[_ Old Earth _] Watch story

[reznwerks]

Remember the old watch story? Do you remember when it was told to you in that analogous manner which argued the claim that if you found a watch in a dessert that somehow you knew by its complexity it just didn't happen by chance? This conclusion was supposed to make you sit down and conclude that like that watch , we and other life forms on this planet just didn't come about by chance. It's a pretty good story but lets look and question the facts. First of all the bottom line is this, does evolution take place? If we use the creationist logic which was used in this story it will also disprove their logic and prove evolution has and does occur. It is agreed that the watch didn't suddenly appear in it's present state. The idea of time pieces (watches) can be observed over thousands of years. You can see it in the way ancient calenders were created, buildings were constructed , crude sand in the jar time pieces etc. So there you have it a brief evolutionary history of the watch. Evolution happens.

 

[Featherbop]

I can't even understand the arguement that you might try to be making.

The watch didn't get there by natural processes, and nothing else did either.

 

[Barbarian]

In a sense, watches evolved. And yes, if a watch just appeared in a stone-age society, with no intermediate devices, we'd have to conclude something unnatural was going on.

But that's about as far as you can stretch that analogy.

 

[cubedbee]

Very nice Reznworks. Sums up what I believe exactly. The complexity of the finished product shows that it was intellligently designed, while looking at the past shows that the product evolved from a simpler form over time.

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

I'm not quite sure your analogy holds up that well, but then the original argument by Paley doesn't hold up that well either.
His argument for design requires there already to be knowledge of a watchmaker to know that the watch was made, a use of inductive reasoning in an argument where he wants to be inferring from the best explaination.