MoreThinking's video: An Introduction to Paley s Argument from Design Part 2 of the Argument from Design

Learn more about the Argument from Design and other topics relating to G-d, the Torah, science and philosophy at MoreThinking.com (http://morethinking.com/). TRANSCRIPT I would like to take a moment and talk about this man (William Paley) and what he had to say about a rock and a watch. Paley noted that there is a difference between a watch and a rock and we want to understand what that difference is. According to Paley, the difference has to do with parts and purposes. A rock has no organized parts. If you take the materials that make up a rock and organize and structure them in a different way, you'll still end up with a rock. Furthermore, by looking at the rock you can't tell any clear and obvious purpose for why it was made. We can utilize a rock for our purposes, for our desires - but the rock itself does not indicate why it exists. This is not the case, says Paley, when it comes to a watch. A watch has organized parts - as he put it, several parts formed and adjusted to produce motion and that motion is regulated to point out the number of the day. There are certain numbers evenly spaced on the face of the watch. We have dials that spin around according to that motion, all so that we can achieve the clear and obvious purpose of the watch which is to help us tell what time it is. And we can also note that if we used the wrong parts, or the right parts but they were shaped in the wrong way or placed in the wrong order when constructing the watch (some parts have to be laid down first, some second and so on). Or if we had all the right parts, but we integrated them improperly we would not be able to tell time. We would not be able to achieve the clear and obvious purpose for which the watch was constructed. Now based on all this, says Paley, it's obvious that the watch had a watchmaker. And clearly this watchmaker understood what it was that he was trying to create, understood what it took to create a watch and designed it in order to achieve the function for which a watch is clearly made. Now we would know this even if we never met a watchmaker, even if we knew nothing about how watches were made. We would know this from the properties of the watch itself. Now this is an important word 'properties'. This is not an argument from analogy as we will discuss when we get to Hume later on. This is an argument that is being made from how the nature of how the watch itself is constructed. Now here is the key step. Can we make an inference from the watch to structures that we find in nature (such as the human eye). After all, many of these structures in nature have the same exact properties that we find in a watch, except that they are more impressive. And we will see what we mean by that when we actually take the time to see how a watch is made and how it works - and to see how various different elements and aspects and structures in nature function and work. And then we'll ask ourselves, can the same properties lead to the same conclusions? And we'll ask ourselves these questions, not only after taking the time to see design in nature and the watch itself in comparison, but to take into account all the objections that have been raised. Objections from the likes of Hume and from the Theory of Evolution. And afterwards we'll ask this question. So let's go and take the time to find out whether or not this inference can be made. IMAGES FROM WIKIPEDIA: * Watchmaker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elgin_watchmaker.jpg * Human eye: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_eye_cross-sectional_view_grayscale.png