The watchmaker analogy

[Clueless Morgan]

OK, that was kind of hilarious. 
[snip]

But what's the question?

Paley's argument is this:

"In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there."

"Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation."

ANKA asks doesn't this person notice the watch because it's so different than the ground its sitting on?

Yes.  That's one reason the argument fails.  To put the watch on the same footing as the stone in the original argument, it would go something like:

In crossing a heath made of watches, suppose I pitched my foot against a big watch, and were asked how the big watch came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever.

Which is what robvalue is getting at when he says,

you'd see a watch lying on a beach made of watches, next to a sea made of watches under the sky made of watches

In the case of WatchWorld, the watch you stub your toe on is as unremarkable as the unremarkable stone you stub your toe on in Paley's original example so there's no reason to conclude that the watch in WatchWorld hasn't always been there just as is assumed for the stone.  If, as Paley continues on to say,

Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature...

Then there's no reason to infer design (or non-design) in nature any more than you would infer design in WatchWorld.


It is because of our scientific understanding of geological and biological processes such as plate tectonics and evolution (among others) that we infer non-design in nature, and it is because we have experiences with creatures that manufacture mechanical (now electrical) devices like watches that we infer that the watch in Paley's argument is designed.