Go visit any machine shop. You’ll find tools there like lathes and mills which, given a supply of raw materials, can be used to manufacture another machine shop.
And yet… Where did the first lathe and mill come from if all lathes and mills are made using other lathes and mills? Obviously God created the first ones and gifted them to us, because nobody even knows how to make the high-precision slides and rods and threads needed for lathes and mills without lathes and mills to use for tools...
Oh… Wait… The first ones were made with tools other than lathes and mills via processes that we don’t use anymore because they really stink by comparison.
You can see some evidence of this in cellular machinery in places where cells have more than one way to perform some function. What the originals were… We’ll never know for sure without a time machine, there are several possibilities for each. But they all stink compared to what’s become ubiquitous now. But, like with the machine shop, they worked well enough to get the job done and pave the way for something better later.
Note that this doesn’t eliminate the possibility of some intelligent entity watching over the universe and tuning it to get some desired output according to some master plan. It just means that the watchmaker analogy is a bad argument for that. Just like the other common argument that evolution is a decrease in entropy, and therefore a violation of the laws of physics. Stupid, ridiculous arguments that don’t survive more than a cursory examination and, therefore, make all theists look bad via “guilt by association.” Stop it. Evolution and God are not mutually exclusive, and trying to deny that evolution happens as a way to discredit atheism is letting the atheists frame the argument in such a manner that they can’t possibly lose. Not a good strategy. If you’re going to waste time arguing something that neither side is likely to concede on regardless you should at least take pride in being good at it.
Go visit any machine shop. You’ll find tools there like lathes and mills which, given a supply of raw materials, can be used to manufacture another machine shop.
And yet… Where did the first lathe and mill come from if all lathes and mills are made using other lathes and mills? Obviously God created the first ones and gifted them to us, because nobody even knows how to make the high-precision slides and rods and threads needed for lathes and mills without lathes and mills to use for tools...
Oh… Wait… The first ones were made with tools other than lathes and mills via processes that we don’t use anymore because they really stink by comparison.
You can see some evidence of this in cellular machinery in places where cells have more than one way to perform some function. What the originals were… We’ll never know for sure without a time machine, there are several possibilities for each. But they all stink compared to what’s become ubiquitous now. But, like with the machine shop, they worked well enough to get the job done and pave the way for something better later.
Note that this doesn’t eliminate the possibility of some intelligent entity watching over the universe and tuning it to get some desired output according to some master plan. It just means that the watchmaker analogy is a bad argument for that. Just like the other common argument that evolution is a decrease in entropy, and therefore a violation of the laws of physics. Stupid, ridiculous arguments that don’t survive more than a cursory examination and, therefore, make all theists look bad via “guilt by association.” Stop it. Evolution and God are not mutually exclusive, and trying to deny that evolution happens as a way to discredit atheism is letting the atheists frame the argument in such a manner that they can’t possibly lose. Not a good strategy. If you’re going to waste time arguing something that neither side is likely to concede on regardless you should at least take pride in being good at it.