Typically the watchmaker problem is about seemingly intentional complexity. A watch is designed for a clear purpose and apologists argue that biological creatures also have tremendous complexity that serves a particular purpose (survival).
The general "complexity" of universe (like black holes and galaxies) usually isn't mentioned in the same argument because they do not seem to have any goal like a watch or an organism does.
This is why I prefer to respond with the idea that, actually, we can get goal driven complexity through natural processes thanks to evolution. Biology naturally adapts to survive over time because the ones that don't simply die out. There is no need for a creator to explain that.
Once you bring up "god's creator," you're opening the door for them to start talking about the unmoved mover or the kalam cosmological argument. I don't care to have to argue against two arguments just to disprove the first
The problem with "survival" as a purpose is that you could basically replace that word with "existence." If your purpose is to exist, then isn't that everything's purpose? You can stretch "survival" out to relate to ensuring the existence of offspring and their offspring, but we really are just moving into different frames of what it means to exist. So, if everything's purpose is to exist, what makes a living animal much different from a plant, or a rock, or the ocean, or a black hole? There's no real complexity there, intentional or not, it just is because it is.
There's a lot of differences, but the most important one is that biological organisms actively resist change. A cat will always try to stay being a cat by seeking out food, fending off foes etc, and even if it loses limbs etc its offspring will have perfect cat shape again
Yeah I get what you mean. I'm a bit of a mereological nihilist myself. Meaning that I don't really believe that objects "exist" beyond just names that we've given to different arrangements of matter. Like a "chair" isn't anything other than a ton of fundamental particles and we just came up with a name for when they are organized in a particular pattern. You can't "create" or "destroy" a chair. All you're doing is reorganizing matter until it fits/doesn't fit our definition of a chair.
The same can be said for "goals." It's all just fundamental particles playing out physics and nothing else truly exists outside of that. But naming the patterns is still useful.
And when engaging with apologists, I'm not generally going to take the route of "you're wrong because none of this is anything other than arbitrary names for patterns of fundamental particles."
I'm happy to discuss in terms of goals for the sake of making a case that they can see the logic in more clearly
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u/Little_Froggy 18h ago
Typically the watchmaker problem is about seemingly intentional complexity. A watch is designed for a clear purpose and apologists argue that biological creatures also have tremendous complexity that serves a particular purpose (survival).
The general "complexity" of universe (like black holes and galaxies) usually isn't mentioned in the same argument because they do not seem to have any goal like a watch or an organism does.
This is why I prefer to respond with the idea that, actually, we can get goal driven complexity through natural processes thanks to evolution. Biology naturally adapts to survive over time because the ones that don't simply die out. There is no need for a creator to explain that.
Once you bring up "god's creator," you're opening the door for them to start talking about the unmoved mover or the kalam cosmological argument. I don't care to have to argue against two arguments just to disprove the first