Watches
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
A watch is a relatively complex device designed to seculate measured bursts of the imaginary dimension we call "time" and thus prevent humans all over the world getting splitting headaches trying to work out what time it is. A watch usually consists of a leather strap supporting a round dial on which are displayed 12 hours. Two "hands" point out from the center: the little hand which points to what hour it is and the little hand which tells which minute in the corresponding hour has been reached. The watches' electronic counterpart, the "digital watch", is basically fundamental evidence of mankind's basic laziness, i.e, it is exactly the same as a normal watch only you don't actually have to think. The watch was also used in the much touted "Argument from Design", one of the most tried and true theories that are supposed to prove the existence of God.
The theory runs something like this.
You are walking in a desert (the exact location of the desert and the texture of it's sand is neither specified nor important, just any desert will do) (the time at which you are walking in this undetermined desert is also not mentioned) when you come acrosssomething lying in the sand (the sand has no preordained texture, as has been previously mentioned). It is a pocket watch. You pick it up an speculate on where it could have come from (presumably in this hypothetical argument you have been living in a hole for the last 500 years). Is it some weird kind of rock? No, you firmly state, observing it's intricately designed innards and smiling sagely to yourself. This thing's just too coordinated and exact to have come about by pure chance. It must logically have been designed by someone (bravo Holmes, however did you work that one out!). This example is then compared to the situation of the world and where it came from. The Universe (say the arguers) is far too intricately designed to be merely the product of chance. See how a bird's wings are perfectly suited to flying and a fishes' fins are perfectly suited to swimming. Surely there MUST have been a designer who created it all and that designer MUST have been God.
The philosophical effect of this argument is somewhat dampened by the fact that the human race and the earth they infest are just about the least perfectly designed things we have ever encountered in our sphere of knowledge which is, it must be said, mind-bogglingly minuscule and so it is generally discarded as a load of dingo's kidneys.
The theory runs something like this.
You are walking in a desert (the exact location of the desert and the texture of it's sand is neither specified nor important, just any desert will do) (the time at which you are walking in this undetermined desert is also not mentioned) when you come acrosssomething lying in the sand (the sand has no preordained texture, as has been previously mentioned). It is a pocket watch. You pick it up an speculate on where it could have come from (presumably in this hypothetical argument you have been living in a hole for the last 500 years). Is it some weird kind of rock? No, you firmly state, observing it's intricately designed innards and smiling sagely to yourself. This thing's just too coordinated and exact to have come about by pure chance. It must logically have been designed by someone (bravo Holmes, however did you work that one out!). This example is then compared to the situation of the world and where it came from. The Universe (say the arguers) is far too intricately designed to be merely the product of chance. See how a bird's wings are perfectly suited to flying and a fishes' fins are perfectly suited to swimming. Surely there MUST have been a designer who created it all and that designer MUST have been God.
The philosophical effect of this argument is somewhat dampened by the fact that the human race and the earth they infest are just about the least perfectly designed things we have ever encountered in our sphere of knowledge which is, it must be said, mind-bogglingly minuscule and so it is generally discarded as a load of dingo's kidneys.
