william paley - natural theology

Question 1

Why does Paley think that we would have to conclude that a watch was designe

Answer 1

-Imagine yourself talking a walk and finding a watch upon the ground.
How could the watch have gotten there?
Paley’s answer: there must be someone who made the watch, and someone who put/dropped it on the ground.

When we look at a watch we see that its parts serve a purpose.
Putting these purposeful parts together cannot have happened by chance.
Thus, we conclude, there must be have been a watch maker.

This thought would come to mind even if:
We know nothing about watches and how they work.
The watch does not function properly.
There are some parts missing that we cannot find/see.

Moreover:
We are not satisfied by being told that the watch could be the result of a variety of possible combinations, according to some general principle.
The existence of the watch cannot be explained by the “law of nature” alone.

Question 2

Even if we grant that the watch was designed, how does this help us argue for the existence of God?

Answer 2

-When we look at a watch we see that its parts serve a purpose.
Putting these purposeful parts together cannot have happened by chance.
Thus, we conclude, there must be have been a watch maker.

Question 3

Paley says that the question under consideration is not how the first watch came into existence. Why not? And what question is under consideration?

Answer 3

• What if we found out that watches can produce new watches by themselves?
  Then, one may think, there is no need for a watchmaker, since every new watch can be produced by older ones.

Paley finds this thought unacceptable.
Even if we see a watch that reproduces itself, we do not abandon the thought that there is a watch-maker.
After all, there are two different senses of being the creator of the baby watch:
The sense in which the parent-watch is the creator
The sense in which the watch-maker is the creator

Question 4

According to William Paley, should the discovery that watches can reproduce themselves change my view about the existence of their designer? Why (not)?

Answer 4

-there are two different senses of being the creator of the baby watch:
The sense in which the parent-watch is the creator
The sense in which the watch-maker is the creator

Paley’s conclusion:
By finding further causes, we do not lessen the need for an original intelligent cause.
On the contrary, the more of nature’s complexity we observe, the more we are convinced of the existence of an intelligent being that is behind it all.

It is not enough to say that the cause of any watch’s existence is the watch it came from, even if this goes on to infinity.
The reason is that explaining the existence of a watch in terms of other watches does not take into account the complicated and intricate nature of the watch.

Even if there is no first watch to come to existence and no cause for it, one may still think that the existence of such complicate machinery must be due to the existence of a designer.
Otherwise, we would be treating the watch as any simple thing, like a stone, which could be the product of mere chance and mechanical forces.