I think some of the points that have been made here, based upon the metaphorical notion that even the most unlikely hand is bound to show up in the cards if you deal enough games, is true as far as it goes but fails to genuinely address the “Blind Watchmaker” fallacy.
A watch is a constructed object; this is clear by opening the case and looking at the works (we’re assuming an analog watch here, of course). There are no extra parts, and removal or modification of any individual component is likely to render the entire machine inoperative. If we were walking about the Galapagos Island with our friend Chuck and came across a functional watch-like object formed of lava slag sticking out of the ground, we’d be highly (and correctly) suspicious that anything so useful could have simply fallen together naturally. There is a chance, of course, for anything to happen, but the odds against it are so vast that the likelihood of such a device being randomly formed, even once, are many orders of magnitude greater than the lifespan of the Sun, or indeed, of the universe. (And, of course, in the days before modern understanding of geography, the life of the planet was assumed to be measured in the thousands, rather than unimaginable billions of years, even by those who were not dogmatically locked into the claims of Biblical Creation in Genesis.)
So, applying the same logic–by analogy–to the even more complex mechanisms of life, it would seem utterly preposterous to assert that life could arise from the muck (abiogenesis), and even more unlikely that “random” events would form toward the end result of the highly optimized, self-aware, bipedal form of man. The problem with that argument is that it is, as indicated, based upon analogy, which is the most slippery method of asserting a position ever devised by philosophers and argumentarians of all colors. An analogy starts by making assumptions about the relationship between the two compared concepts and results in conclusions that are inherently based on the validity of those assumptions. In the case of comparing a fabricated engine, such as a clockworks, to a living organism, there are a number of ways in which the assumptions do not follow.
For instance, as noted, a clockworks is constructed externally. It has no means to replicate itself. A “mutation”–say, damage or breakage of one of the sprockets–cannot be carried on to the next watch down the line. It can’t improve via “natural selection”, or indeed, any form of selection that doesn’t involve human intervention. A watch is also a dedicated device with a specific purpose. A watch can’t measure temperature, or write a sonnet, or order a drink. It does one thing–keep track of the passing of time via the controlled release of mechanically-stored potential energy–and every bit of its works are dedicated to this goal; the removal of any one part renders it immobile.
With consideration to these points, it is clear that even the simplest form of life is not like a watch at all. Life is very robust; it is usually (nearly always, actually) capable of repairing cellular and genetic damage and degradation via its mechanisms. Even with the loss or damage of a significant amount of genetic code it is still able to continue functioning and can reproduce; on the rare occasion that such a modification actually provides some benefit to its ability to reproduce, it passes this onto its offspring, and they to theirs, and so forth, so that the benefit may propagate itself indefinitely and allow its recipients to predominate over its less-able brethren.
And while a watch is constructed with a specific goal, the anthropic notion that life, and in particular humanity, follows the same principle is a quasi-solipsistic, self-centric notion; like the puddle mentioned in a previous post which is amazed at how well the ground fits it (and nods to the late Douglas Adams who is credited with cracking that insightful joke), we assume that the world is built for us because it provides all that we need, instead of recognizing that the fit is so convenient because we evolved to make use of the resources at hand, and that those creatures do didn’t fit so well (or didn’t cope with environmental changes) long ago gave up their claim. We are not watches, or automobiles, or Sony Playstations; we are highly adaptive organisms who came to predominate precisely because we are robust and can create new methods and tools to let us accomplish functions that we are clearly neither designed nor evolved to perform, such as flying through the air or swimming underwater.
