What does a bad watch imply?

Religion
1

You find a watch in the sand, clean it up, and take a good look at it.

You know what a good watch looks like, and you know what a watch that doesn’t work - or doesn’t work very well, looks like.

And this watch doesn’t look right. It has pieces that don’t mesh together well. Some are too thin, some too thick.

You know your watches and this watch couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes before a spring would go, “boing.”

The watch didn’t put itself together. It was built.

What’s your opinion be of the watchmaker?

2

Maybe he had an awful teacher…

1 Like
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Where do the notions of “good” or “bad” or “perfection” come from?

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Did this watchmaker also create time? Then how is time itself doing?

5

Everyone’s avoiding the analogy…I wonder why? :grinning:

You look at a poorly designed watch with ill-fitting parts and you see a bad watchmaker. Not the watch’s fault the designer made it poorly.

Same with the earth and all the people suffering … and you think…this world was created by a pretty poor world-creator if this is the end result of his creation

6

I was wondering where you were going with that.

And your subsequent explanation wasn’t the guess I had in mind. :man_shrugging:

7

Love analogies! However, they always fail at some point.

The question is whether we want a physical existence and all the imperfection that entails, or do we wish to forego a physical existence and opt only for the spiritual one where we can avoid the physical catastrophes?

I don’t think anyone should have invented games of any kind! People always lose and they feel bad. No games, no losers. Wow! We can make the world better by simply eliminating games. What say you? :slight_smile:

8

Because it’s a flawed analogy. There is no direct correlation between mechanical machines and biological life for one. The so-called design argument is to an extent based on the idea of empiricism, which assumes that the existence of God can be proven. There are actually many theists who reject the argument from design. Also the argument you present has fundamental presuppositions on notions of “good” “bad” “perfection”. Are these notions something real and absolute or are they arbitrary constructs of human evolution. So if one states that they are merely arbitrary then I will simply toss out the argument as merely arbitrary as well.

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I don’t understand why other people failed to see what I was driving at. I admit I thought they did and just didn’t want to address it.

I thought the analogy was obvious.

Isn’t that the religious’ person’s analogy for why there must be a God - that a watch implies their must be a watchmaker?

So if you’ve got a flawed watch…obviously it was made by a flawed watchmaker.

Sublety never works. Lesson learned!

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They are real and absolute.

Two gears that mesh together are good. They work.

Two gears that don’t mesh together are bad. They don’t work.

Perfection is where everything works together as it has been designed to do, because all the individual gears and pieces are made to an exact tolerance by someone skilled at their craft.

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Clearly God is outsourcing labor to China.

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That’s not what perfection is.

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I already addressed that in my previous post. I even noted that there are even theists who reject the design argument.

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What makes you think this is his end result?

A better comparison would be if we were one atom on one of the gears on the watch…

You are looking at the entire world and finding fault with one grain of sand and proclaiming it a failure…

Looking at all of creation… all the billions of galaxies each with billions of stars… you are judging it all based on the result of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of it…

15

According to evangelicals, God created human beings to give glory to Him.

That’s what He wanted from the get go.

And yet what do we have in the world today. Five major religions, fundamentalists of at least one religion who go about cutting off the heads of others, lots of people who’ve never heard of God, people starving, people suffering, etc. etc.

A good watchmaker creates a good watch, a competent Creator creates a world that does what he wants it to do…

And yet here we are…

Which supports my theory that what God wanted was a soap opera to watch for all time. :grinning:

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Again…you have choices to make. The Lord spells out what He considers to be the right path but in His creation, you have a spherical choice. It’s all up to you to choose which way you choose to go and this time frame is your watch.

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See - that was an interpretation of the analogy that had not occurred to me.

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Link?

I think you’ll find most evangelicals agreeing that God doesn’t need anyone’s praise or glory or worship or anything else.

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I’m sure He doesn’t need it… but doesn’t He want it?

Isn’t that what goes on through the whole Old Testament - worship me or else?

I’ve been watching the videos of a guy named Todd Friel who is an evangelist with a radio program - he said that… so I admit I assumed all evangelicals felt the same way.

If God doesn’t want humans to glorify him, what does he want?

The video below is also where he says that God has pre-ordained everything. (Meaning - to me - that no one should be blamed for everything, because God makes it all happen, using everyone as “instruments” to bring about what he wants. People have no free will - what they’re gonna do God has chosen for them already.)

“The intention of this universe is to bring God glory.”

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Nope.

Unless you choose to see it that way.

The entirety of the Old Testament is a giant foreshadowing and prophesy of Jesus, and the Covenant that He fulfilled.