Let us now return to the claims by Dawkins and others that Darwin’s theory of evolution has decimated Paley’s argument from design. Actually, Paley’s argument has never been refuted. I am not talking of the specific details that Paley cited, but about his general case for design. That case is actually much stronger today than when Paley made it two centuries ago.
Dawkins is too blinded by anti-religious prejudice to see it, but his argument in The Blind Watchmaker actually supports the design argument. To see why, consider the example of a computer. A computer is like Paley’s watch: it shows clear evidence of design. No one could seriously contend that the computer somehow “evolved” through the forces of natural selection. Someone made it and someone programmed it. Now let’s assume that this is not the case with a certain type of software. Let’s assume that this software operates in a kind of “open source” mode. It accepts random changes and somehow the most useful and adaptive programs survive.
Let’s posit that the process here is evolutionary; it is guided by no one. My question is the following: would the fact of evolution in the case of the software in any way undermine the fact of design in the case of the computer? Obviously not. The software may evolve but someone still had to make the computer and install in it the original programming.
Now apply this analogy to the universe. I have in previous chapters offered strong evidence that the universe is the product of design. The universe could not have evolved through natural selection, as the universe makes up the whole of nature. Someone made the universe and prescribed the laws that govern its operations. Now within the universe there are innumerable life forms that correspond in our analogy to the software programs. These life forms are the product of evolution, and Darwin and his successors have elegantly elucidated the modes of transition. But evolution has no explanation for the origin of the universe or its laws. So how can evolution undercut the argument from design as it applies to the universe itself and the laws that govern it? Clearly it cannot. In this case, as with the computer, the evolution of the part in no way refutes the deliberate design of the whole. The overwhelming evidence is that someone planned the whole thing.
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