Watchmaker Analogy: Argument from Design

The watchmaker analogy was most famously formulated by William Paley. It is also called his teleological argument. The analogy attempts to demonstrate that since man-made objects are designed and have a certain complexity, that the complexity we see in the universe would entail design and therefore a designer.

So Paley argues that coming upon a stone in nature one would not think much of it, assuming it to have been there forever. But if one comes upon a watch on a beach one would instantly differentiate it from it's surrounding because it appears to have a specific design. Paley then concludes that "Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation" (Natural Theology 1802, by Paley)

A problem arises from this in that if you instantly recognize that the watch is different because it appears to have been designed but then claim that the rest of nature also has been designed, then how is it that you are drawing the distinction of design between them? It appears as if this is a self-contradiction. The way we are able to draw the distinction between the watch and the beach is that we have prior knowledge of what a watch is because we have them in our culture.

Another problem arises from claims that the watch is complex and that is how we recognize it. This has been popularized in recent religious movements to attempt to modify the educational system to teach intelligent design as a science. The claim we recognize the watch because of its complexity is actually misleading. We recognize the watch because of its simplicity. A watch is far less complex than any living organism or ecosystem (or other things in nature, like crystal caves and even snowflakes). It is also the geometry of the watch that sticks out. The watch uses straight lines, arcs, etc. whereas these are rarely found in nature.

There is also a problem in that the complexity of artifacts does not entail the necessity of a designer. One of the claims of Paley is that there is a high amount of adaption in the plants and animals in the world. Paley believed that this level of complexity in the environment required an intelligent designer. Charles Darwin directly refuted this with his theory of natural selection. Darwin demonstrated that small amounts of change over time with a natural selection mechanism will lead to animals and plants being adapted to their environments. This will give the illusion of creation that they are fine tuned by a designer, but in reality they are fine tuned because if they aren't they will die and any descendant will die also.

Another problem is that the analogy is faulty. A watch is not made by a single person, there are multiple people that lead to its creation. There are miners, gem cutters, glass cutter, etc. If we are to actually use the analogy correctly, it is not that there is a designer, but multiple designers. So if nature is to be analogous to the watch, we would have to conclude that there is not one designer of the universe, but multiple designers of the universe. So the attempt to posit the designer as god would not be supported, but a polytheistic view would be more accurate.

There is still yet another problem, in that this line of argumentation does not just stop at a designer(s) of the universe. there would have to be a designer(s) of those designer(s). And there would have to be a designer(s) of those, and so on ad infinitum. Therefore you either fall into an infinite regress of designers designing other designers, or you arbitrarily stop it at a certain point.