[note: the author formatted this is a way that did not leave space for a page break. So I am inserting the break at the top — NR]
- Paley’s teleological argument is: just as the function and complexity of a watch implies a watch-maker, so likewise the function and complexity of the universe implies the existence of a universe-maker. Paley also addressed a number of possible counterarguments:
- Objection: We don’t know who the watchmaker is. Paley: Just because we don’t know who the artist might be, it doesn’t follow that we cannot know that there is one.
- Objection: The watch (universe) is not perfect. Paley: Perfection is not required.
- Objection: Some parts of the watch (universe) seem to have no function. Paley: We just don’t know those functions yet.
- Objection: The watch (re universe) is only one possible form of many possible combinations and so is a chance event. Paley: Life is too complex and organized to be a product of chance.
- Objection: There is a law or principle that disposed the watch (re universe) to be in that form. Also, the watch (re the universe) came about as a result of the laws of metallic nature. Paley: The existence of a law presupposes a lawgiver with the power to enforce the law.
- Objection: One knows nothing at all about the matter. Paley: Certainly, by seeing the parts of the watch (re the universe), one can know the design.
- Hume’s arguments against design:
- Objection: “We have no experience of world-making”. Counter-objection: We have no direct experience of many things, yet that never stops us from reasoning our way through problems.
- Objection: “The analogy is not good enough. The universe could be argued to be more analogous to something more organic such as a vegetable. But both watch and vegetable are ridiculous analogies”. Counter-objection: By definition, no analogy is perfect. The analogy needs only be good enough to prove the point. And Paley’s analogy is great for that limited scope. Hume’s followers are free to pursue the vegetable analogy if they think it is good enough. And some [unconvincingly] do imagine the universe as “organic”.
- Objection: “Even if the argument did give evidence for a designer; it’s not the God of traditional Christian theism”. Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding.
- Objection: “The universe could have been created by random chance but still show evidence of design as the universe is eternal and would have an infinite amount of time to be able to form a universe so complex and ordered as our own”. Counter-objection: Not possible. There is nothing random in the universe that looks indubitably designed. That is why we use non-randomness to search for extraterrestrial life and ancient artefacts.
- Other arguments against design:
- Darwin: “Evolution (natural selection) is a better explanation”. “There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.” — The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. Counter-objection: “Natural selection” would be an alternative hypothesis to Paley’s if it worked. But it demonstrably doesn’t, so there is not even a point in comparing the two.
- Dawkins: “Who designed the designer?” Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Dawkins: “The watch analogy conflates the complexity that arises from living organisms that are able to reproduce themselves with the complexity of inanimate objects, unable to pass on any reproductive changes”. Counter-objection: Paley is aware of the differences between the living and the inert and is not trying to cast life into a watch. Instead he is only demonstrating that they both share the property of being designed. In addition, nothing even “arises”. Instead everything is caused by something else. That’s why we always look for a cause in science.
- Objection: “Watches were not created by single inventors, but by people building up their skills in a cumulative fashion over time, each contributing to a watch-making tradition from which any individual watchmaker draws their designs”. Counter-objection: Once we establish that the universe is designed, only then we can [optionally] discuss other aspects of this finding (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Objection: In Dover case, the judge ruled that such an inductive argument is not accepted as science because it is unfalsifiable. Counter-objection: Both inductive and deductive reasoning are used in science. Paley’s argument is not inductive as he had his hypothesis formulated well before his argumentation. Finally, Paley’s hypothesis can absolutely be falsified if a random draw can be found to look designed. This is exactly what the “infinite monkey” theorem has tried and failed to do (see counter-objection to Hume).
- Objection: Paley confuses descriptive law with prescriptive law (i.e., the fallacy of equivocation). Prescriptive law does imply a lawgiver, and prescriptive laws can be broken (e.g., speed limits, rules of behavior). Descriptive laws do not imply a law-giver, and descriptive laws cannot be broken (one exception disproves the law, e.g., gravity, f = ma.). Counter-objection: Of all the laws with known origin, all (100%) have a lawgiver at the origin. The distinction between descriptive and prescriptive laws is thus arbitrary and unwarranted.
- Objection: It is the nature of mind to see relationship. Where one person sees design, another sees randomness. Counter-objection: This ambiguity is present only for very simple cases. But all humans agree that organisms’ structures are clearly not random.
- Dawkins: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Counter-objection: Just a corollary: since organisms indeed appear designed, then they are most likely designed according to Occam’s razor.
- In conclusion, Paley is right and his opponents continue to be wrong with not even a plausible alternative hypothesis.
Links:
newton,
Scientism
Description
DescriptionScientism is the promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values.
