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Paley's Intelligent Design Argument

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In his 1802 work Natural Theology, William Paley attempts to logically prove that God exists and created the universe, known the Intelligent Design argument (Himma). In this argument, he states that the universe is like a watch in three relevant aspects, complexity, regularity, and purpose. Because of this, he says, we know that a watch has a creator, therefore the universe must also have a creator. However, I believe that this argument is flawed because I think the analogy does not work on two of these counts, regularity, and purpose. I also believe that Paley uses circular logic to explain his definition of purpose.
Paley argues for the existence of God by using an argument through analogy, comparing the universe to a watch. He says that …show more content…

In fact, the concept of entropy describes the fact that the universe is actually more prone of disorder and irregularity and order and regularity (Entropy). I also believe that he is incorrect about the universe having purpose. While some objects have an apparent purpose, such as wings made to fly, sharp teeth made to hunt, etc., most living and nonliving things do not have a clear purpose. Birds do not have a clear purpose, jaguars do not have a clear purpose, humans do not have a clear purpose. The universe itself does not have a clear purpose. Paley’s idea that both the universe and the watch have purpose is flawed, because while the watch was made to tell time, Paley’s concept of a universal purpose came from the Bible, which was written on the assumption that God exists. Therefore, it cannot be used to prove Paley’s point about purpose. It also does not make sense for some things to be made part of the universe, such as the blind spot in an eye, or vestigial structures like a tailbone in humans or hip bones in whales. These things do not have a purpose, and can even be damaging to the individual. Finally, I believe that the aspects Paley observed between the universe and the watch can be explained by natural selection and evolution. Of course, Paley would not have known about this at the time of writing his paper, which is why he doesn’t take it into

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William Paley was a well known theologian in the 19th century responsible for surmising the existence of “an intelligent creator by design.” His argument, built up to and stated on page 29, Chapter III, paragraph 1 in sentence 1 is as follows: “for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature”. Before diving into the meaning behind this, there are terms to be defined. By contrivance, Paley means artificiality, or to have been made. A watch, as easy as it is to grasp, is simply the mechanism on your wrist that tells you the time of day.

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He points out that the Bible cannot be taken literally because sometimes it can be interpreted in different ways. The Bible was written for the common people and illiterate to understand, and to prove his point he mentions that the Bible gives God a body like ours while theologies believe God has no such features. He moves to his main point about who has the authority to determine what is true and untrue. He argues that what is scientifically proven will to understand the Bible true meaning.

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Hambourger’s argument from design argues for the existence of god based on the perceived evidence of deliberate design in the world/universe. To further elaborate on the concepts he uses, Hambourger uses three main concepts; determinism, chance, and mere hap. Hambourger’s argument from design claims that though many things occur by chance, there are some things which we cannot simply accept to have happened by chance, and must therefore have some common explanation in the causal chain of events connecting the two events. For instance the universe is created by many states of affairs coming together. If some slight changes had occurred, the end result could have been vastly different than it currently is.

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Francis Schaeffer and James W. Sire present a views of the universe that reflects judeo-scripture in their works. They describe the ideas that God created the universe to be good, and that God continues to oversee and Shepard all that lies within it. God did not simply form the earth with aimless intentions. He had an eternal detailed plan for all He created and would create, and all that He made had a good and holy purpose. In Genesis in Space and Time, Schaeffer conveys it as, “A doxology of all creation-everything glorifying God on its own level” (56).

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Albert Einstein asserts that the mystery of the world is so complex that it almost seems as a gift that humans are able to understand it so accurately. “The appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve” (244). The gifts that we have on this earth, such as the laws of physics, makes life for all beings a lot more simple because there are so many ways of understanding life in a more thorough, less complicated fashion. Physicist Eugene Wigner claims, “In the case of the crossword, it would never occur to us to suppose that the words just happened to fall into a consistent interlocking pattern by accident…” (244). With this metaphor we are taught that things fall into natural order.

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In the totality of his essay, Carr provides evidence to support his positon, like of the University College London study on database user behaviour to illustrate that web users skim, rather than closely read online articles. Providing evidence, and making connections is characteristic of insight and we can see this in Carr’s essay. Instead, Lightman provides tentative solutions, with hypothetical reasoning, “If some cosmic intelligence created the universe, life would seem to have been only an afterthought. And if life emerges by random processes, vast amounts of lifeless material are needed for each particle of life. Such numbers cannot help but bear upon the question of our significance in the universe” (Lightman 507).

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I have to admit that Zimmerman’s talk was hard at times for me to comprehend. I would love feedback if I understood his divine argument wrong, because I have had a few discussions about it with my peers and many took away different views from his final argument for a divine being, and in this paper I will explain how I understood his final argument. To come upon the divine being of God, he had to eliminate all the other contingent and necessary options believed by other philosophers and scientists through reasoning. He explained how it wasn’t possible for their to be no answer for the cosmos, nor were any of the contingent explanations of science, philosophy, or an infinite past made any sense.

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The Teleological Argument In the Theological Argument, Premise one says that ‘The world, and every part of it, is like a machine, in that its parts are adjusted to each other, with means adapted to ends’. Paley explains how finding a mechanical watch on the ground is like understanding the world (Paley, 56). The watch displays

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Huygens said, “suppose nobody will deny but there’s somewhat more of contrivance, somewhat more of a miracle in the production and growth of plants and animals than in lifeless heaps of inanimate bodies … For the finger of God, and the wisdom of divine providence is in them much more clearly manifested than in the other” (Tyson, Eil DeGrasse). Scientist Huygens argument clearly shows that science depends on religion to understand some concepts. It indicates that they believe that God is the creator of the living organisms. Additionally, to understand their existence it means seeking knowledge from the Scripture

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William Paley’s argument from design starts off with a man seeing a watch on the side of the road. The argument is whether or not someone designed the watch, or if the watch randomly just showed up there itself by random chance. He makes an analogy of watches and humans. He says that since there is a designer that made the watch, there must be a designer that made us humans. The reason that he compares watches to humans is that is because they are both complex and have parts that work very well together.

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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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Philosopher David Hume’s argument against William Paley’s addresses the most common criticism in why Paley is wrong. Hume’s points out two major flaws in Paley’s argument that there is a creator of the universe. The first argument is the lack of evidence, in which he states that the existence of such a creator can only be proved through the a pattern of observation, which there is no pattern for. This addresses how without any form of pattern through observation that it is difficult to make a correlation between the universe and its designer (Speaks). Secondly he argumes that there are limitations to the design argument that Paley does not address.

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He says that the universe is the most amazing achievement imaginable. The merit or value of an achievement is the product of its intrinsic quality and ability of its creator. If we think about God who has no hands even he created universe then

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