Even hemoglobins can't touch this.

On the surface level, you might be fooled into believing that this argument is solid. However, Paley’s Watch is completely fallacious and intellectually dishonest because it boils down to a case of circular reasoning and something called “the fallacy of equivocation”.

We already know that a watchmaker designs watch, but we cannot take that same argument and use it to take a gigantic leap and conclude that the Universe was designed by God. Essentially, the best thing you can say is that the Earth was designed by an Earth-maker. Alternatively, a rock is designed by a rock-maker. Nevertheless, if we conclude that, then we will fall into the trap of a circular argument. Based off the facts we know, we already know humans design a watch because we can recognize manmade objects. However, none of us can say that we wholeheartedly are able to recognized god-made objects. Therefore, the fallacy of equivocation is that you cannot equivocate those two designs. One of them we know is designed while the other is just an assumption based off a giant leap of faith. Creationists are falsely construing the Universe as a watch and concluding that the Universe needs an intelligent Universe-maker.

Paley’s Watch is just one branch off the main idea that complex designs are unlikely to appear in nature by itself without the aid of some designer. This debate has risen to the level where an entire field of study has been created dedicated to “complexity”. Many people found similar themes throughout the different scientists and that very theme is the self-organizing principle. Take Physics for instance. We have quarks, molecules, and electrons. These are organizing themselves into larger complex agents such as atoms and multi-celled beings. Even further, down the line, we have multi-celled beings, humans, acting as individual agents organizing themselves into more complex structures like societies. If we take it from a non-biological standpoint, we have stars organizing themselves into galaxies. From this, we notice that matter has an inherent property to organize and the question arises as to whether or not this is by supernatural means. The field of complexity is figuring out why things do not tend towards either chaos or order, why there is some phase state change (the ideal area where things suddenly become complex and there is chaos with order).

There is a computer simulation called “Life” that has only a few simple rules.

1)      If you have one cell that is surrounded by two, then the cell lives to the next term.

Those three rules are the only rules of the entire game. They are very simple but with these simple rules, we notice that it organizes itself into these amazing complex structures. You eventually get to the point where there are gliders that move across the screen to retrieve some complex pulsing objects that theoretically stay there forever. As we can see, even from this simple computer simulation, we begin to recognize that there is an undeniable, basis, underlying, organizing principle to anything that expands to every single field of science and that it is an innate structure to the Universe and all of existence.

Obviously, a lot of Theists construe that God is the one who put these three simple rules into motion. Although that is a possibility, there is no particular reason why God is a favorable choice. Researchers have found a sweet spot for the certain amount of connections an individual agents can have with its surroundings.

In an auto-catalytic set, you have a set of 26 catalysts, A through Z. Catalyst A is a very weak catalyst that acts upon Catalyst B, the two combine, and then Catalyst B acts upon C and the two combine. After each round, the catalyst becomes stronger and more complex up until you arrive at Catalyst Z which in turn reacts with A and by that time you have gotten a product with an extreme amount of strength that transfers throughout the set. You have this continuous buildup of potency in the catalyst until you are able to get a sufficiently complex reaction to have life or even a complex organism.

If you don’t understand that, let me give you a simple analogy. Pretend you’re cooking a stew. You begin with water but over time, you continue to add more and more to the broth until you eventually have this complicated and full broth.

Onto other arguments in support of intelligent design: they all seem to revolve around very key ideas that includes the fine tuning of the Universe. Intelligent design people argue that the Universe is finely tuned for us to be here. If gravity was just a miniscule amount off or the Earth was 5% closer to the Sun, we would not be here. Additionally, the Universe is specifically tailored for us to be here and this evidence that the Universe is a watch and these fundamental principles of design, these key constituents that we require in order to be here are the gears that allow us to be here in the watch. The makeup of the watch itself is that the Universe was designed by God. However, it is possible that there are a lot of other Universes tailored for us and we don’t exist in them. The only reason why it seems to be tailored for us is because we happened to be here.

