Susceptible By Design

They walked leisurely along, the sand beneath their feet still wet and firm from the recent high tide, the sun hanging low in the sky leaving a golden, glittering path out to sea toward the horizon. A strong breeze suddenly slapped them in their faces and they instinctively turned away, though no sand was kicked up. They both noticed, simultaneously, the flicker of light reflected from something silver resting on a large rock a few meters away. They looked at each other, and then started toward it.

The taller one picked it up and examined it. "A beautiful pocketwatch, it is," he said. "Still working, too. What time is it according to yours?"

"Ten past five."

"Hmm... exactly three hours behind."

The shorter man turned back to face the setting sun. "I read once that just as the watch must have had a watchmaker, the universe itself, being infinitely more complex, must have had a designer."

"So then, design is top-down. Someone created the watch, and something created that someone... that's it then?"

"Basically, yes."

The taller man slipped the watch into his jacket's breast pocket. "I guess that leaves the obvious question of who created the something that created the someone who created the watch."

"I suppose..."

"Well then, it never ends, does it?"

"I'll tell you what I think; the universe created that watch, and I don't need to know about, nor do I care about, what created the universe."

The taller man furrowed his brow. "I'm trying to get my head around what you're saying..."

"Well, to put it simply, over the countless years following the creation of the universe, and that act of creation is of no concern to me as I've said, simple forces at work have brought about the complexity in the universe that we see today, one aspect of that complexity being the product of evolution we know as homo sapiens, who eventually came to create things, like watches."

"And, here we are."

"Yes. Here we are."

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