Talk:Clockmaker hypothesis

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Contents 1 Watchmaker instead of clockmaker? 2 Requested move 2.1 Voting 2.2 Discussion 2.3 Result 3 Reverting move, and here's why 4 Material moved to talk 5 why is this in Category:Pseudoscience ? 6 Evolution example 7 Is this topic noteworthy?

[edit] Watchmaker instead of clockmaker?

Isn't the common term "watchmaker", not clockmaker? >:\ Sherurcij 09:16, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

I've heard both, but certainly watchmaker more than clockmaker. Google gets 739 hits for "Watchmaker hypothesis" and 80 for "Clockmaker hypothesis." I'm going to list it on WP:RM and see what happens. Blackcap (talk) 21:21, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Is this the same as, or part of, the watchmaker analogy? If so, it should be probably be merged into the much more comprehensive (and older) article there. Vclaw 22:23, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Little bit different, from what I can tell. WM analogy says that the world's too complex to not have a God, CM hypothesis says that God created the world and then stepped aside. Not sure if they're related at all. Blackcap (talk) 22:26, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Due to Wikipedia:Use common names. This is the one I've heard more, and Google has too, apparently (with 739 hits for "Watchmaker hypothesis" and 80 for "Clockmaker hypothesis"). Blackcap (talk) 21:29, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Voting

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

1. Support, clearly. ^N_i^g_h^t_s^t_a^l_lⁱ_oⁿ ✉ 22:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
2. Belated nom support. Blackcap (talk) 01:23, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
3. Support, that Sherurcij kid seems to know what he's talking about Sherurcij ^{(talk) (bounties)} 20:28, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

[edit] Result

Moved as requested. WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 22:11, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting move, and here's why

m:Polls are evil.

A bit more digging shows that the words "watchmaker hypothesis" are almost exclusively found in the phrase "Blind watchmaker hypothesis" (512 hits for this exact wording, and 224,000 for "blind watchmaker" alone). The blind watchmaker hypothesis, which is completely different from the Clockmaker hypothesis (named after the book The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, it uses evolutionary arguments to deny the watchmaker argument, which is also subtly different to this hypothesis: the "watchmaker" makes life, the "clockmaker" makes the universe). If these occurences are eliminated, the following Google results are found:

• "watchmaker hypothesis" -blind; 65 results
• "clockmaker hypothesis" -blind; 81 results

In addition, more reading of the Google hits also reveals that the words "watchmaker hypothesis" are almost always used to mean the argument of the watchmaker analogy, which is, as stated above, different from what this article is about.

Therefore, by the "use common names" rule, not only should the original name for this article be restored, but also the term "watchmaker hypothesis" should be pointed to the watchmaker analogy article. -- The Anome 12:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Material moved to talk

I've moved the following from the article to here:

In ancient times, God(s) were thought to control the weather, crops, the motion of the planets, etc - essentially, everything unexplained. As time has passed and more and more knowledge has been amassed, mechanisms underlying these phenomina have been eludicated; the remit of the Deity corrispondingly receeded.

Gods no longer hurled lightning from the skies; it became known that electrons were responsible. The appearance of crucifixtion-like wounds on the hands of deeply religious schoolchildren became understood as psychosomatic wounding, not a miraculous proof. Newtonion physics explained the motion of the planets and the forces of physics around us in day to day life; God was no longer thought responsible for keeping the Universe ticking over.

Finally, with the modern advent of quantum physics and a solid theory for the creation of the Universe, the remit of the Diety has receeded to the creation of the Big Bang; everything else is broadly understood to be a part of the natural functioning of the Universe.

In fact, theory states that there is no space-time prior to the Big Bang, and so the idea that a Diety created the Big Bang is actually a representation of a failure of comprehension of theory.

The passage has a POV that denies the theory of the creation of the universe by God. Now, this may or may not be true; but directly taking a position on this goes against Wikipedia's NPOV policy. In addition, this claim is strictly outside of the remit of naturalistic science, since it cannot be either proved or falsified by experiment. However, the remarks about the recession of the role of divine intervention over religious history are valid (see God of the gaps); can you re-insert them without an anti-religious POV, please? (and also fix the spelling of "recede", please) -- The Anome 13:43, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] why is this in Category:Pseudoscience ?

I'd like to remove this from Category:Pseudoscience, as far as I can tell, there is no pseudoscience involved in this article. Any objections? linas 22:23, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

That seems prudent. It doesn't appear to make a claim to scienceosity, so being unfalsifiable doesn't make it pseudoscience (not that falsifiability should really be the WP criterion for pseudoscience anyway)--ragesoss 23:47, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I move it to Category:Philosophy of science which seems far more appropriate. linas 02:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Evolution example

I think that natural selection is not what the Clockmaker might have pre-ordained so evolution would work. Natural selection is as simple as "if it works, it thrives; if it doesn't, it fades away" (almost a tautology), so it doesn't even take a law for it to work. What might have been set up are "replicability" (an organism/molecule might spawn another, similar, organism/molecule) and mutation (the new enitity may be slightly different from its parent or change before replicating) and both are ultimately determined by fundamental physical laws, which is where the Clockmaker/God of the gaps could have intervened. Any thoughts/suggestions to improve the example? --Arielco 03:18, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

"if it works, it thrives; if it doesn't, it fades away" is a physical law, not a tautology. There have certainly been sci-fi books written about what happens if this law is broken. In physics, this law is one of the laws of thermodynamics .. actually, its a localized breakdown of the second law of thermodynamics, which says "everything fades away". The breakdown of this law is of some interest in quantum mechanics these days. linas 15:38, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is this topic noteworthy?

Only 128 unique hits on Google, and this article is a completely unreferenced stub with no assertion of notability. Could someone clear up whether this topic is actually even noteworthy enough for an article, by Wikipedia standards..? -Silence 03:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)