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So I was cruising around and ran across a link to an article -- 'Common Sense vs. Evolution'. Okay, I thought, I'll bite. Clicked. Read it. Mostly unimpressive, but at least it didn't resort to Bible quotes. But the logical arguments -- one of them I'd seen before, namely the one that complex systems can't arise by chance and as an example, if you put all the parts to a watch in a little bag, screws and everything, and shook it for a long time, you still wouldn't have a watch.
I had to respond to this. I ended up not sending it because, well, I'm soft, but I had to write it out. So here it is.
Regarding your article "Common Sense on How We Got Here", I would like to debate a few points. I don't mean to be rude or inflammatory, all I want is a polite discussion.
The example of the watch puzzles me. You imply that the only way a complex structure like a watch could have arisen is by being made by someone. Which is fine as far as it goes; no one (to my knowledge) has claimed that a human being is formed spontaneously out of raw materials. They are born from other humans.
But how does a watchmaker know exactly how to create such an extraordinarily complex machine? Obviously, he learned his trade from other watchmakers. His work may involve some innovation, but most of his knowledge and inspiration come from previous work.
The watchmakers he learned from, in turn, learned from still other watchmakers, longer ago. And if you go far enough back, the watches they were capable of making get simpler and simpler, until you reach nothing but sundials.
So the evolution of watches involves lots of time, experimentation, trial and error, and certainly the first people messing around with sundials weren't doing it with the goal of eventually creating a modern digital watch, even if that did turn out to be the end result!
We know that this is what happened to give us watches. The same kind of process happens with almost any complex system: houses, cars, computers, the economy or government . . . what is truly improbable is the idea that such a system could be 'created' out of nothing, all at once and running perfectly.
Our world, its ecosystem and biology - not to mention the entire universe - are so much more unimaginably comlex than anything human minds have even attempted to create, it is difficult to imagine that they could have skipped the process of spending eons of time in experimenting and refining, slowly working from the simplest organic compounds (which have been spontaneously formed in laboratories) through single cells to the incredible diversity of life today.
Even if God could do it all in a single week, why would He rush through it all (even planting quite convincing evidence to make it look as though it took billions of years) when He could equally well have taken his time, used subtler means which followed the laws He set up for the unverse to run by, and the result would surely be even better for time and care spent on it?
I had to respond to this. I ended up not sending it because, well, I'm soft, but I had to write it out. So here it is.
Regarding your article "Common Sense on How We Got Here", I would like to debate a few points. I don't mean to be rude or inflammatory, all I want is a polite discussion.
The example of the watch puzzles me. You imply that the only way a complex structure like a watch could have arisen is by being made by someone. Which is fine as far as it goes; no one (to my knowledge) has claimed that a human being is formed spontaneously out of raw materials. They are born from other humans.
But how does a watchmaker know exactly how to create such an extraordinarily complex machine? Obviously, he learned his trade from other watchmakers. His work may involve some innovation, but most of his knowledge and inspiration come from previous work.
The watchmakers he learned from, in turn, learned from still other watchmakers, longer ago. And if you go far enough back, the watches they were capable of making get simpler and simpler, until you reach nothing but sundials.
So the evolution of watches involves lots of time, experimentation, trial and error, and certainly the first people messing around with sundials weren't doing it with the goal of eventually creating a modern digital watch, even if that did turn out to be the end result!
We know that this is what happened to give us watches. The same kind of process happens with almost any complex system: houses, cars, computers, the economy or government . . . what is truly improbable is the idea that such a system could be 'created' out of nothing, all at once and running perfectly.
Our world, its ecosystem and biology - not to mention the entire universe - are so much more unimaginably comlex than anything human minds have even attempted to create, it is difficult to imagine that they could have skipped the process of spending eons of time in experimenting and refining, slowly working from the simplest organic compounds (which have been spontaneously formed in laboratories) through single cells to the incredible diversity of life today.
Even if God could do it all in a single week, why would He rush through it all (even planting quite convincing evidence to make it look as though it took billions of years) when He could equally well have taken his time, used subtler means which followed the laws He set up for the unverse to run by, and the result would surely be even better for time and care spent on it?