The Blind Watchmaker?

“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. ... 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 which I had before given, that for anything I knew the watch might have always been there.”The above quote belongs to the Reverend William Paley, taken from Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, written in 1831.Paley’s arguments are the basis for what is now known as intelligent design (ID). But his analogy has always struck me as being a little odd.To explain why I say that, let’s send Paley back from the 19th century, to the Stone Age for example. Would he have been able to imagine his famous analogy then? Or similarly, in the above quote, why did he use a watch to represent complex design as opposed to a quad-core microprocessor, for instance?The answer to both of these questions seems fairly simple. To the best of our knowledge, based on all the evidence we have available to us, the watch that Paley imagines did not exist in Stone Age times, or the microprocessor in the 19th century.But why should this be? Paley’s argument is that the watch he talks of is evidence of complex design, which in turn requires an intelligent designer. Based on his argument, there seems no reason why Stone Age man should not have designed the watch of which he talks. Wasn’t Stone Age man as intelligent as his descendants? Wouldn’t he have had use for a sophisticated timepiece?Most of the evidence we have suggests that, for all practical purposes, Stone Age man was little different to modern man in terms of his mental capabilities.So what then does Paley’s imagined watch actually represent? Surely what it represents is not intelligent design, but evolved, accumulated knowledge.Take an example of something like the modern car or automobile. Its lineage can be traced back to vehicles such as the more humble Roman chariot and beyond. Whilst these two vehicles share some common traits, the technologies employed are literally eons apart. But what if we compare this year’s car to last year’s model. The design differences are going to be minor, as car design tends to advance in small increments.So a large part of the design of the latest models is simply evolved, accumulated knowledge, with a relatively small amount of design intelligence thrown in.But what does design intelligence actually amount to? Is design intelligence anything more than a mutant idea or two, set apart from the accumulated knowledge base, which happens to work well or catch the eye of the marketing man?If we look at the fossil record, we see no evidence of homo sapiens walking the planet with the dinosaurs. Similarly, when we examine the design record, we see no evidence of Stone Age man having designed a quad-core microprocessor or plasma TV.In neither case were the underlying conditions sufficiently ”advanced’ to allow these events to occur, despite the intelligence of the would-be designers in the latter case.I suggest that Paley’s analogy points not to intelligent design, as he intended, but unwittingly to the process of evolution via natural selection. That is, apply mutant ”left field’ ideas to the evolved, accumulated knowledge base, see which work and which don’t, update the knowledge base and move on.

I don’t see any reference to chance anywhere in the post. Perhaps you need to go back and read what is actually written and take things from there. Now you’re starting to get the hang of this . follow your argument through and you might begin to see why Paley’s analogy seems a little odd to me. Again, follow your argument through. Paley insisted that complex design is evidence of an intelligent designer, but you make the point that it’s evidence of a whole lot more than that.

Well it’s your god, you created it, so I guess it’s just as smart as you want it or need it to be.

I maybe didn’t do such a good job making myself clear in my original post as a number of responses appear to be homing in on the actual designed objects used as examples, rather than the design process and the attendant, implied intelligence required to produce things.So when I talk about evolution, I am talking about the evolution of the implied intelligence required to produce things, which, in large part, comes from an accumulated knowledge base. The natural selection I mention also refers to ideas, i.e. some survive to bolster the accumulated knowledge and intelligence base because they are a good fit for what that particular culture is looking for at the time, but many don’t. The watch was Paley’s choice not mine. In the original post, I sought to express the view that what this watch represents to Paley is somewhat different to what it represents to me