The claim is basically an assumption, an assumption that states the Universe was designed in such a way that we could exist and the fact that we do exist backs up that very assumption (which is also their conclusion). They concluded that we were designed and their assumption was that we were designed to fit the Universe because we do fit the Universe, therefore we were designed. You see the circularity in this argument because that was essentially what they were starting with. People seem to trip into that fallacious reasoning because they approach it logically in the wrong way. They seem to think it makes sense but when you start with your conclusion and end with your conclusion nowhere have you demonstrated that a designer is required for the Universe.

Additionally, given that fact that we evolved on this planet and we adapted to this planet means that Earth was not perfectly designed for us to be here. Michael Behe uses this argument from the bacterial flagellum, stating that it is so complex and amazingly well-designed to the point where it can only have a Designer. Behe maintains that there could have been absolutely no possible way the flagellum would have worked without any of those parts. Therefore, the only logical explanation for the propellers arisen on the end that can spin 10,000 RPMs is God.

The main problem of Behe’s argument is that he assumes for the sake of his arugment that the functions of the parts of the organism always has the same functions throughout all of their existence. There is no reason to assume that and if you don’t assume that, his argument falls apart. If you assume first that the only function of the flagellum is going to be motor movement then the argument will always be in Behe’s favor. Take the immune system in humans for instance. Some other organisms are missing certain portions of this cascade of the immune system. Since the immune system is a continuing fashion of one thing setting off another, if you remove one of the processes it would not work or it would not work as efficiently. However, if you look in another creature’s body they are still missing parts of the human immune system but obviously it is still alive. Although the level of efficiency is significantly lower, the idea remains: it works. If you accept the fact that functions of some organism’s parts can change, then there is no issue and the whole argument about irreducible complexity goes away.

A big quandry of science comes from inflationary cosmology, which is a well respected branch of science that dates back to over 70 years. You might be familiar with the term, "Big Bang", but in actuality, scientists do not favour that name because it brings about the popular misconception that there was a loud, explosive noise that created the Universe. In inflationary cosmology, we know that the Universe is expanding and if we run that backwards we see a compression - rather like a reverse Big Bang. If we compress it down far enough we know that space and time are in accordance with each other. They are almost the same concept if not mutually connected. If you run space down to an extremely small point, you'll find yourself with a singularity and the laws of physics break down. Time becomes 0, things do not make sense, and we need a whole new set of physics laws in order to describe it. This is one of the biggest arguments from intelligent design - where did that first singularity come from?

In order to answer this question, we must realise that a singularity does not really come from anything. It is just a mathematical construct used to label something we don't understand. For the moment, we don't have a definite theory yet. However, according to Inflationary Cosmology, our Universe is just an expanding bubble of normal matter which is in a decaying false vacuum, a decaying and ever-expanding false vacuum which arises from interaction of energy and of energy fields from phase particles.

It is also extremely possible that for it all to have come from nothing. The main support for the "something cannot have come from nothing" argument is that the first law of thermodynamics says that matter, or energy, cannot be created or destroyed. But it really is possible. All the potential energy between every single object is stored in gravitational fields. Because gravitational fields govern the entire Universe, they have potentially infinite energy storage capacity. Also, when a gravitational field is created the result is that energy is released so the numerical sign we assign to the energy storage of a gravitational field is negative as long as we make all the other energy in the Universe positive. Therefore, the energy stored in gravitational fields cancels out the rest of the Universe bringing the net energy to 0. Of course the problem with this is the idea that it might not cancel out exactly, but the fact of the matter is: it's still possible for something to have come from nothing.

We cannot even conclude that there was a singularity. What people are doing is running back to an era where it does not even apply. They are trying to move general relativity to a realm where mathematics break down and we have to rely on more quantum explanation during the first Planck second when the Universe existed. Because gravity behaves in such different ways on the small scales, we need a theory of quantum gravity to describe what would occur during this time and of course our theories of loop quantum gravity, string theory, etc. But if we look at what some of these have to say as far as cosmology there really is kind of an answer as to what the origin of the Universe would be and it springs up from these kind of quantum gravitational theories. All we need is a theory of quantum gravity and once we get that we are set.