I read with great interest Cofty's thread on complexity found here:
I wanted to talk about another aspect of complexity and whether complexity is truly what we should see in design. The argument that creationists make about how complex living things are is a good one. In fact, it's the best argument that creationists have come up with so far.
The argument that complexity in nature equals design was first proposed by Rev. William Paley in his book Natural Theology. In it he proposed that if you were out walking one day and found a pocket watch on the ground you would be able to tell by the intricate mechanism, the painted dial, and the sophisticated metallurgy used to craft the watch that the watch had a designer.
So too, Paley reasoned, if you see the intricate mechanisms of life, shouldn't you reason that life too, had a designer?
It's a good argument.
It's the best argument that creationists have.
Now let me poke a hole in it.
Complexity is NOT necessarily a hallmark of design. Let me illustrate by using Paley's analogy. Only now instead of finding a pocket watch on your outing you find an arrowhead. An arrowhead is very simple. It's just a chipped bit of stone, yet when you see it it practically shreiks, "I am designed!" Why? What makes this simple arrowhead instantly recognizable as a designed artifact and something intricate, like a snowflake for instance, not?
The answer lies in purpose. Things that are designed are designed for a reason. Reason and reasoning ability are products of a mind. Of what reason or purpose is a frog? Or for that matter, a human being? or blades of grass or anything else? The only purpose they have is to survive long enough to make new frogs, human beings or grass.
What I'm saying is that nature has no overarching goal, no purpose other than to self replicate, which isn't a purpose at all. It's merely a survival mechanism. So without a purpose, wherein lies the design?
This survival that we see is one of the reasons we perceive so much complexity in nature. In a designed world we should actually see simple things-a designer would want to be efficient in his design. He would know that simple designs are more efficient and less prone to trouble and breakdown. This is not what we see in nature. Instead we see redundant systems in organisms. We see inefficient immune systems that try to fight off disease microorganisms that are themselves part of nature. In fact we see stuff that we would expect to see if things were not designed, but rather came about through the trial and error path of Natural Selection.
CyrusThePersian
