Atheists' Responses to the Watchmaker Argument
Hiyah. :P
I'll start this by saying that I'm not Christian or in any way religious (that is to say, I follow no religion), and frankly I think that anybody who takes that book to have any kind of literal truth is barmy; but that's not what this is about.
However, one thing that's always troubled me about atheists is the way in which the watchmaker argument is dealt with. Sure, most of us can see that the world's major religions' versions of God are nonsense. However, this doesn't discount the possibility of God, defining God as 'a conscious creator'.
Really, I think the whole watchmaker thing is at the heart of why people originally thought up the idea of Gods. But as our scientific knowledge increases, I can't help but shake the feeling that it's amazing that there should ever have been a world in which intelligent beings with such immersive environments for us to live in. When you take into account all the different factors that have to be exactly right; you need self assembling membranes and genetic material to start evolution off, and for that to happen all of the configurations of the electron shells of each element has to be exactly the right shape so that the different necessary compounds can form and reactions can take place, you need gravity to be just right so that you get a vast number of habitats in the universe to make it probable that evolution might kick off, you need the two forms of energy and mass to exist in the right proportions, you need all the different types of particles and the correct proportions between atomic forces so that you have any mass in the first place, etcetera etcetera...
When you multiply these probabilities together, you come to the conclusion that the chance of conscious beings arising from the dust is next to nothing. So, what I'm asking is, 'how you deal with the perceived design in the universe for conscious life with meaningful experiences'? Why all this instead of nothing? Or instead of the hugely more likely bland mush of energy and matter?
For it seems quite natural to think that design implies intent, and intent implies a mind.
Thanks for your time. :D