As for the irreducible complexity argument: unlike a clockworks, in which a single missing part renders the whole inoperable and which has but one single functional result, life occurs in various stages of development, from single celled organisms with no nuclear structure to highly complex, massively differentially multicellular bodies. Irreducible complexity might make sense if babies emerged in infant form straight from the ground, or if our genetic code were unique from every other living thing; but in fact, we share the great bulk of our genes with most other complex organisms. The inherent assertion of natural selection, and backed up by over a century of cladistic and genetic taxonomic study and research, is that every characteristic is a development of the phenotypes of preceding species, and are often functionally unrelated as with our inner ear mechanisms for hearing (the anvil, hammer, and stirrup bones being derived from the gill arches of jawless fish and the jaw bones of early reptiles). We did not, after all, emerge fully formed from the primordial ooze (or ocean vents, or whatnot) but came to be via a long and undirected (but not random, in the sense that genotypes were randomly jumbled together) path from a very simple, self-replicating pre-living protein to become Harvard Law graduates, romance novelists, and reality TV contestants, which when you think about it isn’t really that far at all.
One particular organ that is often touted by ID proponents as a prime example of irreducible complexity is the vertebrate eye; that elimination of any of the individual components (lens, cornea, retina, et cetera) would render the entire organ useless, and that it is vastly unlikely that the individual components would have evolved separately to make such a functional whole. This is stated in apparent obliviousness to the fact that, indeed, these components didn’t evolve independently but rather, the entire organ, as a functional unit, came about to its current level of development with each component being successively “optimized” i.e. providing benefit to the organ as a whole, and to the body using it, and ultimately, to the genes for which the body is a carrier. The vertebrate eye is, in fact, a rotten example of intelligent design; anyone familiar with the anatomy of the invertebrate octopus (the phylum of which evolved the eye completely independently of us spinebackers) will recognize that the optical gear on that much maligned creature is actually better assembled. It is also worth noting that nearly every stage of development, from the pre-focus pinhole-type eye (which can see only movement in light and dark) to full color, autofocus, adjustable intensity hardware can be seen in the various species of class Cephalopoda, making it clear that, indeed, one need not have all the components in place in order to have an organ that does something beneficial.
Irreducible complexity is, in fact, a way of going from the admission that “we don’t know how” to “ergo, it must be impossible”. This is clearly an argumentum ad ignorantium. Such arguments have been repeatably falsified; however, whenever that occurs, the proponents merely recede back to other, as-yet-unexplained phenomena and claim a standing victory, which is a bit like keeping yourself from falling off a precarious cliff by crabbing along the edge.
Fundamentally, the reason that life exists it because it is successful at propagating itself. This may seem like a bootstrapping argument, but that is in fact the only claim necessary. Life is complex because it is able to retain increasingly developed characteristics that permit it to propagate more effectively. Life emerged as a simple, self-replicating pattern of molecules, and has evolved into the complex forms seen today not as a random throw of an enormous cup of dice to score a GigaYatzee but a meandering, goal-less path, winnowed by competition for scarce resources with other creatures and against environmental challenges. It’s conceptually straightforward (if highly complex in the details) game theory. No god or gods required.
An excellent read on this topic is Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker and/or Climbing Mount Improbable. which are, I’ve found, the most comprehensive nontechnical books on the topic. Stephen J Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is interesting, too, but very long and often rambling, complete with his contentious conceptual stands on punctuated equilbrium (but valuable for his expansion on the contibution of environment and embryonic development as well as genetic coding). I have’t read Ernst Mayr’s What Evolution Is (yet), but it is highly thought of. And one is never amiss to read up on Darwin himself, especially The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. Darwin might be well over a century dead but the points and observations he makes, even in the pre-Mendelian knowledge of biology in which he labored are as insightful and correct today as anything stated by modern evolutionary scientists.
Stranger
) I didn’t need enlightenment regarding ID in the first place. I went into this thread thinking that Intelligent Design was bullshit. What I didn’t understand was one of the rebuttals to ID. I just wanted to make sure I understand my side’s argument/debate better and a bunch of posts helped clear that up for me!
Frankly, I kinda like the idea…sometimes you can even see it in action, like the Daytona 500 several years ago when a group of Gods conspired to bring Dale Earnhardt into the lead, only to be confronted by another God that threw a rock and popped his tire on the final lap. Or…something like that.