The Divine Watchmaker Fails to Persuade

 

                             The Divine Watchmaker Fails  to Persuade

Some Thoughts on an Old Argument

 

     I believe that actual philosophers have created far better treatments of this, but I haven't read them.  So, I can proceed without intimidation (maybe a little trepidation).

     Christian fundamentalists argue that a clock could not possibly be created by evolution.  The complexity of it requires that there must be a watchmaker.  Likewise, complex creatures, such as humans, must have been created by the Creator.  To me, it suggests the opposite.  Many creatures have clock-like functions built in, e.g. circadian rhythms, jet lag, etc., which are more biological and less mechanical in our way of categorizing,  For some reason, two unconnected examples also have popped into my head, sleep and mosquitos.

     First, sleep.  Why would the watchmaker create sleep and dreams, particularly rapid eye movement (REM) sleep which occurs during dreaming? 

     It is not difficult to understand how our brains, which require a great deal of energy to operate, might need time to rest.  Researchers suggest that up to 75% of an infant's energy goes toward brain development.  Infants sleep a lot.

     Apparently, dreaming aids in this rejuvenation.  Also, during REM sleep, people are known to often experience brief, temporary paralysis.  The temporary paralysis could be a mechanism to protect the dreamer from sudden jerking movements, which could endanger the individual, for example, by falling out of a tree or alerting a predator. 

     One can see how these traits could develop through evolution, but it makes little sense for a god to create them.

     When we build robots, we would be irrational to require that they sleep one-third of their existence.  There are better ways to prevent overload: add a little lubricant, install a fan.  This would apply to any machine: a dishwasher, a vehicle, a watch.  And it would be more irrational to add in dreaming, and paralysis while dreaming.

     Perhaps this god solves this by watching over us while we are sleeping.  But I wonder why a god with billions of times greater knowledge and power than us would build creatures with so many built-in quirks.  There are seven billion of us, plus billions more species just on one planet out of trillions of planets.  What rational god would create that nightmare of oversight.  In light of the billions of species that have gone extinct (95%?), it doesn't seem likely.  "He watches over the sparrow . . .", until he doesn't.

     Second, mosquitos.  Kurt Vonnegut, in one of his novels, wondered why god created the rattlesnake, a creature with a baby rattle on one end and two hypodermic syringes filled with deadly poison on the other.  What kind of a god would create that?  My favorite cruel creation is a species of mosquito that lays its eggs inside the larvae of a fly.  The eggs hatch as the larvae grows, providing an immediate food source.  In addition, the baby mosquitos eat around the vital organs, thus keeping their food supply fresher longer.  What kind of monstrous god would create that?  Definitely not the kind that I'd enjoy worshipping for eternity.

     So, my conclusion is: the more complexity, the less divinity.

 

- PeteBarkett.blogspot.com

1/18/21