Summary Of Paley's Argument From Design

The argument from design, or teleological argument, is an argument that states everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in it, and if the world was ever so little different we could not manage to live in it” (Philosophy 57-58). In 1802 William Paley’s introduced his own argument where he compared the complexity of living things to the complexity of a watch. Just as a watch would not be able to exist without a watchmaker, Paley argues living thing would not be able to exist without an intelligent designer. More than a century later Bertand Russell delivered an argument in which he used Darwin’s Natural Selection theory to argue against the argument from design. Russell argued that “living things have adapted to their …show more content…
First, it performs a type of function that an intelligent being would perceive as valuable; the watch is able to perform the function of keeping time which is a job that an intelligent being would see has value. Secondly, the watch would not be able to perform it’s function if the parts were differently sized or arranged; the ability of the watch to keep time depends on numerous factors such as being the precise shape and the arrangement of these parts suggests that the watch was designed by some intelligent designer who designed precisely to perform these tasks. Using the analogy of a watch, Paley argues that the creation of the world happened just like a watch would. Since it can be concluded that the world posses much complexity in relation to its function and all the parts that go into its design, there must be an intelligent designer who created it and this is whom we know as …show more content…
This person would then be able to come to the conclusion to know that it was not possible to have sprung up by chance. Just like the watch, the world is the same way. Russell’s argument does not explain this however. It simply explains why the living organisms are not that of a design. His argument also fails to take into account that it is possible for a design in an object to go unrecognized. There’s a possibly that there was a design present for natural selection to take place among biological species however it was not needed until deemed necessary. Paley would argue like there is in a watch, there many parts that may go unnoticed for a long period of time. Nonetheless this does not mean they are not important and are not apart of the design. We may only begin to see their importance when the time is