An Analysis of the Watchmaker Analogy by William Paley Essay

Argument from DesignIn The Watch and the Watchmaker, William Paley argues through analogy that since an intelligent designer must be assumed for the purpose-revealing watch, an intelligent Grand Designer may be inferred in explaining the purpose-revealing world. Both products, the world and watch, reveal an intricate and positive design thus, each has to have its own intelligent designer. Also, because the universe is like a watch, we can infer it has an intelligent designer by the fact that it may be proved to be mechanical through mathematical concepts. He begins his argument by asking the reader to imagine crossing a heath and pitching ones foot against a stone. If one were asked how the stone came to be there, it would not be absurd to suggest it had laid there forever. However, if a watch were found on the ground, it would be hardly acceptable to give the same answer as the stone. Paley continues by illustrating the precision and intricacies of the cogs and springs within a watch in relation to natural physical objects. In a watch several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, where the parts being together are in a particular formation, there must be reasons for such a placement, giving away its cause of existence. And given that the watch has a purpose, Paley argued that this obvious design would force one to conclude "the watch must have had a maker that there must have existed an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer". Perfection, like that in a watch, needs a creator because the coincidence or chance of being made without a creator is highly unlikely. The belief that a watchmaker will always exists, even if the individual does or know a watchmaker or has seen a watch made. No other explanation of a watchs existence could be feasible or logical without believing that there was once a...