[Debate] - Religion

[ManagerJosh]

The talk of religion reminds me of Dragon's Teeth.

Its a greek mythology (not sure). But anyhow, to make a long story short, dragon was of enormous power who started many wars. Then several nations gathered together and killed the dragon.

What happened was the teeth fell into the ground and became water so that fighting would continue

As for the big bang theory, I find it personally hard to believe something of that magnitude would occur.

Let me explain.
I'll be refering to this book: (Evolution: a theory in crisis."
by Michael Denton) (Non-Religious)

Organisms and watches are similar because both are complex and have many co-operating parts. But they differ also in many ways. For example watches are made of glass and metal, and organisms are not. This is not a relevant difference. Relevant for the validity of Paley's analogy are properties bearing on the questions 'Where did this object come from?' or 'How was it produced?'. The following properties are relevant for the validity of the watchmaker analogy:

Watches don't reproduce
Watches don't have heredity
Watches don't have mutations

Typical for artefacts, a watch is produced from raw materials by external forces. Watches don't self-assemble. Watches don't descend from other watches. There are no father and mother watches, no baby watches. Every single watch we encounter is necessarily produced by external forces because watches are unable to reproduce themselves. Obviously watches need a watchmaker!
We know today that organisms reproduce and self-assemble on the basis of internal information (DNA). Watches don't have internal self-descriptive hereditary information. The instructions to manufacture a watch are located outside the watch, which explains why they cannot reproduce themselves. The properties reproduction and heredity tell us how living individuals come into existence. This is not a superficial difference, but a fundamental difference.

To my surprise Paley proposed designed, self-reproducing watches (10) and concluded that his design inference was reinforced. He was right that self-reproducing watches are a more powerful design. And he was right that self-reproduction is not an 'ultimate' explanation, because self-reproduction was designed by the watchmaker and not by the watch itself. Now my point is that if self-reproducing watches are a more powerful design strategy, then creating the first form of life and let it evolve into all the million of species, is certainly a far more powerful design method. Furthermore, designing the laws of nature and creating the initial conditions of the Big Bang must be the most powerful creation method. Paley wrote his book before Darwin's Origin of Species. If he had known about natural selection, then only the religious dogma of the fixity of species (biblical 'special creation') could prevent that one species could originate from another species. And the whole point of his analogy was to prove a Designer without relying on revealed religious knowledge. (11)
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