There is something deeply perverse and idiotic about the whole "it's complext and so it must be created argument".  I mean, frankly, if I were God creating me, I would not create - as in, start from scratch - something so complex as a human body.  After all, I would be God.  Instead of the complex mechanism of the eye, I have a single cell serving as the retina, with a few backups, just in case, that could see then entire spectrum.  Why not?  As God, I could make one cell do the job of a billion just as easily.  And why the myriads of synaptic pathways and the cross-over nerves and the re-imaging of the world in the brain as it is done by our imperfect bodies?  One cell to receive light and image, one to make memory connections.  With a single nerve cell connecting the two.

And I could go on, and on and on and on.  The problem of the watch analogy is that humans are not omnipotent, and so we have to get things done in a complicated way.  But God?  If we were creatures of God, we would all be single cell amoeba who could, with our single cell, do everything and anything we want.  The very complexity of our design belies creation by an OMNIPOTENT being, and suggests the kind of trial and error that went into the clock used in the determination of longtitudes: a bit of gold here, a bit of copper there, some jewels on this side, some crystal on that, and stabilisers and whatnot ... God would have created a sundial that gave you the time, the latitude and the longitute, and did a belly dance, in one go.

icarusr, the watch analogy is indeed one of the most infuriating ideas in modern life. If you found a watch in the desert, you would know that a _person_ had created it. But for all we know, God doesn't tell time with watches. For all we know, the erosion of stone into sand, and the eventual compression of sand back into stone, is how God tells time, in which case it would be the desert, not the watch, that would actually be the designed system. The thing is, humans by definition lack the insight necessary to identify which is the evidence of design and which is not, since we have no way of knowing how God would approach any given design challenge.

What would an ant think of that watch in the desert? Would it even be capable of comprehending the complexity of the mechanism, or the underlying elegance of the problem the mechanism is designed to solve? Or would the ant deny the theory of chronology, because the ant's limited idea of complexity ends with balls of chewed leaf held together with aphid poop?

But the problems are deeper than that. To say that sufficiently complex natural systems cannot evolve is to limit God's creative powers. Which is a form of blasphemy. We know that evolution happens; we can observe it in nature. We know that the evolutionary process can in fact create new species, since we humans use exactly the same mechanisms as those posited in natural selection to create new species of plants and animals for domestic exploitation. So the creationists are actually saying that God cannot do what humans can.

The only reason to repeat the blasphemy that God cannot cause, say, eyeballs to evolve without a direct act of creation but humans can bring into being, say, new species of rice with mammalian genes, is because the words in a book say so. But this gets us to a further problem with the creationist's stance: It is idolatrous, and thus a form of God-denial. If God created the world, no matter what methods he used to do it, then the world itself is his handiwork and the physical manifestation of his creative being. If words written by men in a book contradict evidence of his creativity observed in the world, then the book is to that extent an inaccurate description of God's creative endeavor. To dismiss the observed evidence because the book contradicts it is to replace worship of the God with worship of a false, man-made image of a god. When thusly abused, the Bible itself functions as a golden calf leading people away from the proper worship of God.

Anyway, a challenge to issue the next time you're in an argument with a creationist: Ask them to cite biblical verses that allow them to accept the theory of gravity. If they really know their apologetics, they will cite a couple of chapters of Job, but most will not. Meanwhile, numerous references to the sun's motion around the earth -- you can cite Psalm 113 -- flatly contradict gravitational theory, and the twin stories of material creation in Genesis leave no room for gravitation. In fact, in Genesis, God creates the heavens by separating darkness from light and by separating the water below from the water above. The theory of gravity proposes that the heavens are instead governed by a fundamentally attractive force with no observable role for divine agency, making it manifestly contrary to the biblical description of creation.

Mr. Zimmermann, with all due respect, can you tell me why I should take your post seriously when you show no interest in differentiating between two different schools of thought on the matter? If you don't fully understand the differences between creationism and intelligent design, that's okay -- for a long time I didn't either. But you could at least try researching the topic.

Its all one giant absence of evidence fallacy. The best response I've found is to challenge them to prove that it is more likely Yahweh was the intelligent designer than aliens.

Interesting points, Icarusr & Rhubarbs - and you're not far from the mark with the gravity analogy:  www.theonion.com/.../39512

GinaRenee: Care to tell us the differences between creationism and "intelligent design", one that does not put ID to the Rhubarbs analysis - with which I agree, whether or not I believe in God - and one that does not result in the cthulhu2008 conundrum?

As I mentioned, if anything, I find the complexity of our make and model, so to speak, the result of a weak, unimaginative, unintelligent and less-than omnipotent "design".  As one example, I give the simple result of the build-up of excess gas in my digestive tract when I eat apples or onions.  I'm sorry, but what kind of "intelligence" comes up with a design flaw so basic?  Why not come up with a "methane gas processing" unit in my anus to convert the said build-up into energy and good clean H2O, instead of the existing, socially limiting and quite unpleasant (even to me) rear-end exhalation?

I mean, just think about: a minor variation in the universal constant, and we would not exist.  Quarks would not capture quarks, protons and electrons would crash into one another, photons would not carry light, and for all we know, gravity would not exist.  This is not the mark of a "highly balanced" order, but a highly fragile and accidental one.  A highly balanced one created by the Omnipotent God would have a universal constant, if at all, with a variation measured not in nano-fractions but in mega-deviations.  

As I said, I see a watch, and I say "Egads, you had to go through all that trouble to tell time?"

Adaglas - thanks for the Onion link ;-).