Clockmaker analogy1/6/2023 ![]() ![]() The fact remains, though, that the man had no frame of reference. Of course, the absence of a frame of reference, makes this argumentation rather doubtful. The man had mistaken a man-made, mechanical device for a product of nature. But the fact that he referred to a truck carrying bananas as a “weird beast”, is the significant part of this documentary. The man replied: “nothing, except for a weird beast that could carry very much bananas.” The man, of course, didn’t see nothing, he just lacked the frame of reference to describe what he saw. Similarly, if we do not know what a watch is or what the watch is for (which is the case when we look toward nature, our planet and/or our existence) we have no reason to say it was man-made.Įvidence for this, is obtained from a documentary that aired first somewhere in the ’90s on BBC, I believe it was called Meet The Natives, but I haven’t been able to track it down, unfortunately (if anyone knows exactly which documentary it is, please notify me so I can insert a link and watch it again) in which a tribesman was taken into a modern city. If, for instance, we stumble upon a cave while trekking through the mountains, we have no reason to assume it was man-made, nor that it formed naturally as a result of plate tectonics and rocky structure. The reasoning behind this argument is that because there is a difference in aesthetics and function we can discern the difference between designed and not designed objects, systems etc. just by looking at them. There is, however, no reason why we would recognize the work of a fellow human being as being the work of a fellow human being, without having an additional reason to. If, on the other hand, we do not accept this argument, the premise would remain in tact. This would mean that in fact, we haven’t the ability to discern between designed and not designed features, as the premise would have us believe. The problem is that if we accept this argument, the premise becomes void, because the one thing we understand to not have been designed, would be designed. The experienced debaters among you, might already have raised their red flags and sounded the fallacy alarm, because this is a self-defeating premise. The premise of this argument is that there is a significant difference between man-made objects and objects designed by god or “an intelligent designer”. We come across this argument, or attempt to argue this point all too frequently, and quite frankly, it’s annoying to say the least. This is apparent too when we look at nature” – The Watchmaker Argument. We all know it, “If you walk across the beach of an uninhabited island, having never met another human being and find a watch, you would know it was made by a fellow human being. ![]()
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