CharlieM,
What a strange thing to say. Creationist biologists do exist. I knew one once. Strange fish. But, given that they represent a small fraction of one percent of all biologists, we can use the word “biologists” unqualified to represent the >99.6% without causing any misunderstanding, especially if you are “pushed for time” as you claimed to be:
Wow. I did not expect that you would agree with me there.
I appreciate that.
DNA_Jock,
I agree with you that I have taken a cursory look at the criticisms as they are not getting at the real point. He did not test the hypothesis against design which is the discussion topic here.
That definition has nothing to do with how you used the term here:
Thanks. What are the alternative best or objective means?
No, Bill.
You started this hare when you disputed the reality of universal common descent, remember?
You went on to claim that “Theobald’s paper was highly criticized for very good reasons”, whilst demonstrating (by confusing design arguments with UCD) that you do not understand Theobald, nor the criticisms, which now you are all of a sudden only cursorily familiar with. You are parroting rubbish that you googled, and appear to have not even read.
Kantian Naturalist,
Fair point but one of the ways of promoting science as an authority is through exaggerated claims promoted to the public through the media or schools.
If you insist on using a word differently from how everyone else uses it, you have no justification for complaining that you’re not being understood.
For what it’s worth, there’s nothing anthropocentric about refusing to use the word “life” to refer indiscriminately to all energy-involving temporal processes. Stars are basically just extremely long-lasting fusion-driven explosions occurring in vacuum. If you want to call that “life,” well, OK I guess. But that just invites chaos and confusion and an inability to recognize that some things really are different from other things. (I’m reminded here of Russell’s criticism of Bergson: he refused to make any distinctions between anything and anything else and then complained that the whole mess was ineffable!)
You tell me that stars only transform matter. This is according to the prevailing theories, it is not unquestionable fact. In order to make sense of the history of the early universe and origin of stars, researchers are forces to invoke the existence of dark matter.
I am happy to agree that there is something being transformed into something else and that there is nothing in existence that just appears from nothing. Even by your preferred theory there would not exist all these heavier elements to form the various compounds and mixtures of today. And do you not believe that energy precedes matter?
DNA_Jock,
I gave you the very good reason which you seem to have difficulty comprehending. The wrong comparison was used. This is a weak paper Jock. Your a bright guy so what makes you want to lead with your chin here. :-).
Take a good look at the paper and it basically tells you that evolution is not statistically viable if you are smart enough to read between the lines.
Other ways are demonstrating its predictive and explanatory ability compared to unnamed or possible alternatives, such as “ some people say” , “ many people say”, I know things”.
Yes I agree. But we do witness lifeless, solids being generated by living organisms. And we have never witnessed anything but life coming from life.
That sounds like a claim that requires some evidence.
newton,
The paper is the evidence. It touts extremely rare probabilities of separate biological origin events.
Nope. The evidence says UCD regardless of how it diverged. That’s a different question.
The observed data screams that a mind was involved in how all the life we see around us is related by common descent? That’s backwards Bill. Minds are features of a few life forms, so they could have been involved in events that happened before there were any minds around.
Nope. the discussion point is UCD. Also, just so you know, scientists do not test scientific hypotheses against fairy tales.
You’re misunderstanding the point. It’s extremely low probabilities that all of life would share so many things if it had multiple origins. The most plausible explanation is that they share all of those features because they have the same origin. That they inherited those features from a common ancestor.
If you define living organisms as any dynamic systems, then by definition life would come from life always by definition. As per those solids, again, transformation, not production. How long do those solids have to be “static” for them not to be considered part of those universal dynamic systems and thus alive/part-of-life?
Maybe not unquestionable, but for there to be dynamic systems we’d need the energy/matter stuff first. How could nothingness be dynamic?
Not at all. Dark Matter is a hypothesized stuff to explain gravitational effects that betray the existence of much more matter than what’s “visible.” The early universe thing is about energy-into-matter as the universe coooled-down.
Sure. But energy and matter are different forms of the “same stuff” (I don’t know if the wording should be “same substance”).
You did use the word, ‘decided’.
Because no earthly organism is omnipotent. Saying that life produces matter does not mean that all forms of life can just produce matter as they like. The terraforming of the environment by other organisms allows us to concentrate being human without having to be diverted in other ways.
Your inability to land a blow? <ggg>
You must be referring to this exchange, viz:
You are misusing the word ‘random’. Theobald tests against ‘independent’ separate origins; it’s a technical term, related to P(A∩B).
This is your idea of giving me “the very good reason”? Yikes.
[As an aside, my Last-Thursday-Loki-demi-God would be motivated to make the separate creation events appear nested. Satan, likewise, but YHWH?]
Saying it’s “a weak paper” but declining to discuss details only makes it look like you don’t know anything.
You are going to need to get a LOT more specific. This is not the killer rejoinder you imagine.
