I ended up deciding that I will in fact make a few myTakes about common arguments for the existence of god. https://www.girlsaskguys.com/religion-spirituality/a51320-cosmological-argument-for-the-existence-of-god was my first attempt of this series. These myTakes are solely my own thoughts on the matter, and I'm sure many others can, will, and have done far better than me at both promoting them, and pointing out their flaws. I am doing this because I enjoy it, and I am trying to get into the habit of writing more often as I'm getting ready to apply for graduate school and will have to write a lot I'm sure. That said, let's begin.
Today I was going to attempt to tackle teleological arguments, but as I began to look over some of the more common ones I started to realize how diverse a branch this particular strain is, as well as the dozens of responses that immediately seemed glaring to me. As a result of this I decided to try and narrow down the scope of this myTake to just one particular teleological argument, the "Watchmaker Argument."
As with the cosmological argument these arguments are not new. The first usage of this metaphor that I could find was in Cicero's De Natura Deorum (20CE) in which he said, "When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?" This sundial was later expounded upon in Paley's Natural Theology (1802CE) "[S]uppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think … that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for [a] stone [that happened to be lying on the ground]?… For this reason, and for no other; namely, that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it." Those of you who are familiar with creationist arguments may notice that this is strikingly similar to Behe's idea of irreducible complexity, and as such expect me to comment on that. I will not do so at this point. In this myTake I want to focus on two very important errors that I believe have been made in this argument. These two errors involve intuition, and how we determine if something is designed.
*A quick aside* I was looking for an image that said the opposite of the above. I was going to go on and talk about how our intuition is not always reliable and we needed to be skeptical, but I could not find a single picture saying that...
Intuition
We live our lives by intuition, it is often fairly reliable because today is pretty much the same as yesterday and not that much changes. The problem with this, is that we are incredibly trusting of our intuitions, it's a very proud position, and one that we know has not worked well throughout history. We intuited that the earth was flat because it appears to be flat from our limited perspective. We intuited that storms, floods, earthquakes, and sickness were capricious and mean minded gods vengeance for some slight. We also then intuited that we needed to give blood sacrifices to these gods in order to appease them.
We get it, intuition isn't always reliable and can lead to devastating consequences. What does that have to do with this?
Good question, my assertion is that this entire argument is predicated on an intuition that we are prone to. We are prone to seeing design in the universe. As a matter of psychology we know that humans are prone to making attribution errors, that is, we are prone to ascribing design to natural phenomena when there is none. If you look back at the examples I gave prior you will see that each of these incorrect intuitions that humans have has were ascribing intention to natural phenomena. The same is happening here, but on a cosmic scale. "Look at how perfect DNA is, it must have been authored by some cosmic super being." "Look at how beautiful this tree is, it must have been designed." "Look at the banana, it fits in your hand and fits in your mouth. It was designed to be eaten." Etc.
Because we know of this error we cannot, or should not, rely just on intuition to tell us what is designed and what is not. How then should we determine that which is designed?
Design Is Determined By Contrasting With Nature
We determine that something has been designed by contrasting it with things that are naturally occurring. I don't just intuit that a building was created because it looks fancy, I contrast the shape with things that are naturally occurring. I can see people around me designing similar structures. I can test the things that make up the building to test it against other buildings and see that they are made of the same materials. I can go to city hall and actually look at the building design sketches. The problem that is inherent within these watchmaker arguments is that they have no methodology other than intuition to determine if something is designed. In fact, it gets even more problematic because according to the watchmaker argument everything is designed. The grain of sand is just as designed as a sun. This puts the watchmaker in the position of looking at one particular watch amongst a sea of watches, in a universe full of watches saying, "This one is obviously designed."
Anyway, congrats if you made it this far! As always, criticisms, commendations, and name calling will always be appreciated!
Most Helpful Opinions