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Paley Watchmaker Argument Summary

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Weaknesses of the Argument Paley gives the example of the watch being complex, so it must have a creator. Things can be complex, without having a designer, for example a snowflake. If we were created by an intelligent designer, then why are we not perfect? If God created us, then why do babies die young? Why do natural disasters kill millions and millions of people? God is meant to be omniscient and benevolent, yet why does he let these atrocities take place. Even if there was an intelligent designer that created us and our universe, what evidence is there to show that it’s God. Based on past experience we know that a watch will have been designed by a human, however we have no past experiences of a universe being created by an intelligent designer. Even though it is extremely unlikely that a watch could have been created by random chance, it is still not impossible; there is still the slightest chance that this could happen. …show more content…

Paley simply responds to this by saying that something doesn’t have to perfect to show that there was a designer. Another problem with this argument is that things in a watch (or a universe) contain different parts that look like they have no function, so these parts are somewhat proof that he universe wasn’t designed. Paley replies to this by saying that just because we do not know the function of something it doesn’t mean that it has no function, Paley looks at different parts of the watch (or universe) and from this he decides that it must have been

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The blind watch maker analogy that was presented is brilliant. Creationists, use their own version of the watchmaker argument saying if you were walking down a beach and you found a watch you could assume there was a designer. But when it comes to talking about existence, physical reality, and life, It’s a little different. The analogy at first glance seems to work but then you realize that even metaphorically speaking it’s an equivocation fallacy.

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He also refers to the cosmological argument to show that God is an all-powerful being who created the universe out of nothing. Furthermore, he claims that suffering in the world is moral in the sense that suffering inflicted on innocents is genuinely evil. Without a God, there would be no objective morals, thus, evil proves God’s existence, as things would not be considered good or evil without a God (Craig, p. 126). In conclusion, evil proves God’s existence and thus the question as to why God permits evil does not work to disprove His existence.

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In this argument we already assumed that there may be possibility that God exist and finally we reached where we started. So this argument does not give us the exact information about existence of God. There are many objections on this argument but still it is a powerful argument. In my opinion, this argument is not much satisfactory. It describes that existence is greater than imagination.

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