And that is why you will find it so difficult to account for the origin of life. You believe that matter is the primal state from which life emerges. For anyone who believes that it is the natural state of matter to either to be part of or to have come from life then it is not difficult to envision why life has appeared on earth and that solid matter is a precipitation of life.
I don’t try to define life because any definition of life would be inadequate.
I don’t need to expect it, I know it happened.
For someone who believes that life comes from life then some form of life is to be expected, and the position of the earth, the properties of water, and the way that matter can form polymers are among the attributes that make organic life likely.
100% stupid.
My approach is different, but yields the same conclusion. Classic scientific method. You wouldn’t know.
How so?
You don’t know what black swan is. I didn’t label you a “retard atheist”, but if you insist… 🙂
Stupid again. I clearly said “you mean”. So indeed, not my claim.
I’m not sure you can even self-convince.
This is plain stupid again and bears no resemblance to what I said. Stop making up stuff. And [a tough one] stop seeing what you WANT to see rather than what it’s there.
Like the nonsense with mountains and biology, you assume too much, jump important steps and “see” what you want so see. But this has been said before and you’re not improving.
What assumption? What’s your point? Why do you leave out: “Also, the “grouping” refers to all organisms not just guppies, right? Those statements do NOT contradict each other.”?!?
The “grouping” we’re debating is not of guppies, but of all organisms.
Wrong on all counts.
Haha.
False. I would not confirm anything without checking… especially from you&co… especially such strange claims. That would be stupid. You too see what you want instead of what’s there. Haha.
In my opinion there is no such thing as mere matter. No matter is entirely left to itself, It always exists in a larger living whole. There is living matter and there is matter that living systems have deposited or excreted so to speak. The rocks, the oceans, the atmosphere form the body of the living earth. The calcium carbonates in a coral reef may be dead matter but it is an integral part of a living system. Living beings or systems always have death as an intgral part of their makeup.
There are external intelligences responsible for the design and construction of a Boeing 747. The intelligence of a living system is an integral feature of it. It comes from within. Living systems do have self-organisational abilities.
Humans build machines which is organisation from without from our perspective. But both ourselves and the material we use belong to the overall living system which is the earth. And so it could be argued that the building of machines is a self-organising process of the earth.
Why don’t you write your own OP about that topic? This thread is still about Paley’s excellent argument. I see no new arguments and no new views, so why digress endlessly? Focus on Paley and come up with something intelligent or go squat somewhere else.
You are thinking like the creationist who believes that God is in His remove heaven guiding the proceedings from the outside.
I don’t think that would help preventing any damage caused by the fall itself.
You are talking about individuals where the predator has the best chance of picking off the slowest and weakest, I am talking about the survival of the species or kind.
DNA_Jock,
Thanks for the discussion but not worth the time. The improbability of new cell types in the paper shows the mechanism chosen in the paper is a non starter. The comparative mechanism should be design which handles the improbability problem of new cell types.
Here is Koonin and Wolfe’s rebuttal https://biologydirect.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1745-6150-5-64#citeas
And like I said, it seems to have touched a nerve.
And I suppose that we are just bags of chemicals doing what chemicals do.
How can you be sure that the consensus human understanding of stars is so complete?
Well, when you admitted that
you made it pretty clear that your use of the term “evolutionist” was not a convenient short hand for “orthodox evolutionary biologists and those who agree with their theories as to how life evolved”, like you subsequently pretended, but rather was meant perjoratively to imply a religious belief.
If, when you insult someone, they react negatively, that reaction does not imply that ‘there must have been some truth to the insult’. Well, not after you turn twelve, that is. 😉
colewd,
ROFL
That’s not a rebuttal. It’s a self-published refutation of one (irrelevant) throw-away line in Theobald 2010.
I note with amusement that neither paper has any mention of the “improbability of new cell types”, so I don’t know where you came up with that topic.
Now, if you want to discuss this, you will first need to describe in your own words the point that Koonin and Wolfe take issue with, and why it is peripheral to Theobald’s main argument. (Tip: Koonin and Wolfe are correct, but as they themselves note this has no bearing on Theobald’s main argument for UCD)
DNA_Jock,
Theobald claimed a test for UCD. Do you think they agree his test is valid? What do you think K and W think is the evidence for common descent?
I think we all have common ground on this one. As John Harshman pounded into the ground common descent is an explanation for similarities.
Nathan Lents over at peaceful science has claimed you cannot differentiate the evidence between the claims of common design and common descent based on the evidence.
I would argue that common design is the only viable explanation for the differences especially when were observing large amounts of new genetic code. Paley was ahead of his time.
Without design as a comparative hypothesis evolutionary science lacks rigor. Theobald 2010 is a poster child for this problem.
Can you read?
