mired a book more....
I could almost formerly have said it by heart." Later in this essay, we shall
see that Darwin paid Paley an ultimate debt of gratitude by inverting his former
mentor's system to construct his own particular and distinctive version of evolution.This
long tradition bore the name that Paley appropriated for the title of his book--Natural
Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected
from the Appearances of Nature. Natural Theology stakes the particular claim
that God's nature, as well as His being ("existence and attributes"
of Paley's title), can be inferred from the character of objects in the natural
world. (Most religious thought today either denies or downplays such a link and
does not attempt to validate the idea of divinity from the nature of material
objects.) Natural Theology presents 500 pages of diverse
arguments for God's existence, personality, natural attributes, unity, and goodness
(in this explicit order of Paley's chapters), all centered upon one primary theme,
endlessly hammered: God shows His creating hand in the good design of organisms
for their appointed styles of life (wings are optimal for flying, nest behavior
for raising offspring). Paley sets forth his theme, in the opening paragraphs
of the book, with one of the most famous metaphors in English writing. As the
scene opens, the good reverend is walking across a field. In
crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how
the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew
to the contrary, it had lain there forever. The stone, so rough
and formless, can teach us nothing about its origins. "But," Paley continues,
"suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how
the watch happened to be in that place." Now the answer must be different,
for the watch--by its twin properties of complexity and obvious contrivance
for a purpose--implies a watch-maker. Complexity and construction for use
cannot arise randomly or even from physical laws of nature (the laws may build
something complex, like the chemical structure of a crystal, but not something
evidently designed for a purpose, for natures laws are abstract and impersonal).
The watch must have been made on purpose, in order to keep time:
The inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker;
that there must have existed, at some time and in some place or other, an artificer
or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer;
who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. One
additional step completes the argument: Organisms are even more complex, and even
more evidently designed for their modes of life, than watches. If the watch implies
a watchmaker, then the better design of organisms requires a benevolent, creating
God. There cannot be a design without a designer; contrivance
without a contriver... The marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design
must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is
God. Paley's argument is scarcely immune from parody, especially
since the reverend wrote in such a colorful style. His need to attribute purpose
and benevolence to all aspects of our life in this vale of tears does recall his
near contemporary, Voltaire's immortal Dr. Pangloss. For example, Paley's earnest
resolution to the problem of pain parallels the punch line of an old and feeble
joke: "Why did the moron hit himself on the head with a hammer? Because it
felt so good when he stopped." (In fairness, Paley also presents the acceptable
argument that pain informs the body of danger.) Substituting the ills of his age
for the hammer of our joke, Paley writes: A man resting from
a fit of the stone or gout is, for the time, in possession of feelings which undisturbed
health cannot impart.... I am far from being sure, that a man is not a gainer
by suffering a moderate interruption of bodily case for a couple of hours out
of the four-and-twenty. Nonetheless, I believe that Paley's argument,
although quite unacceptable today, deserves our respect as a coherent and subtly
defended philosophy from an interesting past--a "fossil world view"
that stretches our mind as we seek to comprehend our own preferences by appreciating
the history of alternatives. Self-sustaining arguments are cheap; anyone with
half a brain and a reasonable turn of phrase should be able to set forth his own
prejudices. The test of a well-constructed defense lies in the identification
and disproof of alternatives. If contrary interpretations are fully listed, fairly
characterized, and adequately dismissed, then a system can win respect. I admire
Paley primarily for his treatment of alternatives to his favored argument.
Paley's central argument includes an assertion, that organisms are well designed
for definite purpose--and an inference, that good and purposeful design implies
a designer. We might attack the assertion itself, but the prevalence of good |