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Here’s a notion that should thrill atheists:
Intelligent Design. Now usually that’s their hairiest bugbear ever since
blind faith entered the arena thousands of years ago when a bunch of
terrified cave dwelling ancestors of ours decided to ascribe supernatural
causes to scary natural events like thunder, lightning and stuff. The reason
is because ID proponents seem to have a supremely intuitive counter to
unbelief. It’s called the watchmaker analogy after the 18th century
Christian apologist, William Paley, came up with the teleological argument
which says that the existence of a watch implies a watchmaker.
Here’s how it actually works.
If one were to look at a watch – especially if one were to open it up and
check out the complicated mechanism of gears and cogs inside – one could
easily tell that it was designed and built by someone who was at least
intelligent enough to understand the way it was put together and how it
would function in future. Meaning not only did a complex manufacturing
process take place but a purpose was also involved and inbuilt into it.
Similarly, if one were to look at some natural phenomenon like a particular
organ or organism, the structure of the galaxy, life in its various forms or
even the entire universe, one could easily tell that it was designed and
built by an intelligent designer. A creator.
But then one may well ask
where’s the purpose element? Well, if one were to open up the watch and show
it to that same bunch of cave dwellers, would they be able to tell there was
any purpose behind the arrangement? Obviously not. One has to be
sufficiently sophisticated in certain ways to be able to do that.
So where’s the thrill in all this for atheists? As
the contemporary philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy
at the University of Hawaii, Victor Stenger, puts it, although complexity is
difficult to define, we can reasonably expect a high intelligent entity to
be highly complex itself. Thus, it can only have arisen out of something
even more intelligent and complex. Logically this should go on forever in
infinite regress. And as far as purpose is concerned, would it not also
logically follow that if the same things is being repeated ad infinitum,
there could indeed be no purpose involved – mainly because purpose has to
have an ending. Every time we look at a watch we do so to tell the time. End
of story. |
