The Panda's Black Box: Opening up the Intelligent Design Controversy

2 The Argument from Design

The Argument from Design michael ruse 2 In 1802, opening his book Natural Theology with one of the most famous passages in the history of philosophy, Archdeacon William Paley wrote: 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 for ever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But supposing I had 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 any thing I knew the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone; why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, namely, that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive—what we could not discover in the stone—that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been shaped different from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the ma- chine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.1 This is the opening move to the well-known Argument from Design (also known as the Teleological Argument) for the existence of a god, or rather of the Christian God. A watch implies a watchmaker . Likewise, the adaptations of the living world imply an adaptation maker, a deity. You cannot argue otherwise without falling into absurdity. “This is atheism; for 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 and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.”2 So influential and widely read was Paley that his book was part of the final examinations at the University of Cambridge until after the First World War. Yet even as he wrote, the argument was under heavy attack and this continued through the nineteenth century. The great theologian John Henry Newman, who began his life as an evangelical Anglican, moving through the High Church and then on to Rome, and eventually a cardinal’s hat, wrote in 1870 (twenty-five years after he converted), in correspondence about his seminal philosophical work A Grammar of Assent: “I have not insisted on the argument from design, because I am writing for the 19th century, by which, as represented by its philosophers, design is not admitted as proved. And to tell the truth, though I should not wish to preach on the subject, for 40 years I have been unable to see the logical force of the argument myself. I believe in design because I believe in God; not in a God because I see design.” He continued: “Design teaches me power, skill and goodness—not sanctity, not mercy, not a future judgment, which three are of the essence of religion.”3 Not all agree with Newman. Indeed today the Argument from Design is as popular as ever, especially in American evangelical circles . So, because the best way to understand the present is always by looking to the past, let us go back to the earliest days of the argument , and follow its fortunes through to the twenty-first century. I The Argument from Design 19 am not so much concerned here to criticize today’s supporters of the argument, as to put their enthusiasm into context and warn that one should realize that however new things may now seem, they have a long and relevant history. the greeks Plato gives the first explicit discussion of the argument in his great dialogue (the Phaedo) centered on the death of Socrates. Asked why he does not fear death, the old man replies that either it is dreamless sleep or a...