"You're walking down the beach one day and find a watch. You pick it up and hold it in your palm. Do you assume it evolved naturally or do you think "Mmm, must have been made by a watchmaker"? The latter, of course. The universe is a complex thing, just like the watch, and so too it must have had a creator."
There are three reasons why this is a bad argument for the existence of a god....
1.A watchmaker makes watches from metal and glass and paper and springs and all manner of material, all of which is pre-existing. God, on the other hand, is said to have created the universe from scratch. These are two very different type of creation. Bzzzz!, no cigar.
2.Watchmakers, as a rule, make watches. If you stroll a little further down the beach and find a nuclear reactor you might assume that it was not made by a mere watchmaker, but by a nuclear reactor maker. And so, the argument suggests that there are a great many creators, each responsible for creating a different thing. Bzzzz!, no cigar.
3.Why do we see the watch as being something that is not of nature? Obviously because, as an ordered entity, it stands out from the rest of random nature. Now, when we found the watch we commented that it stood out from nature because it was ordered yet we are trying to prove that there must be a god based on observed order. What the? Who? How? Whe...
