You: When you say that two or more things are cooperating, you are saying that they are actively working to reach a particular goal or goals. This implies that the parts of the system know what the goal is. If they do not know what the goal is, then they cannot be working toward it. In this sense, only thinking things can cooperate.

Aaron: How can you say that the parts of a watch are not cooperating? As I said before, removing one would disrupt the whole system.

You: The parts of a watch are doing nothing more than obeying natural laws of motion. Unless we know that someone put them into that motion, we cannot prove that they were designed.

Imagine that you live in a house at the base of a steep hill. If a boulder rolls down the hill and hits your house, you might imagine either that it was jarred loose by some natural process, erosion for instance, or that it was pushed toward your house by a malicious person. In one case the boulder is acting naturally, in the other it is part of a plan, but you cannot tell that the boulder is or is not part of a plan by examining its actions because it is merely obeying physical laws.

Your watch example is contrived because we all know that a watch is something that has to be designed. What you are tying to prove is that living things must also be designed, but you cannot. They might be the end result of a natural process, just like your smashed house would be. In order to prove that life is necessarily the product of design, you will need to prove that it could not exist without a designer.

Aaron: Fair enough.