Okay, I think it’s time to move the debate forward a little.I’ve already expressed a view in the original post that I think William Paley’s choice of analogy to illustrate his point seems a little odd to me. But there’s a second reason why I question how appropriate the analogy is for the case he wishes to present.Paley clearly sees a correlation between the complex design he witnesses in a watch and what he perceives to be the complex structures thrown up by nature. From this he concludes design in nature, which in turn leads him to propose an intelligent designer. Less obvious, but implied in the nature of the argument, is that the high levels of complexity he sees in nature point to very high levels of intelligence in the designer.In the original post, I wanted to highlight the point that I believe design intelligence is accumulated incrementally, in an exponential manner. That is to say, I see design intelligence in the same way I see compound interest - as the accumulated knowledge base grows, each successive fixed percentage ”improvement’ yields ever greater ”advances’ in the accumulated knowledge base, with associated ”advances’ in design intelligence.Why is this point important? Let me try to illustrate with an analogy of my own.Think of a very heavy weight. For one person to lift it, they would need to be very strong. If ten people are available to lift it between them, individually they can be a lot less strong and still succeed in lifting the weight.So how much intelligence is required to produce a very complex design? In my opinion Paley, and those who share his sentiments, massively overstate the amount of design intelligence required to produce highly complex designs. If there was any evidence of ”zero to high complexity’ in a single step, I might have some sympathy, but I’m not aware of any evidence that shows intelligence has the capability to conjure high levels of complex design from a ”standing start’.As already suggested, the design intelligence that leads to high levels of complexity is accumulated over many years, centuries, eons. Thereafter, a relatively small amount of additional design intelligence is required to create something that is even complex than what went before.So, based on the above, what should we make of Paley’s analogy? Are we really to believe he is suggesting that his favoured intelligent designer has produced designs based on the pre-existing evolved, accumulated knowledge of peers and predecessors?I’m guessing this was never Paley’s intention, so once again question whether the analogy he cites unwittingly invalidates the very point he wishes to make.

But if we knew the outcome of the game before it was played, how much fun would there be in that?

Welcome to EvC jrodr036. Not that I’ve been around here very much myself, at least in terms of posts, but I found it gratifying to be welcomed by existing members in my early days.I like your post; it makes a number of good points. Have I read too much into what Paley says? Perhaps, but one of the things I learned early round here is that the devil is frequently in the detail, especially where analogies are concerned.If you’re saying that Paley simply wished to draw a parallel between the design he knows to have created the watch with the design he supposes created the universe, then I go back to my final point in Message 20 and suggest that it is a misleading analogy. That is to say I don’t believe for a moment Paley is suggesting the design he supposes led to the existence of this universe is a modified version of pre-existing, evolved, accumulated design intelligence, arising from a knowledge base built up by countless previous intelligent designers designing their various alternative universes. As such, I’m sure it mattered to Paley a great deal who the intelligent agent he believes created the design he supposes he sees in the universe was.I mention this last point because there is another problem I have with the analogy. The watch Paley imagines finding on the heath is entirely attributable to natural forces i.e homo sapien, yet Paley seeks to use the analogy to attribute supposed designs in nature to something other than natural forces.Whilst I accept some of the points you make, I still contend that Paley’s analogy seems a little odd to me.

How do you know I’m not him?

It always comes back to this - the Biblical model. What Biblical model? Isn’t the Biblical model just a faith based hypothesis masquerading as something else?The omniscient, omnipotent being to which you allude in undetectable and unquantifiable, yet those who propose it also seek to attribute to it a whole set of properties, ranging from character traits to supernatural, energy forming capabilities.Based on what though? Natural structures can be very complex, which may lead some to conclude that they are the result of design by purpose. So the argument goes that if parallels can be drawn between something that is known to have arisen out of intelligent design, a watch, and something that resembles a watch in terms of complexity, a natural biological structure, it can be inferred that the processes that led to their existence were similar.So if I say an ostrich can run at speeds of up to 70mph and the top speed of the humble old Citroen 2CV was around 70mph, does that mean I can infer characteristics of the ostrich by what I observe within a 2CV? I don’t believe so. Based on the evidence we see around us, it’s an unsound comparison.Whilst some have inferred intelligent design to be the process that has led to complexity within natural structures, others have concluded otherwise.On what do they base these conclusions? Mostly loads of hard evidence gathered over many years of painstaking research. Does this evidence offer all the answers? Of course not. Is there still more to be learned? Of course there is. Will the conclusions that are reached when more evidence is gathered be the same as it is today? We have no idea.There are no easy answers. A lot of very hard work has gone into gathering the knowledge we have today. A lot more still has to be done, along with very large helpings of patience and an acceptance that most of us will go to our graves knowing only a fraction of what we’d like to know.But if the alternative is, “if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck”, then I’m going to take the tough option every time. Let me get this straight. Paley is allowed to use inferred design processes to make his case, but because he sets his inferences within the constraints of a ”Biblical model’, nobody is allowed to point out the shortcomings or inconsistencies inherent within the inferences. Sorry, but this requires a few more Or are you saying you cannot disprove ”illogic’ by the use of logic?

