Dawkin and Paley

Read at least 4 classmates’ original posts, and, in at least 200 words each, engage with them.
My classmates explaining this 3 questions: (i) Paley’s (or Aquinas’s, Rabbi Akiva’s, Francis Collins’, or Dawkins’) design argument, (ii) Dawkins’ main objection to all design arguments, and (iii)
I need why you agree or disagree with that design argument or the objection against that design argument.

1-classmate:
Youchun Li
Paley & Dawkins
COLLAPSE
i) Paley’s argument is cosmos must have a designer, namely the God! He argues that if there is a stone found on the beach. Nobody should show his curiosity for such a simple stone. we may neglect questions of why the stone sits here? How the stone formed? and what is the parts for such a stone? All explanation seems pointless since it is obviously to people to get to know the stone on the beach is a natural occurrence, which is caused and formed in the functioning of centuries of waves, rains, and wind. On the other hand, If there is watch on the beach. people would question with why the watch lied there? whose watch is it? and the most important, who made and designed such a subtle and complex article. This is not forming process by natural causes. The watch must have a designer behind what we can see from appearance. Hence, he infers that the more complex it is, the more certainly it should have a designer behind it. The life, the nature, and the order of the world should have designers. The more complex universe should have designer to set every thing in its place and space. It seems that there is a super power who designed everything in the universe. So that he concluded that the complex cosmos must have a super designer, that is God!

ii) Dawkins takes Darwin’s evolution theory to overthrow the designer arguments. As we all know, if there is a counter example unsuitable to the designer argument, then God= designer of the cosmos fails. And evolution is such a good counter example. He argues that if there is mountain with one side of sheer cliff and the other side of gentle slope. If someone want to climb to the summit. It is impossible for him to make a bound to reach the summit from the sheer side, though its distance looks shorter; but it is surely possible for him to get to the summit by climbing the gentle slope ,though its distance is much longer and it take much more time to finish such a task. Design argument resembles the bound on the sheer cliff. And the evolution is just like the things happened on the gent side of the mountain. The appear of human beings took a long long time to form what we look like today from the primate family. The long process of evolution is a long process of natural selection, adaption, and elimination. The forming of human being’s brain and intelligence also takes long time to run. The human being have already experienced congnitive revolution, agricultural revolution, and industrial revolution which are all long time to rush and develop. I think, our modern life, in deed, is also a process of evolution. For instance, our communication of car, it is a historical line of on foot, by horse, chariot, horse carriage, T-model by Ford, modern cars by different car companies, car powered with electricity by Tesla and AI controlled car in the near future by Tesla or Google…I really appreciated with his big question ” if God designed the cosmos, the who designed the designer?”

iii) I don’t agree with the design argument. the design argument thinks the cosmos is designed by God. In another word everything in the cosmos is designed by God, including the AI controlled car! Then I have to ask my question to them who hold the design argument, Has God told them what the AI car will be look like? How is the principle of safety? When the AI car can be largely used in our daily life? I am sure they have no answers from them or from their designer, God! But there are answers among our scientists, engineers, technicians with time goes by. The blue print and the reality are both sourced from human being’s brain of intelligence. And human being is the production and process of evolution.

2-classmate

Madison Ross
Paley’s design argument and Dawkin’s main objection to all design arguments
COLLAPSE
Paley’s design argument is that since there are such complex things that exist in this world, that means that there has to be a world maker or a God. Paley believes that complex design automatically implies a designer. William Paley uses the example of the watchmaker. This example follows that, for instance, if you find a stone on the beach, it’s clearly a natural occurrence. There would be no need for curiosity or an explanation for that stone. It was brought there by the occurrence of centuries of waves, wind and rain. On the other hand, if you find a watch on the beach, that most certainly is not a natural occurrence. Nature could not have caused that watch. Aside from a watch, the human eye is also much more complex and so is the entire universe, which in turn implies a world maker.

Dawkins’ main objection to all design arguments is that he believes that there is almost certainly no God. Dawkins Reply to the principle that complex order and design cannot arise from randomness is that evolution is a clear counter example. He uses multiple examples to explain his point of view, including random ink spills and if those hypothetical ink spills splattered randomly onto paper to create a sentence from Shakespeare, then that would not be random. Rather it would be a miracle. Just as monkeys typing, could not write Shakespeare. He describes these examples as disanalogous. Dawkin states that natural selection resembles the process of variation and elimination and that every new generation is a new ink spill or typing event. Natural selection predicts and explains the entire tree of life. Dawkins believes that everything that occurs in this world, is truly due to natural selection and evolution. For example, the panda’s non- opposable thumbs, the appendix in humans that we are told that we don’t need and is a useless organ, but we have it for a reason and so it must have been important to humans years ago. However, ecolution has changed that. Some would argue that early humans started to stand and walk up straight because God intended that to happen and created the human body so that it would. Dawkins would argue that it simply occurred due to evolution and natural selection. The humans who didn’t stand up straight, would have had a harder time fighting off other human or animals, or taking care of themselves in general. Therefore, they wouldn’t have reproduced as much as the humans who did stand up straight.

