IS God dead? Irreducible Complexity
News Staff
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Body
William Paley was an 18th – century English clergyman, Christian apologist, and philosopher. He is best known for his design argument for the existence of God. Paley suggested that if a person were walking through the forest and came upon a rock, it would gain no special attention because it is something that is naturally expected, and fully at home in the forest. However, if a person walking in the forest came upon a watch, it would be known by instinct that the watch was not part of the forest, and stood at odds with the surrounding environment. But more than that, where the rock is a naturally occurring object, the watch is an object with an intricate and purposeful design. In other words, a highly designed watch indicates a Watchmaker. But there are those that say no, the apparent design observed in nature is the result of millions of years of random trial and error. If you roll the dice enough times, so it is thought, anything can happen . . . even a fine-tuned universe. But cosmology is not the only place we see fine-tuning. We see many examples of fine tuning in biological systems as well. Where fine tuning arguments for the existence of God from design in the cosmos are called Teleological Arguments, arguments for the existence of God based upon the fine-tuning observed in biological systems, including man, are generally called Design Arguments.