One of the points I was trying to make was that the cited watch was evidence of a lot more than just intelligent design and, by implication, if the proposition is that natural structures are also the result of intelligent design, then ID would need to be set against a similar background for the analogy to work effectively.This would lead to questions like what pre-existing evolved, accumulated design intelligence was available for the designer to draw upon when formulating their design? Given the several billion years that have elapsed since that earlier design, what has the designer learned that could be applied to a new design if they were to start all over again? What ”need’ did the design fulfill? This is a little off topic, but I did not expect anybody to suggest there is evidence of homo sapien populating the planet over 250 million years ago. Do you wish to elaborate? Again, this is a little off topic, but you’ve raised an interesting point. I’m no biologist, but it’s always struck me that the positioning of the vagina on female homo sapiens only really makes sense if you view it as an evolved version of what is found on four-legged mammals. Indeed, when we observe the design features favoured by intelligent design, they invariably produce a flush, vertically positioned receptacle, which receives at right angles to itself - the ubiquitous wall socket and power plug being an obvious case in point.

As I’ve already mentioned, I’m not so interested in the evolution, or otherwise, of the designs themselves. I’m much more interested in the evolution of design intelligence and the amount of intelligence actually required to drive the design process.At some point in the future, should we ever figure out how to travel through time, a watch may be designed that incorporates this facility. It may have no direct descendant in the evolutionary path of watch making, but the knowledge required to design it will most likely have been accumulated incrementally to get it to the stage where it can be incorporated in designs in other fields. It would be the design intelligence through the accumulation of knowledge that resembles evolution through natural selection, as opposed to the designs themselves which might not necessarily do so.Finally, if there is a proposition that the complexity of structures observed in nature is the result of design intelligence, it seems reasonable to ask how closely the processes involved might resemble those found in human design intelligence. We can be confident we understand the latter but what can we say about the former?

No problems.Would you like to share with us what has been learned as regards the nature of the design processes and design intelligence/s involved?For example, when we look back through the history of human design intelligence, we frequently see the results of research in one field being applied to design advances in other fields. In Message 33 NosyNed makes reference to the quartz timed watch. Here is an example of the results of research in one field being applied to designs in another, that of time-keeping appliances. Given all the painstaking research you talk of within the area of design intelligence in the Biblical model, would you like to suggest an example or two of the intelligent designer/s having utilized knowledge gained in one field to advance designs in another?Further, when we examine the evolution of human design intelligence, we can see many of the hopes and aspirations of the cultures reflected in the designs they produce. Much of what we know about ancient cultures is based upon what the designs they left behind tell us about the types of lives they led. Based upon the design intelligence you observe within the Biblical model, what have you learned about the culture and the hopes and aspirations of those behind the design intelligence you speak of?Whilst there may be plenty still to be learned as regards our understanding of complex structures in nature, there is mountains of evidence which suggests a common strand or strands running through the processes that led to life on earth as we know it today.Let me end with an example of what I’m trying to get at.Let’s say I want to understand the processes that went into the design of a particular make and model of motor car. One means of doing this would be to wade through many tomes on the subject of motor car design, followed by a more specialized search for literature regarding earlier versions of the model I wish to examine. I might choose to supplement this by speaking to the design team responsible for the final design. This ought to give me a solid understanding of the design process and the reasons why that particular model turned out the way it did.An alternative route may be to ask somebody. But what if all they can tell me is, “Bert designed it”. Okay, that’s not really what I’m looking for so they refer me to somebody else. The second person also tells me that Bert designed the car, but they add what a great design they think it is.This still doesn’t help me, so they refer me to another source. This third person confirms that Bert designed it; they think it’s a great design and they’ve joined a design appreciation society, which has changed their life.So I spend the next five years of my life researching the matter and at the end of it I have countless volumes of data which tell me Bert designed the car, it’s a great design and it has profoundly changed the lives of large parts of the population. So I guess that’s the answer then - Bert designed the car. Right?

