The Meaninglessness of Meaning

[Pyrrho]

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We can all pretty well know why you like this example, as it reminds you of Paley's watch.

The point though, it that stuff doing things and interacting with other things gives rise to additional properties not in the constituent parts separately.  A fire gives off heat, but the log before it burns may be cold, as may the oxygen necessary for burning to take place.  It is the chemical reaction that gives off heat, not the individual chemicals by themselves.

It is important to remember such things to avoid committing the fallacy of composition and the fallacy of division.




The "right order" is defined in terms of whatever it takes for them to give the specified result.  Thus in the case of the clock example, whatever arrangement it is that would allow it to tell time.

As for your question about a mind or being unguided and mindless, it does not matter how the order occurs; a fire is a fire whether it occurs naturally or is made by a person who intends to make a fire.




The "right order" is defined in terms of whatever is necessary for the specified result.  In order for there to be a fire, there needs to be fuel and oxygen and some catalyst to get the fire going.  A fire is a fire whether it occurs due to nature or design.




In the case of a clock, I know going into the matter that it is made by people and is not natural.  (Not to mention the fact that your statement of my claim goes beyond what I stated.)  In the case of people, the matter gets more complicated, but I seem to recall you indicating that you believe in evolution.  If so, this is a strange thing for you to be asking about, because evolution gives you the answer to how a human could come to be without being designed.

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I'm glad to see at the end you see the difference between your fire analogy and the watch.  Not to mention fire in itself is not making something more beneficial or new.  My point being is that in your use of the watch analogy you found it preposterous that it would be able to tell time if thrown at a workbench.  I was likening that to the big bang theory of this universe being "thrown at a workbench" and out of that, comes immense order and complexity.  You found it absurd in the watch, but wholly accept it as plausible in something infinitely more complex as the universe.   

I do not find macroevolution convincing by any means, there are a lot of assumptions and leaps there.  Evolution and natural selection in describing variations within a species, yes.  The pure mathematical probability of beneficial mutations in single cell organisms giving rise to more complex ones leaves me highly suspicious.

You are completely missing the point.  I know that clocks are made by people.  So does everyone else who is familiar with clocks.  So when I say something about clocks, that bit of information is always affecting the kinds of things that I am going to say about them.  I do not pretend to not know that clocks are made by people.  In the case of a fire, there being a fire does not, by itself, tell me whether it is by design or accident that there is a fire.  When I watch the news, and some house burns, I do not know, before finding out more details of the particular story, if that is the result of design (i.e., arson) or if it is an accident.  The same idea applies to a forest fire; it could be design or it could be an accident.  Since I do not know in advance, I make no judgement in advance.  But with a damn clock, everyone knows that clocks are made by people.

As for the evolution idea, my apologies for imagining that you were more reasonable than you are.  I have no interest in arguing with you on that; I am sure that you will find others willing to do that (as can be seen from subsequent posts from others).