RE: The Watchmaker: my fav argument
March 11, 2021 at 12:08 am
(This post was last modified: March 11, 2021 at 12:17 am by Belacqua.)
(March 10, 2021 at 8:45 pm)Apollo Wrote: Totally clueless to what you said there but ok.
What I mean is that you are applying modern economic values to judge whether the universe is well or poorly designed. But you haven't yet established that these are what a designer would be aiming for.
(Also if you're going to call yourself "Apollo" it would probably be a good idea for you to have some idea of the Apollo/Dionysus contrast. This is kind of fundamental.)
Quote:Ask yourself two questions: what does “design” include? It includes a designer, spacetime, which given the cold dark empty space and supposedly a creator we have so far for the sake of the argument. But is there something missing that is essential to design? I give you a hint—there are at least two other things missing.
I have no idea.
Quote:Now ask yourself the second question: what are some of the characteristics of cosmos that would still exist in nature whether or not observers like humans exist? Particle spin? Gravity? Electromagnetic force? Atomic decay? Nuclear transmutation? So on and so forth.
Is ‘design’ such a property of nature or is it purely interpretive?
If those things are designed, then they came about by design. If they weren't then they didn't.
How we interpret them doesn't change whether they were designed or not. We might well be interpreting wrongly.
Quote:Things that exist regardless of us are objective reality of our universe. Design is not one of them. It’s an emergent pattern meaningful to us allowing us to use it to our advantage.
John has correctly pointed out that design exists objectively in our world. Whether there are non-human designers, or whether the universe as a whole is designed is a separate question.
Design certainly isn't an emergent pattern. Design is design. I think you mean that we think we perceive design based on patterns we see in nature, but that these patterns may only look like design based on how our minds interpret things. If that's what you mean then I agree.
Quote:Order vs disorder are human-centric concepts to weed out useful matter patterns from not useful (eg—fruit on tree or snake identification vs randomly scattered stones on sand).
And "successful design" vs. "failed design" are also human-centric concepts which we apply based on our judgments. The idea that God would have the same standards of judgment that modern liberal bourgeois people have is something you haven't demonstrated yet.