On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:56:29 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Not saying I agree with that idea, but that's the counter argument that
>> I've run into in the past myself.
> 
> Sure, except that's factually incorrect. It's easy to do experiments to
> show it's pretty trivial to evolve something that does a rather
> sophisticated function without actually designing how it does it, and
> indeed with the result being difficult or impossible to analyze for how
> it works. In other words, no, the watch doesn't imply the watchmaker.

That presupposes enough understanding of evolution (or for that matter, 
believing the facts put in front of one that support its existence) to 
accept that as an alternate explanation.

I think we could probably agree that a watch is unlikely to happen as the 
evolution of something geologic, and certainly not to the extent that 
there are billions of them in existence.

> This is the same "I can't imagine how it could be anything else, so I
> must be right."  The old "since my imagination is inadequate, I must be
> right" argument. They said the same thing about thunder too.

True enough.  Personally, I've always taken the approach that if my 
imagination isn't adequate to the task of understanding, I don't know 
(rather than "anything I make up must be right").

It seems to me that a lot of the religious people I know believe we've 
advanced science to the point that there is no more to discover or 
understand - and if we don't know "it" now, we will never know it.

That certainly could explain the decline in math/science in the US...

Jim

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