William Paley's Watchmaker Analogy (Extract from 'The Teleological Argument')

Join George and John as they discuss and debate different Philosophical ideas. This extract is from the Teleological Argument debate.

Paley's watchmaker analogy is an attempt to prove the existence of God by comparing the complexity of our universe to the complexity of a watch. We would all agree that if we found a watch we would agree it has a designer, so should the same be said of our universe, and is this designer God?

This is an extract from our Teleological Argument video.

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#watchmakerargument #teleologicalargument #williampaley #philosophy

[PhilosophyVibe]

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[ColinFox]

As for the "The earth is the perfect distance from the sun. Too close and we would burn, too far and we would freeze". Yes, we are in the goldilocks zone. The thing is, we *evolved here*, in this zone, to this environment, so of course it's pefect for us.


This brings up the mud puddle analogy that Douglas Adams came up with:
“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”


In case that goes over anyone's head -- the puddle is shaped to the hole, not the other way around. We are shaped to the planet, not the other way around.

[mcsuck]

A few points for why I think this analogy/argument fails, that this video doesn't make:

1. If the Universe is intelligently designed, then Paley isn't walking in the meadow to find a rock and a watch to compare, he is walking up a hill of watches to find a watch to which he compares to another watch. Therefore you can't really tell what's intelligently designed from what is naturally occurring.

2. To piggyback off of the first point: Comparing things in order to differentiate intelligent design from random natural occurrence. We only know of one Universe - this one. We cannot compare this Universe to another in order to compare design from non-design.

3. If the Universe must be intelligently designed because it is complex, then what makes God, that is as complex as the Universe *if not more*, exempt from this rule? If God doesn't need a designer, why must the Universe need it? This is just special pleading.

[ColinFox]

Paley's argument is self-defeating. He is trying to argue that a watch is "too complicated to have occurred naturally" and therefore must have been designed. But he is talking about a watch sitting in a natural environment that was allegedly "designed and too complicated to have occurred naturally", yet the watch stands out. If the environment and the watch were both designed, then neither would stand out.


If I showed you a picture of a forest and there was a watch on the ground in the picture, and asked you to point out "the thing that stands out", you'd easily spot the watch and point it out. But if I showed you a picture of a modern office with a desk, phone, books, lamps, chairs, and a watch on the desk, and asked you to point out "the thing that stands out", you would struggle, because nothing particular stands out.


The reason why the watch stands out is that there are no natural processes that will bring it about. It has nothing to do with "complexity". It has to do with process, and interaction of forces.


Even his initiating statement, that it is "too complicated to have occurred naturally" is absurd when you think about it. Too complicated? Based on what measure? How complicated, in his opinion, is the maximum for a naturally occurring thing? A rock? A tree? A mammal? An ecosystem? A solar system?

[paulm]

If our solar system hadn't evolved in the way it did and our planet didn't have earthquakes, volcanoes and an atmosphere (along many other things) we wouldn't be here to contemplate these things. The fact that we are here just means that this spot of the universe formed with the correct conditions for life. May be there are a few other places in this vast universe where something similar has occurred. When you study physics, biology, evolution and geology there is a wonderful story as to how our world and our species came about.
It amuses me that people need to believe in gods or a designer but it doesn't surprise me given what we are.

[Never-mind]

Isn't the design argument just kicking the improbability can down the road to an exponentially greater improbably?

[ClassyBaxy]

thank you purple shirt guy who looks pissed and black shirt guy who looks depressed for the help with my rs homework very happy

[redbearwarrior]

I see where Purple Shirt is coming from. But I’m not convinced that we need other universes to compare ours to for the teleological argument to work. All we need to do is identify the relevant features of our universe that would help us choose between the only three explanations for the fine tuning and complex order in our universe: necessity, some kind of blind process, and design.

[communismwithgiggles]

Just because it looks simple doesn't mean its creation was simple

[jeffreykaufmann]

Even if the Rock is less complex than the Watch wouldn't the Rock still need a Designer?

[noidea]

why does the video look like from like 2005 or 2006

[gillloteen]

Surely the biggest issue with the argument is that the watch is supposedly designed due to it's complexity and the purpose it serves for telling the time. In which case the universe would also require not only complex parts but a purpose that those parts collectively serve.

[cnault]

The watchmaker argument for god is a great argument for the existence of Zeus...or Odin...or Brahma...or -fill in the blank -

[DoubleMrE]

A watch is a great argument FOR evolution. After all, a whole series of inventions like metallurgy, gears, etc. had to be invented before the watch could be.

[theboombody]

The universe is 10^18 seconds old, and there are 10^82 atoms in the universe. If you multiply these two numbers together, it's still FAR smaller than the denominator of the probability of typing Hamlet randomly, which is over 10^130, 000 possibilities. I don't know if the universe can make a watch randomly, but it DARN sure isn't able to make Hamlet randomly, unless it gets many, many orders of magnitude older.

[ryanpacheco]

We havent given God human qualities but he has made us in his image giving us a form of Godliness its upto us what we choose to do with it, serve him and trust him or be faithless and serve ourselves.

[Never-mind]

If this universe was purposely "designed" for us, it would be the ultimate Rube Goldberg Machine, bar none!

[sfkr]

We don't find if something is natural based on If it is complex

[rev.stephena.cakouros]

Hail Paley! The Greeks debated the need to give God a name a descriptive name. They went back to their original Pelasagian dialect. They did that so there would be no mistaking what they wanted to convey. They chose THEOS a word that makes God out to be a designer and not just a blind power See Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1ff.

[liamthompson]

How are they using an eye as an example, bro I have a phone in my pocket with 3 cameras on it