The Watchmaker: my fav argument

[John 6IX Breezy]

If some being loses its eyesight it's bad unless that being is living in the dark, then it can be an advantage because it can use that energy and part of the brain for something else that will make it thrive.

I think your example is a bit off. Darkness doesn't make blindness more adaptable. Whether its day or night―you can't see.

[Fake Messiah]

But darkness makes it useful because they can develop other features that beings who can see don't have, like I said: "because they can use that energy and part of the brain for something else that will make it thrive".

For instance, this is what Darwin wrote about moles:

The eyes of moles and of some burrowing rodents are rudimentary in size, and in some cases are quite covered by skin and fur. This state of the eyes is probably due to gradual reduction from disuse, but aided perhaps by natural selection. ...

As frequent inflammation of the eyes must be injurious to any animal, and as eyes are certainly not necessary to animals having subterranean habits, a reduction in their size, with the adhesion of the eyelids and growth of fur over them, might in such case be an advantage; and if so, natural selection would aid the effects of disuse. 

[Apollo]

I actually really like to hear discussions of the Watchmaker argument and picking it apart. So, it's an appeal to the irreducible complexity argument in biology, where there are some things in nature that are so complex they must have an intelligent designer. Yet the analogy doesn't work at all. 

Because in the example, you're walking along a beach and find a watch. Based on your prior knowledge of watches and comparing it to the simplicity of the sand around it, supposedly, you can assume the watch was created by an intelligent designer. But that's a contrast that hinges on "things made by a human" and "things not made by a human". So, when making the analogy fit with "things created by God" the answer is "everything." 

 The complexity of a thing doesn't actually matter.

I always thought that some complex thing argument never works for a single god argument—a watch or a mug of coffee are products of thousands of years of civilization based learning and divisions of labor— you need a place, a building, a lab which you didn’t build yourself to make those things.

In other words, these products are fruit of collective efforts of many people for many generations learning and collaborating make something. That in itself implies that if there is intelligent design, there is a civilization behind it and not a single entity.

[The Architect Of Fate]

I think your example is a bit off. Darkness doesn't make blindness more adaptable. Whether its day or night―you can't see.

Darkness allows for a host of unique adaptions and niches

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But darkness makes it useful because they can develop other features that beings who can see don't have, like I said: "because they can use that energy and part of the brain for something else that will make it thrive".

For instance, this is what Darwin wrote about moles:

The eyes of moles and of some burrowing rodents are rudimentary in size, and in some cases are quite covered by skin and fur. This state of the eyes is probably due to gradual reduction from disuse, but aided perhaps by natural selection. ...

As frequent inflammation of the eyes must be injurious to any animal, and as eyes are certainly not necessary to animals having subterranean habits, a reduction in their size, with the adhesion of the eyelids and growth of fur over them, might in such case be an advantage; and if so, natural selection would aid the effects of disuse. 

Moles, in particular, have a number of special adaptions in their olfactory system and their ability to sense vibrations in the soil.

[The Grand Nudger]

Give an example of irreducibility, please. It doesn't need to be addressed directly unless it can be demonstrated that it exists.

I did, namely, I argued that the medical field exists because of failures in reduction. Meaning any medical example you choose is a demonstration of a function that is irreducible via a given method (genetic disorders, infection, trauma).

Human eyes, for example, are heavily integrated within the visual system. Our eyes exist at a delicate crossroads between sensory outputs to the brain and motor inputs from the brainstem―which means a lot can go wrong. Strabismus, for example, is a disorder of the extraocular muscles. Improper functioning of these muscles lead to misalignment of the eyes, producing double vision, and impairments in depth perception. Strabismus can lead to amblyopia, in which the misalignment leads to neural signals being suppressed and vision not developing properly in that eye (Kleinstein, 1984).

Strabismus is arguably an auxiliary problem. And yet its indirect effects on vision are devastating. When a system is heavily integrated it is antagonistic to change.

Reference: Kleinstein, R. N. (1984). Vision disorders in public health. Annual Review of Public Health, 5, 369– 384.

Does the referenced paper say, anywhere, that eyes are irreducibly complex?  Why reference it, if not? This habit of yours is garbage and you should stop.

[John 6IX Breezy]

I recommend the APA publication manual if you have questions about references. It's not a habit, it's a basic skill:

"The works you cite provide key background information, support or dispute your thesis, or offer critical definitions and data" (APA, 2020).

Reference: American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

[R00tKiT]

Yeah, no better way to prove intelligent design than with the flaw in the design.

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.

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

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Angrboda]

I recommend the APA publication manual if you have questions about references. It's not a habit, it's a basic skill:

"The works you cite provide key background information, support or dispute your thesis, or offer critical definitions and data" (APA, 2020).

Reference: American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

And that's called ignoratio elenchi.

[R00tKiT]

Based on your prior knowledge of watches and comparing it to the simplicity of the sand around it, 

Simplicity of the sand... I beg your pardon? What makes you think sand grains are "simple"? And can you define what simple is supposed to mean here in a scientific sense?

Watches are mental operations on matter/materials like ceramic, titanium, steel, etc, which the watchmaker didn't design, he simply solved a puzzle by assembling pieces together. Do you think solving puzzles is more impressive than creating their pieces, maybe ex nihilo?