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“I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even My hands, have stretched out the heavens”

Isaiah ch.45 v.12

William Paley

1743 - 1805

William Paley was a Christian apologist and philosopher. In 1802 he published his most famous book - Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature. The title certainly gives the game away! In this work he set out his case for a Creator using his now famous metaphor, commonly known as the Watchmaker Analogy.

Paley reasoned that if a person crossing farmland, found a watch and opened it up, thereby exposing the complex clockwork mechanism, that person would conclude the watch must have had a maker. He wrote ...

“the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some time 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.”

The watch must have a maker!

Paley then reasoned, “Since living organisms are even more complicated than watches, ‘in a degree which exceeds all computation’, it is logical to conclude, they too must have a Designer-Maker.”

It goes without saying that the eye is many, many, many times more intricate and complex than any watch. It is only reasonable to conclude therefore, that eye has a Maker. The argument from design seems no less compelling today!

CREATION

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“To suppose that the eye ... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest” possible degree”

Charles Darwin, the Father of evolution said ...

Having made that statement, Darwin went on to argue that the eye did evolve and the ‘absurdity’ was illusory!!

‘Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not’

The Lesson

Jeremiah 5:21

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Wiki

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