A theologian and scientist from Darwin's age:
"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 anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: 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 anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as the stone?
The reason, says Paley, is obvious. A simple examination of the watch leads the mind inexorably forward:
"The inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at sometime, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use."
So, too, continues Paley, "all the works of nature, indeed, "every organized natural body" whether plant or animal, simple or complex, likewise leads one inevitably to the conclusion that it too must have a maker.
For every indication of contrivance. every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in degree which exceeds all computation. I mean, that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtilty, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety."
Thus, Paley concludes, all the works of nature point to God in the same way that a simple machine points to its human maker.
Indeed, we now know that there are microsopic machines in existence which serve purposes using intricate and unimagiably complicated mechanisms. The 'age of irreducible complexity' is bursting upon a scientific community that is trapped in a contradictory and impossible philosophy. The theories and assertions of the naturalists no longer 'hold water' and only their stubborn resistance to open-minded investigation stands in mankind's way.
Rex
From William Paley.........
by Shining One 3 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Shining One
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Shining One
http://www.crosscurrents.org/darwin.htm
The link to the portion of the article. It even contains a simple graph or two that should interest Jgnat.
Rex -
TimGolden
Behe’s example of an irreducibly complex object is a mousetrap. If you take away any of the minimal elements that make the trap work it will loose its function; on the other hand, there is no way to assemble a mousetrap gradually for a natural phenomenon, because it won’t work until the last piece is assembled. Forethought, and therefore intelligent design, is necessary. Of course it is. After all, mousetraps are indeed human products; we know that they are intelligently designed. But what of biological structures? Behe claims that, while evolution can explain a lot of the visible diversity among living organisms, it is not enough when we come to the molecular level. The cell and several of its fundamental components and biochemical pathways are, according to Behe, irreducibly complex. The problem with this statement is that it is at least partially contradicted by the available literature on comparative studies in microbiology and molecular biology, which Behe conveniently ignores . For example, geneticists are continuously showing that biochemical pathways are partly redundant. Redundancy is a common feature of living organisms where different genes are involved in the same or in partially overlapping functions. While this may seem a waste, mathematical models show that evolution by natural selection has to imply molecular redundancy, because when a new function is necessary it cannot be carried out by a gene that is already doing something else, without compromising the original function. On the other hand, if the gene gets duplicated (by mutation), one copy is freed from immediate constraints and can slowly diverge in structure from the original, eventually taking over new functions. This process leads to the formation of gene "families", groups of genes clearly originated from a single ancestral DNA sequence, and that now are diversified and perform a variety of functions (e.g., the globins, which vary from proteins allowing muscle contraction to those involved in the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood). As a result of redundancy, mutations can knock down individual components of biochemical pathways without compromising the overall function – contrary to the expectations of irreducible complexity. To be sure, there are several cases in which biologists do not know enough about the fundamental constituents of the cell to be able to hypothesize or demonstrate their gradual evolution. But this is rather an argument from ignorance, not positive evidence of irreducible complexity. William Paley advanced exactly the same argument to claim that it is impossible to explain the appearance of the eye by natural means. Yet, today biologists know of several examples of intermediate forms of the eye, and there is evidence that this structure evolved several times independently during the history of life on earth . The answer to the classical creationist question, "what good is half an eye?" is "much better than no eye at all"! However, Behe does have a point concerning irreducible complexity. It is true that some structures simply cannot be explained by slow and cumulative processes of natural selection. From his mousetrap to Paley’s watch to the Brooklyn Bridge, irreducible complexity is indeed the hallmark of intelligent design. The problem for ID theory is that there is no evidence so far of irreducible complexity in living organisms. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/features/2000/pigliucci1.html
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tetrapod.sapien
knowing what we know today about biology, william paley has probably turned over in his grave with your use of his name.
to say he is from "darwin's age" is a typical misrepresentation by a creationist. what? do you think that we don't have google or something rex?
william paley died 54 years before charles darwin came out with the origins of species.
William Paley (July, 1743 - May 25, 1805), English divine and philosopher, was born at Peterborough, Northamptonshire.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Paley"Origin of Species" (1859) The publication of "Origin of Species" encouraged botanists to incorporate evolutionary concepts into classifications.
www.ualr.edu/~botany/systnotes.htmlpaley was an honest man who was in awe of bio-diversity. however he had no material proof to believe that it had evolved, so he formulated the argument from design, and is indeed the father of the modern version of said.
i think it's fairly safe to say that paley would have been a biologist if alive today. he was all about exploring the mysteries of biology. he respected nature and science, and was very intelligent, even if his argument from design has been thouroughly refuted.
and we all know that evolution is what grants any logical sense to biology. or do we all?
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.
...who was also a russian orthodox xian interestingly.
TS