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William Paley and the Divine Watchmaker



In Natural Theology, a book that Charles Darwin studied as a young man, the theologian William Paley pointed out that if you found a watch on a heath you’d naturally assume it had a designer.

Paley argued, that in a similar way, the human eye, a brilliant piece of biological machinery, must have had a designer too. But but does this prove the existence of a Divine Watchmaker?

Narrated by Gillian Anderson. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.

From the BBC Radio 4 series about life’s big questions – A History of Ideas. http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofideas

This project is from the BBC in partnership with The Open University, the animations were created by Cognitive.

BBC Radio 4

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19 thoughts on “William Paley and the Divine Watchmaker
  1. We'd thought God is an Overwhelming-invisible-universal-size-entity but what this video make us think is the oppose, cause a universe (or god) can be contained in a single particule or even more deeper (a cell, a nucleous, a dna… and go on).

  2. Great piece. But I'm still stuck on the teleological argument. Even if we evolve by natural selection, why do we do this? What's the point of surviving? What is the ultimate purpose? Why do we keep going on? I'm neutral on this matter, btw.

  3. Yet then the question extends to, "who designed natural selection?" To which the answer might lie just outside our realm of understanding.

  4. evolution cannot create life. evolution cannot design life. The DNA that determines a life form is unique to every living creature. You cannot attribute to evolution things that only God can do. And what about the cosmos? the sun, moon, and stars? evolution cannot apply to their design. They are clearly made by a Designer who created them to behave a certain way. The sun, moon, and planets do not behave the way they do by accident. That is absurd. What these atheist scientists have done is make evolution their god. Anything that is obviously designed, whether something created by man, or the cosmos, or a life form requires a designer. Atheists cannot account for this, so they use faulty arguments and a bunch of confusing words to claim to disprove it. But the incontrovertible fact remains. Anything designed requires a designer and a maker.

  5. As a teenager, I had a collage of Gillian Anderson pictures on my computer desktop. Now I hope a moving car makes a real life collage out of her. "I don't feel sorry for men" …Die.

  6. In natural Theology, a book that Charles Darwin studied as a young man the Theologian William Palley pointed out the if you found a watch on a heath you'd naturally assume it has a designer.

  7. The intelligence of evolutions designer was emergent through the conditions of the environment and the interplay of species within it.

  8. Who decides the Cosmos had a Creator? And who Created the Creator?
    The Teleological Argument or the Divine Watchmaker Argument are assumptions.
    The Assumption says: Everything MUST HAVE a cause.
    Why?
    Because there HAS TO BE a cause and I cannot on go on living in a universe that has no cause.
    And that cause is a god.
    So let's assemble a god.
    God is an invisible male, with the following attributes:
    Eternity
    Goodness
    Graciousness
    Holiness
    Immanence
    Immutability
    Impassibility
    Impeccability
    Incomprehensibility
    Incorporeality
    Infinity
    Jealousy
    Love
    Mission
    Mystery
    Omnipotence
    Omnipresence
    Omniscience
    Oneness
    Providence
    Righteousness
    Simplicity
    Sovereignty
    Transcendence
    Trinity
    Veracity
    Wrath
    Conclusion: For those that want and need to believe in a god, this is for you.
    For those that prefer to do their own thinking, a simple "I don't know" will also work.

  9. This is a horrible video. The natural selection process does not disprove Paley's argument at all. In Paley's argument, the natural selection process would be considered as a by-product of the creation of the universe. Whoever published this article clearly has never read any of Willam Paley's arguments, the discovery of natural selection would not have answered his question of the universe having a creator.

  10. Most of the video was spent trying to show why this argument is completely invalid… Yet many still see this as a credible argument and there are lingering counter-questions not addressed in this video. Biased vid.

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