The Blind Watchmaker?

It's one thing to design something, but it's an entirely different matter to actually produce it. Is there an intelligent manufacturer to actually implement the design created by the intelligent designer?For example (and this is from memory, so pardon if I get a detail wrong), in the 19th century Babbage designed two computers, a "differential engine" and an "integral engine". Parts of the differential engine were built, though it taxed the manufacturers' craftsmanship. The design of the integral engine was never built because it was beyond the means of manufacturers to actually produce. Though his friend, Ada Augusta, Lady Lovelace, wrote a number of programs for it, making her the world's first computer programmer. The DOD language, Ada, was named after her.So there is far more to design than coming up with a design: the thing has to actually get built.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

I was just explaining you to what dogrelata was telling you, since you had responded to him with "How so?" But now you say that you were agreeing with him all the time. So why the "How so?" Not at all what I was saying. If you are going to insist that it was design, then there are things you need to keep in mind about designs. And about production.What kind of evidence indicates design? Do we find such evidence in nature? Not so far. Is design required for something "irreducibly complex"? No, as indicated by experiments in which genetic algorithms using evolutionary processes produced irreducibly complex designs.Does any of that negate the possibility of some god having gotten involved? No. It does not require some incompetent Creator having to micromanage every minute step of the development of life, but it also does not negate an actually competent Creator from setting up the process for Nature to produce life and all species.But at the level at which design proponents insist that their god had to have meddled, no, there is no evidence of design.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

It is very common for engineers to describe a design as having evolved. The basic approach to a new design is to take something similar and then modify it to perform a new function. And then take that design and modify it further. And further, and further, until it has become something quite different from the original design.And, especially in software design, the design becomes increasingly complex. Irreducibly complex, even.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

I had always assumed that Paley had chosen a watch for his analogy, because he was responding to the Enlightenment view of the universe as a great mechanism, a "clockwork universe", which the "Great Clockmaker" had constructed and set into motion and then left it to run on its own.I'm more familiar with the general progression of German culture than English, but the mid-to-late 18th century was the Classical Period, characterized by formal structure, orderliness, and rationalism. It was the period of the Enlightenment, as well as in the study Greek and Roman ideals (eg, James Madison's studying up on the Roman Republic just before the Constitutional Convention). The Classical Period was followed briefly by Sturm und Drang ("storm and stress") which was a reaction against the Classical Period's unemotional rationalism (this was true in German culture, but I'm not sure what the English equivalent was). Sturm und Drang was in turn followed by a further reaction against the Classical Period, the Romantic Period, which delved more into the emotional and the mystical, among other things (eg, turning to folk traditions, stories, and music for inspiration).The transition from Classical to Romantic was around the first decade of the 18th Century, which has been identified as the time at which Paley presented his watchmaker analogy. Hence, I would tend to interpret it as his reaction against the Enlightenment.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)