Here, we see a sped up time-lapsed snapshot succession view of the design and construction of a fibreglass vs a wooden yacht:
Here is another:
Now, let’s scale down to a canoe:
We thus see illustrated how . . .
design is intelligently directed configuration which makes advantageous, and ideally skilled and artistic, use of forces and materials in nature, economically, to achieve desired ends.
Now, let us follow Paley in his second step, in Ch 2 of his argument.
Suppose, that, in the course of its voyaging we were to notice that a particular yacht — having in it various stored plans, algorithms, assembler position- arm- effector devices, jigs, frames and devices etc, were to somehow construct another yacht of the same type.
That is, the yacht turned out to be a von Neumann kinematic self-replicator:
Would we now be dissuaded from our view that a Yacht is replete with signs that reliably point to its design? No.
As Paley pointed out, we might indeed infer that it is far more likely that the yacht we see has been part of the chain of self-replicating entities rather than being the direct product of observable external designers, but we would not surrender our design inference. Somewhere, behind the whole chain, would be a root-source of the contrivances, the apt functional organisation, the configuration to suitable ends. And indeed, the design of a self-replicating yacht is far more sophisticated than that of one without that additional capability.
Going further, suppose now that we were to see that the yacht did not merely copy itself but created a design family that gradually, across generations, adapted to various niches and specialisations in different zones across the world.
Would we now abandon our design inference?
Not at all, for such adaptability would be a further sign of the robustness of the design.
Of course, the living, self-replicating, metabolising cell . . .
is far more sophisticated and is a wonder of molecular nanotech that far exceeds our imagined self-replicating, adapting yacht.
It is adaptable, for example the neuron is an information-processing weighted sum gate:
So then, on what non question begging grounds would so many insist that such is a spontaneous, self creating entity? _________
Let us ponder where we have gone with origins science, why. END