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I've been working for a long time on a good way to restate the old, disreputable watchmaker analogy for ID,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy
And the criticism of it:
I think I've finally come up with a good one:
You guys agree? It's a pretty good, modernistic, new fabled one, eh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy
Phenomenon X (the structure of the solar system, DNA, etc.) must be the result of:
1. random chance, blind fate, etc.
2. natural causes, natural law
3. intelligent design
In the case of the watch, for example , neither (1) nor (2) is held to be plausible. The complexity of a watch is taken to mean that it could never have come about through random chance or through any natural process; it must have been designed by an intelligent watchmaker. Similarly (the argument continues), the complexity of X means that it could never have come about through random chance or through any natural process; it must have been designed by an intelligent designer.
And the criticism of it:
Cultural anthropologists challenge the watchmaker argument both as a 1) faulty analogy and also as a 2) mistaken idea about the matching of people, animals, and plants to their natural settings. That is, a man's mother and father make the man, not a god. And people, animals, and plants have many biological mistakes in their design. [10]
Furthermore, the anthropologists Richerson and Boyd (see below) note that, though one man or woman may make a watch, the know-how that the watchmaker uses consists of the accumulated learning of many generations of technology workers that managed to make minor improvements on the traditions of prior generations. That is, the cultural evolution in watchmaking from generation to generation demonstrates the very Darwinian accumulation of variations between generations in a population that creationists try to use the watchmaker analogy to disprove. It is not even a case of the watchmaker standing on the shoulders of giants. Developing the art of watchmaking is a case of "midgets standing on the shoulders of a vast pyramid of other midgets." [11]
For example, when John Harrison in 1759 created the most accurate watch that had ever been made for use on sailing ships, he used techniques from many generations of traditions in watchmaking and added in "a number of clever tricks borrowed from other technologies of the time, such as using bimetallic strips (you may have seen them coiled behind the needle of oven thermometers and thermostats)" [Note: John Harrison did not borrow the bimetallic strip for use in horology, he invented it] that kept his clocks from changing their rate even when the temperature rose and fell. The fact that so many hundreds of generations of innovations that go into making any good watch leads to claims that "William Paley's famous Argument from Design would better support a polytheistic pantheon than his solitary Christian Creator; it takes many designers to make a watch." [12]
Also, critics of the watchmaker analogy note that it assumes a background of cultural knowledge — familiarity with watches, clockworks, and time-keeping devices in general. It is this familiarity with watches that enables people easily to identify a watch as an artifact of human design. But (the objection goes) we have no analogous knowledge of the culture of an alleged designer of the universe, and thus conclusions about supposed design in nature cannot be drawn on the basis of an analogy to a watch.[13]
In 2005, Paley's watchmaker argument became an issue considered by the court in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the "Dover trial," where plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy requiring the presentation of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution as an "explanation of the origin of life" thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In his ruling, the judge stated that the use of the argument from design by intelligent design proponents "is merely a restatement of the Reverend William Paley's argument applied at the cell level"[14] and that the argument from design is subjective.[15]
"For human artifacts, we know the designer's identity, human, and the mechanism of design, as we have experience based upon empirical evidence that humans can make such things, as well as many other attributes including the designer's abilities, needs, and desires. With ID, proponents assert that they refuse to propose hypotheses on the designer's identity, do not propose a mechanism, and the designer, he/she/it/they, has never been seen. In that vein, defense expert Professor Minnich agreed that in the case of human artifacts and objects, we know the identity and capacities of the human designer, but we do not know any of those attributes for the designer of biological life. In addition, Professor Behe agreed that for the design of human artifacts, we know the designer and its attributes and we have a baseline for human design that does not exist for design of biological systems. Professor Behe's only response to these seemingly insurmountable points of disanalogy was that the inference still works in science fiction movies. — Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, page 81
Another kind of objection to the Watchmaker Analogy and Teleology in general is coined as the Mandelbrot Analogy. It relies on the observation that some complex patterns and behaviours -such as those seen in fractals and chaotical systems- arise naturally, and often from very simple systems. Therefore the complexity of something isn't a valid argument for the necessity of a designer.
I think I've finally come up with a good one:
The so-called scientists who reject ID, often do so on the basis that ID is not "testable" or "falsifiable" but no theory of origin is, because the precondition of non-origin can't be replicated. They will contend, science doesn't provide any evidence to support ID, but is this a valid criteria to completely dismiss it as a possibility? To demonstrate the absurdity of this, I present the following analogy... Let's go back a couple hundred years in time, a mere sand grain of time in the existence of the universe... Let's assume someone had found a computer. It is made of plastic, steel, wires and silicon... not materials common for that era. There is no electricity yet, so it can't be turned on, but the real question is, what is it? What is its purpose? How did it get here? Some people ponder, it came from God... Others claim it is the work of an ancient civilization, and some believe it came about as the result of random events. Years pass, and we discover electricity, and someone eventually figures out how to turn the computer on. So now, we have this machine that works in a systematic manner, but we still don't have an answer to where it originated. Those who have consistently refuted it was the product of intelligent design, continue to point out, the computer is comprised of wires, metal and plastic, and deals with math... 0's and 1's must have converged at some point in time, and that explains the origin! They refuse to accept any idea it might be the product of intelligence, because the computer doesn't say it was created, the creator's name isn't in or on the computer anywhere, and it works on principles of math, not flesh and blood, so they scoff... how can intelligence have possibly created this? Of course, science can never actually provide an explanation for how the computer got here, where it came from, or what caused it to be... and the question remains unanswered by science. Still, there is evidence of intelligent design.
You guys agree? It's a pretty good, modernistic, new fabled one, eh?
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