Paley's Argument For The Existence Of God

The philosophy of religion is and always has been a very interesting topic. The existence of God has been debated since the beginning of history and is still debated to this day. Many very influential people have shared their thoughts and arguments to this popular debate. Of these influential thinkers are William Paley and Roger White. Paley, a British thinker living in the late 1700s, believed since that the world appeared to be “created” then it must have been created by a higher power. Many people thought and still think that this argument is valid. White on the other hand, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a different view on theism. He states that since our world is life permitting, there must be a higher

Paley presents his argument by using an analogy. In his paper titled “The Argument from Design”, he tells his readers to imagine a watch. He then says that since the watch has so many complex and interconnected components, that there is has to be someone who created it. This person would be a watchmaker. Paley then uses this same logic when thinking about nature. He basically says that there is no way that the earth could have been created without a creator. Therefore, there must be a “divine watchmaker” or a God. He compares eyeballs of humans to the complicated mechanisms within a watch. Paley simply could not believe that these “things” could just appear. In his example he refers to a number of “things”, such as the human eye. He said that the eye has such a purpose, and is designed so specifically that something must have created it. He believed that a higher power must have created these

While it is hard to dismiss Paley’s idea of a “divine creator”, the logic in White’s argument seems is stronger for a number of reasons. One being is that Paley believed that God created each individual thing separately. Using Darwin’s theory, which is accepted science in today’s word, this is disproved. Darwinism has proved that animals and plants have evolved and adapted over time through natural selection. This means when a living thing has a favorable trait, over time this trait will become standard. An example of this in nature is the opposable thumb on humans. This feature allows humans to easily grasp objects. Humans, who evolved from primates, gained this trait over time. Therefore, God did not specifically design humans like Paley claims he