If I had to choose between Paley’s design argument and Dawkins main objection to Paley’s argument, I would choose to agree with Dawkins main objection. This is because Dawkin has more examples that counter Paley’s design argument. Therefore, if I had to choose between Paley‘s design argument and Dawkins’ objection to Paley’s argument, I would choose to agree with Dawkins main objection. His objection makes more sense and is more plausible than Paley’s. Natural selection and evolution truly occurred and can be dated back and proven.

3classmate

Ethan Jones
Resposne to Dawkins.
COLLAPSE
In reading the story of Willam paley’s The watchmaker I think that there is Rabi Akiva is tying to explain to us why he thinks as those that there is a bid diff4ence beween monkeys deal withink from a pen. H esays that whenever monkeys play around with ink the ink splashes around at a much faster pace than whenever a human beings handles ink. I wold sya that or the most people this si true being that both us and apes are descendents from Mammals. But Monky are also alot smater than us in many ways because of the diffrenece in their life span. Aiva also claims that whenever onkeys splash around at a typewriter thsi is far more complex that actually lerning Shakesphere which is a rythmic verse from the 14th Century. This is surely not aheb as challenging as the whole process of actually trying to recite plays much less complex than actually than almost anything that a monkey does with pencil ink because what a monkey does is actually has a much srronger DNA and genepool and so much of human behavior has come out of monkeys and mammals.

Ricar Dawkins’s desigh arguement claims that there is no such thing as god one so ever. Quite frankly I agree with this because thruout history there has been a very long wave of people who have accomplished different things. For example has Dawkins claims a watch tells time or a Rabbi’s Akiva’s study on monkeys and evolution is all about trying to prove how is iit than huamsn are sumch sloppier when it comes to putting paint on a paper than monkeys are. If you also take Paley’s watch that is a great visual achivement in the history of human evolution because of it’s wonderful sense of perspective and how our eyes precive something. Thway i which all of the blue circles wiring around the peremiter of all the white circles which swirl around the peremiter of the orange and white circles. As humab ebings our eyes can probably be very tird of us after awhile.

I would presonally agree with the design arguement simly because science is real and e cannot and shold never do anything else to deny it the way that we have been in the more recent century of human evolution. Ever since the inventios of machinery we have begun to have zero respect for the importance of how carbon dioxode is bad for the air and if tow much congestion in the air than the planet earth better known as mother nature cold get very overwhelmed and then that could lead to a scientific disaster. it could kill the planet earth. This is how we can eventually die some day. Modt people do know that the egenral fact of science is that we are suppos to breathe in Oxagen and breathe out Carbon Dioxoide. This is also a part of evolution.

4-classmate
Joy Clarke
Week 10 Assignment
COLLAPSE
(I) Explain Paley’s (or Aquinas’s, Rabbi Akiva’s, Francis Collins’, or Dawkins’) design argument

William Paley’s argument to design states that with the universe being a complex system consisting of a vast number of variables coming together to create a functioning unit, there is absolutely no way that its creation was a random, chance occurrence. The creation of the universe had to involve a designer purposefully arranging and organizing its components to create a complex, functioning system.

Francis Collins makes a similar argument using mutations in the human genome as his evidence. Collins argued the changes in genetic code that transformed humans into the form we see today had to be purposefully designed. The combination of traits such as larger brains for intelligence or hands for buildings indicates that humans were designed by a higher being for a purpose. For example, compare humans and dolphins. Both species are highly intelligent, but the body of a dolphin with no arms or legs is not suited to build civilization compared to the body of a human. The mutations found in nature are made to occur in order to further an agenda. God’s agenda.

(II) Explain Dawkins’ main objection to all design arguments

Dawkins’ main objection to all design arguments is that they function on the premise that there are only two arguments to choose from. Those arguments being the creation of the universe was completely random vs the complex design argument. Dawkins poses a third argument to explain the creation of the universe. The third option states that over time, randomness can generate and result in complex design via repeated trial and error. Through the theory of evolutions, this third option is strongly supported by scientific data.

Dawkins also noted that all design arguments are based on unsubstantiated, non-rational evidence. The foundation of design arguments are not based on empirical evidence that has been tested on multiple levels but is based on word of mouth and stories that have not been tested and do not hold up to review. Another issue Dawkins has with design arguments is that there are much better theories to explain creations that are based on tangible, rational evidence and hold-ups under scrutiny.

Dawkins also poses a third argument to explain the creation of the universe. The third option states that over time, randomness can generate and result in complex design via repeated trial and error. Through the theory of evolutions, this third option is strongly supported by scientific data.

(III) Explain why you agree or disagree with that design argument or the objection against that design argument.

There have always been parts of the argument for design and the objection against design I agreed with. I absolutely believe in evolution, but I told myself that God created the system of evolution. God made evolutions happen.

Evolution absolutely makes sense. The theory of evolution has been tested extensively and the scientific evidence is there. But still, I always questioned what would be the probability of a perfect combination of random events coming together to spawn this ginormous working universe and life on earth as we know it. There are so many complexities to the universe that it should not work, but it does. It is as if someone took the time to organize and arrange the billions of parts to create a self-sustaining machine. There are probably trillions of scenarios that would have resulted in no universe and/or no earth.

But, after the readings, and listening to the lectures, I now must take into account time. Science says that the universe is over 13 billion years old. Was that enough time for enough scenarios to play out yielding the results we see today? Obviously yes. Did God cause all of it to happen? I do not know.