I tried to make the point that “evolutionist” is not a profession, and “evolutionism” is not a discipline. I agree that he is most obviously NOT referring to a biologist, but rather to anyone whose understanding of how life changes over time stands in contrast with religious doctrine. Without that religious doctrine as context, the term “evolutionist” has little meaning.
Maybe we can sort of lump it in with people who think the earth is not flat, or that rain doesn’t fall from clouds. But we have no specific term for such people, since there’s no religious doctrine requiring the contrast provided by such a specific term. What DO we call people for whom evidence matters, in contrast to those who regard evidence as irrelevant (or, often, hostile)?
I suppose the same is true of such non-rigorous concepts as death. Until religion provided a context, maybe people rejected death as too vague. You think?
Me? I don’t find it difficult at all. We just don’t know the path it followed, the actual history. Your “belief” doesn’t help figuring that history either.
How could there be a dynamic system consisting of nothing?
That’s incoherent. If you believe that life is everything, then life did not appear on Earth, it was always there. Solid matter being a precipitation of life is what you believe, not a conclusion derived from what you believe. If everything is life, then everything would be life in one form or another. On your terms life is a useless concept as KN explained.
ETA: So, your comment to Alan (or Allan) about whether life’s probability is infinitesimal or “to be expected” is nothing but an equivocation.
dazz,
Nice quote mine. I hear Spains conditions are improving. You guys went through a very rough period.
colewd,
It’s not a quote mine. You asked a question and that’s exactly the answer Koonin & Wolf provide in the paper you cited. I don’t expect you to understand given what we know of you. Over and out
Not so fast kiddo. You need to explain in your own words what specific aspect of Theobald’s work K&W took issue with, why it is a valid criticism, and why it has no effect on the remainder of Theobald’s thesis, leading K&W to conclude “Nevertheless, the evidence in support of this hypothesis provided by comparative genomics is overwhelming. “, as dazz pointed out to you. It is not a quote mine; you owe dazz an apology.
This is utter word salad.
DNA_Jock,
You don’t think the first sentence completely refutes your claim of testability of universal common descent?. This is what is missing from Dazz’s quote.
Is the discussion about the testability of universal common descent?
Cannot help you here.
No it doesn’t. Sentences don’t refute anything. Data do. K&W tested one thing and one thing only, of the things used by Theobald. Quote mining is what you’re doing here: taking a sentence that refers to what K&W tried as if it referred to every line of evidence.
Nope. It’s about the testability of UCD by the specific thing that K&W kind of checked. Not whether it’s testable by other avenues. In the end they do say that the evidence for UCD is overwhelming. What do you make of that? Wouldn’t it be better to read the article and understand what they did, rather than claim that some sentence does all the work? If one sentence does the work, why design a full analyses at all? Why not keep the last sentence, rather than the one you chose?
If you indeed have a theory (not a hypothesis?) then I’d encourage you to expose it to public scrutiny. It might be the bombshell to shatter the existing paradigm. And if it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, you can discard it and move on. Win-win!
A new OP would be fine if you are up to the challenge.
Wrong that you have complained that no-one has addressed your claim that William Paley made an excellent argument? It’s one simple point. All you needed to say was “False Haha!” Or you might have explained what there is in Paley’s writing that needs addressing.
Haha!
Haha! Paley has no relevance to evolutionary biology because, writing at the dawn of the nineteenth century, he had no concept of biology as it exists 200 years later. No idea of molecular biology, no idea of biochemistry, no idea of moleculary phylogenetics, no idea of evolutionary developmental biology.
No relevance!
I’d be interested in reading what Nathan Lents actually wrote, and the context, if you can provide a link. Mind you, if your paraphrase is correct, I’d agree with him. “Common Design” isn’t a theory and has no evidence to back it up. It can’t be disproven by evidence either. If you allow disembodied “minds” to do stuff without trace or mechanism you leave the realm of science.
This separates your perspective from that of the IDers around here. Most of the latter seem to think of organs, tissue and biomolecules as machine parts. You have eye for the dynamics within living organisms, so I’ll give you credit for that.
But you seem to be promoting some form of vitalism, drawing a sharp boundary between living things and “mere matter”. In particular, you oppose the idea of “dead matter self-assembling into living substance”. That boundary does not exist. All matter has internal chemical properties that can guide self-organisation in a very similar way to that observed in living beings. You can call it intelligence if you like, but I just call it chemistry.
colewd,
Sounding more like a profession of Lents’s ignorance over the evidence (and yours by endorsement) than a statement about it. If common design were on equal footing with descent, we could render all DNA evidence inadmissible in court. If we take the familiar dodge that we allow it in interbreeding populations but not between such populations, we arrive at an inconsistent position: that the same evidence indicates common ancestry inside, but ‘common design’ outside. Which is classically ad hoc.