Paley's Rolex
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 suppose 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, viz. 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 differently shaped from what they are, of a different size 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 machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result:
Chapter 1
State of the Argument
Natural Theology
William Paley
Collection of Modern English
Humanities Text Initiative
University of Michigan
By "we" Paley means tool-using, iron-smelting, artifact-gathering, social-history-keeping, man. He does not mean a creature from somewhere else with no knowledge of working metal, with no experience of machines and metal tools.
Without that prior knowledge, to the eyes of a nomadic being used to the novel and the unexpected, with the caution and curiosity that that demands, it could as well be some strange flower, or a growth, some kind of crystalline formation, or a creature from the sea dropped by a bird if the ocean's nearby, or from a lake or a river.
Touching and turning it, shaking it, sniffing, tasting it, none of those actions would lead to the identification of the watch as a man-made thing if there were no other man-made things to compare it to, that were similar. Paley's God is real, but it's a human construct. A man-made thing, as we all are - man-made, or human-made.
A specious argument that's used to validate the arrogant presumptions of the other side - Paley's a fool and his arguments aren't worth reading , therefore there's nothing sacred and we can do what we want with the world.
See how both sides come to the same conclusion?
Paley because God gave it to us, the rationalists because there's nothing in our way.
It's a mistake to think there's nothing else there, just as much as it's a mistake to think that the source of all this complexity would value any of us above a star, or a starfish in its time.