If you recall, this question was posed to Buzsaw in response to his reply that the Biblical model of intelligent design was the result of as much painstaking research and hard work as the scientific models favoured by some. So, given that the Biblical model seeks to draw parallels between design intelligence as used by humankind and design intelligence it supposes is responsible for complexity in natural structures, it seems an entirely reasonable question to ask what is has learned about the design intelligence processes involved, including what it has learned about the designer/s and their motives. The scientific model is able to understand a great deal about humanity as a result of diligent research into its design intelligence, so if there are parallels between the two alleged instances of design intelligence, we might expect them to produce similar amounts of information regarding the underlying processes and nature of the intelligences involved.However, if you are telling me that our understanding of the supposed design intelligence behind natural complexity, despite all the painstaking research and years of hard work carried out by those who favour the Biblical model is diddly squit, then I’m happy to accept your conclusion.There is one thing that does puzzle me though.In speaking with Christians and reading some of the posts on here, I am frequently reminded of the deeply personal and intimate relationship some of them claim to have with their god. Now as a filthy piece of atheist scum, I am wholly unable to share those experiences, but if this were not the case, I think I’d have a few questions I'd want to be asking the god.Before I get accused of being impertinent or even irreverent, there is some basis within theist belief structures to suggest this may not be as glib as it sounds.If my understanding of the Biblical model is correct, there is a belief that humankind was created in the image of its maker. The Biblical model also uses terms like we are all god’s children, etc. I’d have thought if I were a believer of this sort of thing, it might offer me some clues regarding what might be deemed suitable behaviour on my part.So if we look at the alleged intelligent design at play within the human race, we must suppose that much of human behaviour is a matter of design. i.e we behave in the way we were designed to behave.One of the most universal of human behavioural traits is the tendency of children to ask of their parents, “where did I come from?”, “why is this the way it is?” or “how does this work?”If this isn’t an almighty (pardon the pun) clue from the supernatural father to his children, then what exactly is it? Doesn’t the maker want his children to ask the very questions of their parent that it would have our children ask of us?So come on guys, get your heads together, formulate the questions that need to be asked, put them to your maker, get the answers, post them on here and we’ll all be a lot better informed at the end of it.How much easier could it be?

