why did he use a watch to represent complex design as opposed to a quad-core microprocessor, for instance?
Off the top of my head, probably because it was 1831 and they didn't exist. A watch was pretty sophisticated back then.
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?
I believe that man thousands of years was likely just as intelligent as man is now. The only difference being that knowledge begets knowledge, and we build off of previous inventions. If no one invented the wheel, a car thousands of years later may never have been designed.
In reverse, some historians allege that we have possibly lost a great deal of knowledge deriving from the ancients, particularly when it comes to celestial navigation with its complex azimuths and whatnot, when the library at Alexandria was destroyed.
But more along the lines of uncovering teleology in nature, if Paley instantly recognizes a watch as being intelligently, but also asserts that nature is a treasure-trove of evidence concerning God's intervention, then wouldn't he have been just as likely to look at that stone and determine that it was made by a cosmic artificer?
That often is the underlying problem with using arguments like that. For instance, the toaster in a forest scenario commits a flaw. If intelligence is so apparent, then wouldn't we be just as likely to instantly see the intent in the forest itself as readily apparent as the toaster?
If we look at the fossil record, we see no evidence of homo sapiens walking the planet with the dinosaurs.
I would actually have to disagree given the amount of artifacts and testimonies. It doesn't verify it beyond doubt, but I think there is some credence that, while it may have been a rare occurrence, it still happened on occasion.
I suggest that Paley’s analogy points not to intelligent design, as he intended, but unwittingly to the process of evolution via natural selection.
Although one could certainly apply an evolutionary concept to the idea of knowledge begetting knowledge, the fact still remains that it took an intelligent being to create these items. It was not through capriciousness that we arrived at a sharpened flintstone, nor was it capriciousness that we arrived at a plasma screen tv.
Where I personally see design in nature comes as an aggregate and not necessarily in any specific material. For instance, the penis and the vagina certainly, with all its contrivances, appears to have been specifically designed. I have heard of some lofty reasons about how such a thing could have arisen by chance X natural selection, but it sounds like an ad hoc answer to me.
“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious" -C.S. Lewis
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