William Paley

Notes

William Paley (1743–1805), English clergyman and philosopher. Natural Theology (1802) opens with the watch found on a heath: a watch implies a watchmaker, and living things, far more intricate than any watch, imply a designer. This is the classical argument from design. Charles Darwin read Paley at Cambridge and admired him; On the Origin of Species is, among other things, the answer to him.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Paley

Also see

Teleological Argument - Argument from Design
Charles Darwin
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (1986), whose title is the reply

Linked from

Argument from Biological Information

Premise 2 is false. Natural selection is a known non-mental process that produces functional information, by Meyer's own measure, and the production has been watched. Richard Lenski's E. coli evolved a new metabolic pathway in a flask; in-…

Argument from Undesigned Coincidences

An argument from William Paley (Horae Paulinae, 1790) and J. J. Blunt (1847), revived by Lydia McGrew (Hidden in Plain View, 2017):

Teleological Argument - Argument from Design

The classical version (William Paley, Natural Theology, 1802):

Charles Darwin

William Paley