In Message 47 I wasn’t asking you to justify the Biblical model, I was asking you whether the extensive research that had led to these models told us anything about the supposed design intelligence responsible for natural complexity. The above answer does not address this question in any way, so I must assume that after years of painstaking research, you believe humankind has learned nothing about the supposed intelligent design process. It’s not clear what you believe to be so. The question I was asking was whether the alleged maker wished humankind to ask it to tell them about the ”nuts and bolts’ of the supposed design. That’s exactly what I’m saying. It seems an entirely reasonable question to ask, based on the reasons I have outlined in Message 48 and clarified above. Who better to ask about the design process than the designer itself?I don’t know that I can make the point any easier to understand than that.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to respond to this point, as it seems to be moving the topic in a direction that wasn’t originally intended. However there’s been little happening in the topic over the last couple of days, so it’s an avenue that is worth exploring . and it is my topic after all, so I guess I can take it wherever I choose.I guess the first question I need to ask is what represents evidence in terms of ”nature tinkering’ with the natural structure we observe all around us? It’s a pretty big question, and lies at the heart of what separates those who are willing to listen to what evolution has offer and those who aren’t. As such it’s way my beyond my capabilities to come up with an answer that does anything other than scratch the surface.But as a starting point, we could try comparing a penis and vagina in a human couple with a stamen and carpel in a flower. They perform the same role in the respective reproductive processes and sufficiently resemble one another to at least raise the possibility that one may have been an earlier descendant of the other.Of course a proponent of intelligent design might counter the above by saying this similarity in appearance and function simply reflects the ”house style’ of the designer. Further, they might point to the fact that nobody has ever witnessed an evolutionary event occur.But how valid is the claim that we’ve never witnessed evolution in action?Isn’t the emergence of the ”super’ bug an example of a natural organism changing to survive dramatic changes in its environment, i.e. the introduction of insecticides? Then there’s the contentious area of whether viruses that mutate and adapt are examples of evolution in action.So the assertion that we’ve never seen evolution in action is at best contentious.But I suppose a more classical bone of contention, forgive the pun, is what the fossil record reveals to us. Depending on which side of the fence one sits, this shows either an evolutionary continuum of new species arising from earlier ones, or it shows unrelated species being introduced, and phased out, discreetly by an invisible designer.One of the criticisms of evolution is the lack of ”missing links’ in the fossil record. But if we try to imagine how many living creatures have lived and died over the last several million years, how tiny is the percentage that have been fossilised and then discovered? It’s anyone’s guess, so mine would be a very tiny percentage.The chances, therefore, of discovering a ”missing link’ are heavily dependant on how many actual living creatures meeting the criteria of ”species in transition’ walked the earth, versus the number of creatures who lived and died as part of a species in its most common, stable form.If the number of surviving fossils overall is tiny, then the number of surviving fossils of transitional species will be even tinier, especially if the idea of punctuated evolution has any validity.Punctuated evolution certainly appears to be a pretty good fit with the fossil record. However there’s another reason why I like the idea of it.It concerns what we observe in large populations, namely the fact that large populations tend to be normally distributed, i.e. a large majority of the population tend to be clustered around the middle of the ”ability’ range, whether it be height, IQ or ability to run fast, resulting in the majority of off-spring born in the world being very ”ordinary’.So when I hear the term survival of the fittest, I immediately translate that as survival of the most ordinary, as opposed to survival of the biggest, fastest or most ferocious.When I think about, this makes sense to me.Imagine an isolated island, which has a very simple eco system. There is one type of plant, one species of insect that feeds on and pollinates the plant, one species of small mammal that feeds on the insect and a larger mammal that feeds on the smaller mammal.Provided the populations regenerate in line with the normal distribution, there is no reason to believe the delicate balance of the eco system will not be maintained and all life forms can continue as before.However, if we imagine a freak generation of genetically mutated ”super killers’ being born amongst the larger mammals, what are the consequences likely to be.In the very short term these ”super killers’ will thrive and pass on a disproportionately large number of ”super killer’ genes. A little further along the line though, things don’t look so rosy as the ”super killers’ decimate the population of small mammals, endangering its survival. This in turn has a knock on effect for the larger mammals, who no longer have sufficient food to sustain their population and they also become endangered.Further on down the food chain the insects, whose population was previously held in check by the smaller mammals, flourish briefly as their population increases dramatically. However, as a result the plant life on the island also gets decimated, which in turn leads to the insects becoming endangered.So in a very short time, the consequences of a freak set of genetic mutations leads to the destruction of the entire eco system - leaving the way open for a whole new set of genetically mutated descendants of the original species perhaps, much more suited to the new prevailing eco system?There is no need to labour the point by outlining what might happen if the freak set of genetic mutations had resulted in a generation of super wimps instead of super killers. The end result would be the same.The point I am trying to make is that normally distributed populations have a much greater chance of surviving to pass on their ”ordinary’ genes to the next generation and very large populations are statistically much more likely to be normally distributed.What this means is that at any given time, most of the life forms on the planet will be part of very large populations, which by their very nature will tend to be normally distributed, which in turn means that the probability of change or evolution within each population is very small.All of which suggests to me that the punctuated evolution model is not only a good fit for the fossil record, it is a very good fit for what we see in the normal distribution of populations.I suggest that what we observe in the way populations are distributed would ”predict’ a fossil record that looks remarkably like the one we see if evolution were the explanation for life on earth. As such, I think we have observed evolution in action and ”nature tinkering’ with the natural structures we see all around us. Edited by dogrelata, : Typo