is no God.

How do we know that we "struck it lucky"? We know it because we are here, so we must have struck it lucky. Unfortunately, that isn't a valid argument. It isn't valid, because it assumes that God didn't stir the pot and force it to happen. Maybe we struck it lucky, or maybe it was part of a divine plan.

The ID movement wants to claim that we could not have struck it lucky, because it is so incredibly, amazingly, lucky that it simply couldn't have happened by luck alone. Our job is to convince them that it could have.

We could say, "They are making the claim. The burden of proof is on them." Fine. You'd get points in logic class, but in the meantime, they get to vote. Worse yet, their claim seems quite plausible to a lot of people, and those people get to vote as well. The burden of proof is actually on the person who wants to win the argument.

 

[Lothian]

This whole line of argument makes perfect sense....if there is no God.

How do we know that we "struck it lucky"? We know it because we are here, so we must have struck it lucky. Unfortunately, that isn't a valid argument. It isn't valid, because it assumes that God didn't stir the pot and force it to happen. Maybe we struck it lucky, or maybe it was part of a divine plan.

I can live with the choice between us striking it lucky and a Deist God fiddling with the numbers so we struck it lucky. Although I don’t see it as a 50:50 probability. The extra compilation in the second example makes it far less likely

That is not the ID claim however. They can not understand the numbers so default to an argument from ignorance; however I agree their simplistic view; god finished it (as opposed to the Deist God started it) is appealing to those with similar innumeracy.

While the burden of proof is undoubtedly on the ID crowd, the burden of persuading the pubic is on us. To do that we have a choice, dumb down our arguments or intellect up the audience. The last option is slower but it is surely the right one.

 

[Meadmaker]

I don't think they have to be "dumbed down". Indeed, in some cases, they have to be smartened up, because some of the common arguments aren't very good.

Also, while many disagree with me, I don't think the audience is dumb, so smartening up our audience is not necessary, in my opinion.

I think part of a very good argument would be to make sure it's understood that evolution and religion aren't incompatible. I once saw an article, I think it was in Skeptical Inquirer, about debates between evolution and creation. The folks at ICR were staging them in the '80s, and the article was asking if it was wise to participate. The audience was never evolution friendly, and the scientist representing evolution frequently ended up looking bad. The writer of the article was saying that the venue just wasn't fair to the scientist.

I thought that was really, really, wimpy. Cowardly. A cop out. I wondered how I would try and participate in such a debate, and I decided my opening line in my opening statement would be "The heavens are telling the glory of God." (It's from psalms, and has been used as a moderately popular hymn.) Then, go on to explain to the audience that if you want to know more about God, you should look to His creation. And what does His creation tell us?

At that point, the arguments get a bit trickier, and there might be some dispute, but it tells us that it's really, really, old. And, it tells us it evolved.

That was addressing creationism, which is not ID, but that was a different era. The important thing was that I thought it would get the audience thinking in their terms. Sure, you wouldn't leave with a bunch of converts, and there would be some who thought you were Satan incarnate for twisting the Holy Bible that way. However, if you did it right, you would leave with one in ten willing to listen. That's a darned sight better than Dawkins usually does.

 

[Meadmaker]

That is not the ID claim however. They can not understand the numbers so default to an argument from ignorance; however I agree their simplistic view; god finished it (as opposed to the Deist God started it) is appealing to those with similar innumeracy.

I don't think it's fair to cite innumeracy. We don't have the numbers. "Millions of years" is not a number.

What we have is that the development of life was highly improbable, but we had so many chances that (at least) one got lucky. Until we can quantify "highly improbable" and "so many chances", we don't have numbers.

 

[elaine]

How about pointing to good scientists who are christian and accept evolution, such as Francis Collins.

 

[Apathia]

How about pointing to good scientists who are christian and accept evolution, such as Francis Collins.

Yes, there's is a polarization created by fundamentalists and the media to the effect that Christianity is on one side and evolution is on the other. There are millions of Christians who can't be so pigeon holed.