Why My Flatmate Is Not A Monotheist
It’s the tale of the Watchmaker.
Have you heard it before? If you are walking in the desert and you see an old silver pocket watch, and examine it, you will see, amidst the sand, worked silver, and cunning gears, and a face of enamel and glass and gilt lettering. Would you think that it had evolved there, or was it made by a Watchmaker?
This story is used sometimes to illustrate Intelligent Design, the theory that the universe and its inhabitants are far too complicated to have come about through chance or even Natural Selection. This is a Christian story, as I have heard it, and implies the existence of God.
My flatmate, David Schwartz, chooses to extend the metaphor a wee bit further. The Watchmaker, he says, did not mine that silver. He did not alloy it, and probably did not create the glass covering the dial. The design is adapted from those watches that have been created before it, both by the Watchmaker and other Craftsmen. Indeed, the pattern of two sets of twelve hours, of sixty minutes to that hour and sixty seconds to that minute, the pattern of the numerals, Arabic or Roman, even the lettering of the Watchmaker’s name to sign the work, it descends from the work of others, through the passing of time and linguistic drift, to the first Sumerian Scribe that dabbed a wedge-shaped stick in clay to show an Ox.
A watch does not imply one Watchmaker: it implies a great deal more. Polytheism, anyone?
David tells me that he is a Sapientist, although I am not sure what he means by that.
Here endeth the lesson.
Thank you for letting me post this, Dave.
Have you heard it before? If you are walking in the desert and you see an old silver pocket watch, and examine it, you will see, amidst the sand, worked silver, and cunning gears, and a face of enamel and glass and gilt lettering. Would you think that it had evolved there, or was it made by a Watchmaker?
This story is used sometimes to illustrate Intelligent Design, the theory that the universe and its inhabitants are far too complicated to have come about through chance or even Natural Selection. This is a Christian story, as I have heard it, and implies the existence of God.
My flatmate, David Schwartz, chooses to extend the metaphor a wee bit further. The Watchmaker, he says, did not mine that silver. He did not alloy it, and probably did not create the glass covering the dial. The design is adapted from those watches that have been created before it, both by the Watchmaker and other Craftsmen. Indeed, the pattern of two sets of twelve hours, of sixty minutes to that hour and sixty seconds to that minute, the pattern of the numerals, Arabic or Roman, even the lettering of the Watchmaker’s name to sign the work, it descends from the work of others, through the passing of time and linguistic drift, to the first Sumerian Scribe that dabbed a wedge-shaped stick in clay to show an Ox.
A watch does not imply one Watchmaker: it implies a great deal more. Polytheism, anyone?
David tells me that he is a Sapientist, although I am not sure what he means by that.
Here endeth the lesson.
Thank you for letting me post this, Dave.
posted by theamazingcatherine | 11:54 am
3 Comments:
Very very very nice... pity about the strange and odd breaks.
Alan
I like your flatmate very much.
Well, I like his arguments anyway. And the way he thinks. And in absence of any further information as to why I should actively dislike him, I figure I like him too.
The Pagan polytheist in me loves the metaphor and will not hesitate to trot it out to the next person who tries to argue intelligent design with me :-)
"And that is why you can explain by simile, but you should never argue by simile. Because if two things are absolutely equal, they are the same."
My point exactly.
Now name any item at all ever invented, built and utilised exclusively by one person.
Actually, to me the watch indicates intelligence not because it is complex, but because it is simple. If the watch had formed in the same way as a living thing, it would be asymetrical, irregularly shaped, and have vestigial gears that don't directly relate to telling time.
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