William Paley
In his 1802 book titled Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearance of Nature, Anglican Priest and philosopher William Paley made the classic teleological “argument from design” in his famous Watchmaker analogy, which says:
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and asked how that stone came to be there; I might possibly answer that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it has lain there forever. Nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I have found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer, which I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there…. The watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and that some place or other, and artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction and designed its use…. Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.
Granted, rebuttals have been attempted in response to Paley’s argument for Intelligent Design, but the question is: can these counterarguments actually challenge a modernized version of Paley’s Watchmaker with any real success? It seems to me that all of these counterarguments have at least one major flaw–they assume existence itself.
Take, for example, Richard Dawkins’ proposal of a blind watchmaker. Dawkins is famous for his book The God Delusion, a world-wide bestseller of more than 2 million copies. Dawkins’ favorite argument in rebuttal to Paley’s Watchmaker analogy claims that a solution as complex as a creator God requires an even more complex creator to explain the Creator’s existence, because according to him, only a simple beginning could explain an origin for this complex universe.That rather muddled, irrational argument simply glosses over probability problems associated with the Big Bang and abiogenesis. Richard Dawkins is usually presented as a scientist and author who happens to be an atheist, but in reality, he’s an atheist who happens to be a biologist and a writer.
In that book, Dawkins suggests that any existential problem can be assumed to have been resolved because it “only had to happen once”, no matter how ridiculously improbable the event in question happened to be. The only way a person could make such a claim is by being blind to the science and logic of statistical probabilities.
Is there any chance that Dawkins might be right? Theoretically perhaps, but when logic and reason are fairly applied to existential problems, the less likely it seems that accidents, good luck, and random mutations have somehow managed to create an overwhelming illusion of design, where in reality exists a void of purpose.
Does assuming a blind watchmaker truly make any sense? Was the origin of life really and truly the product of unbelievably good luck? Is the remarkable diversity of life on planet Earth merely the result of billions of years and “descent with modification” via sexual reproduction?
Ironically, we may use our own eyes while seeking viable explanations for existence without purpose. We can carefully examine complex organs such as eyes, identifiable as such in an incredible diversity of form in a wide variety of creatures. Is there only one sequence in DNA that may be traced back to a single common ancestor, some sort of DNA blueprint for eyes that only needed to arrange itself once, and then modified arbitrarily as adapted to various types of organism? Or, have the dramatically different kinds of eyes we can observe in nature evolve after totally blind and eyeless ancestors had already formed separate branches on our evolutionary tree of life? Do we dare consider even the possibility that the “overwhelming illusion” of design might instead be the reality of the situation?
While we ponder these questions, here are some interesting tidbits of information about nature that are quite interesting, and relevant to know:
For example, the venomous box jellyfish has 24 different pairs of eyes, but only one pair behaves like human eyes, allowing this unique type of jellyfish to avoid obstacles as it swims along the ocean floor. Does this serve as any sort of legitimate evidence that humans and box jellyfish must have shared a common ancestor? I don’t think so. What about all the other types of jellyfish, that don’t have human-like eyes?
chiton photo by Kirt L. Onthank
Which brings us to the chiton…
Have you ever even heard of a chiton? No worries, me neither — until reading that scientists recently discovered this tiny sea mollusk has eyes made of calcium carbonate crystals.
That’s right – scientists discovered an animal that uses eyes formed out of rock to see.
If this can be considered “evidence” of anything, it seems to be a strong indicator that God has a really terrific sense of humor.
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