William Paley's rather famous teleological "Watchmaker" argument advocating Intelligent Design goes something like this: [S]uppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think … that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for [a] stone [that happened to be lying on the ground]?… For this reason, and for no other; namely, that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it (Paley 1867, 1). Okay, it goes exactly like that...so what's the problem with the argument? An obvious one. But Paley's mistake was both simple, and an easy one to make. He assumed the possibility of an eternal universe, where a rock could have conceivably existed forever. We now believe that we cannot assume the stone was always there, any more than we can assume the watch always existed. In his defense, insufficient scientific evidence existed during his lifetime, for William Paley to assume that the universe once had a beginning and the stone could not have always been there. However, contemporary scientific evidence called "red shift" and "cosmic background radiation" allows modern day scientists to assure us with some degree of certainty that … [Read more...]