The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[The Architect Of Fate]

Redundancy exists in this universe. Parsimony only makes things simpler―it doesn't make them correct. God can be as redundant as possible (I disagree that he is) and that is not an argument against his existence.

A redundant explanation is a redundant explanation and thus is useless.

[John 6IX Breezy]

A redundant explanation is a redundant explanation and thus is useless.

No; redundancy doesn't mean useless. Look at codon degeneracy (genetic redundancy) which produces tolerance against point mutations.

[The Architect Of Fate]

No; redundancy doesn't mean useless.

As an explanation yes it is 

 Look at codon degeneracy (genetic redundancy) which produces tolerance against point mutations.

Total different kind of redundancy

[Angrboda]

What's often lacking in discussions referencing Ockham's razor or Pareto's law is the caveat that such simpler explanations are preferred with the caveat being that the additional complexity of the rejected alternatives is not necessary. If a god and some natural explanation both account for all necessary aspects of a phenomenon, and the natural explanation is simpler, we may have reason to prefer the natural explanation as a matter of principle. If two explanations account for functionally identical aspects of the world, it would seem the only differentiating properties between the two are metaphysical. Since we can't directly access those metaphysical properties, we must look for other reasons for preferring one set of metaphysical assumptions. In the case of religion, the argument from demographics and multiple religions challenges all specific religious backstories in a way that naturalism is not challenged.

[polymath257]

There are many situations where feedback loops naturally and spontaneously produce high levels of complexity. This shows that complexity alone is not evidence for a designer.

But the question of when an artifact *does* lead to the conclusion of an intelligent designer is one that is quite relevant in many areas of study. For example, in archeology, it is important to be able to decide whether something was produced naturally or produced by an agent intent on producing that object. And this means that archeologists have a number of ways to decide such maters.

Among other things, the first question is whether the natural environment *could* have produced something like the object in question. Are there natural processes in that environment that could have given rise to that object without the intervention of an agent?

So, for example, the way bones break because of a fall is quite different than the way they break if a tool is used to break them. Depending on the type of break, we might be able to tell an agent was using a tool to break the bone instead of it being from a fall, or even from a postmortem breakage.

But to answer this requires a pretty thorough understanding of what sorts of things can be produced in the environment in question.

So, for a watch on a beach, there are no natural processes that would produce the type of regular, interconnected wheels made out of materials not directly around. THAT is why we can conclude some intelligence was involved.

In contrast, we *know* that living things naturally and spontaneously produce more complexity over time. So, having complex living things is NOT good evidence for a designer. The complexities seen are well within the capabilities of the environment present.

When it comes to the universe as a whole, the problem becomes one of dealing with what is expected if no intelligence is present verses what is expected if some type of intelligent agent is present. The difficulty is that we don't *know* the 'environment', meaning the basic parameters and whether they *can* be different. So, at very least, there is simply not the type or quality of evidence to point to a designer.

As for the argument that the universe seems to be 'tuned' for life, that is also quite an extreme speculation over the evidence we have. In point of fact, of course, the vast majority of the universe is deadly to any form of life we know. Most of it is a deep vacuum. Other areas are in the cores of stars. So even in the best situation, we can have life only on those few planetary surfaces that are just the right distance from their parent star.

If anything, then, the universe seems to *allow* for life, but NOT to be 'tuned' for life. if it were actually *tuned* for life, we would expect life to be *much* more common and a larger part of the universe to be amenable to its formation.

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Another aspect is that *simplicity*, and not complexity, is often the hallmark of an intelligent agent. An example (admittedly fictional) would be the monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey. Here, the simply, rectangular form with precise ratios is fully enough to show an intelligent agent. Here, we have an environment without the relevant material *and* the fact that rectangular corners, especially with precise lengths in the ratio 1:4:9 are not produced naturally. nature tends to be more 'sloppy' and thereby *more* complex.

If, instead, we had an outcropping of material found locally, with crystals of various sizes and with impurities common and of other materials found in the environment, the complexity would be high, but the conclusion of an intelligent agent would be unjustified.

And, in fact, many of the intelligently made objects are recognizable as such because they are smooth, have sharp corners, or have other *simple* aspects that contrast strongly with the types of things that nature produces, which tend to be more chaotic and have complexity at multiple levels.

[possibletarian]

Believe it or not, you got a point. Flaws in design directly prove design, because without them we wouldn't know what the "right" design is supposed to look like. It's because there are flaws in software that programmers figure out there is better possible software, and manage to improve it/update it or create a superior version altogether.

In this example you are fixing flaws from an already existing idea or end product, new ideas come by understanding what's missing, or what the customer wants not something that is meant to work a certain way and does not.

It's precisely because there are, for example, birth defects or congenital deformities, that the human body is a designed machine.

This will be interesting

Think about it, if all the combined brainpower of these biologists and medical researchers couldn't adjust the microscopic-scale genetic deformities responsible for most incurable diseases, then clearly the absence of these genetic deformities in healthy individuals indicates a superbly skilled designer,

How is having to fix flaws a an indication of a superbly skilled designer, surely not having to fix flaws is the indication of superbly skilled designer. Just because some don't have certain abnormalities from the average  does not indicate design, it simply means those flaws are not there in that person, Do you know a single person who has never suffered from some infection or illness of some sort in their lives ?  

Wouldn't a suffering free world be more suitable to the claim of design ?

who crafted a world with such a configuration that permits gradual self-improvement through natural selection. In a world without birth defects and disease, medicine wouldn't exist, we probably wouldn't have discovered cells or DNA and, more importantly, no one would have mentioned the word fine tuning or design.

We wouldn't need medicine in a superbly designed world, or natural selection what purpose would it serve and what would we be adapting to ?

And more importantly, you have yet to show proof of design at all, it's a claim without any evidence whatsoever.

[Foxaèr]

Okay. So, presumably, human designed machines and the way they are combined are not indicative of an intelligent agent-us ?

The obvious reasonable difference being that we exist. We can point to ourselves as being the intelligence behind the things we have created. The same cannot be stated for a deity that has never been proven to exist in the first place.

[possibletarian]

We create things for a purpose, even if that purpose is just for fun. What use are destructive things like tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanos to a deity that could have easily made a world without them, especially one created just for us.

[John 6IX Breezy]

We create things for a purpose, even if that purpose is just for fun.  What use are destructive things like  tsunamis, earthquakes  and volcanos to a deity that could have easily made a world without them, especially one created just for us.

Guns, electric chairs, and atomic bombs.

[arewethereyet]

We create things for a purpose, even if that purpose is just for fun.  What use are destructive things like  tsunamis, earthquakes  and volcanos to a deity that could have easily made a world without them, especially one created just for us.

Guns, electric chairs, and atomic bombs.

So you are comparing things made by man to events created by the god you think we should worship and follow?  Shouldn't a god behave better?