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Philosophical Haiku

William Paley (1743-1805)

by Terence Green

Imagine a watch
Each part precisely designed.
Now gaze upon life!

William Paley by George Romney

Born in England, William Paley spent his childhood in the lovely surrounds of Giggleswick (honestly, that’s the name of the town). After a spell at Cambridge, he married and became a clergyman. He was very down-to-earth, and given to shocking the delicate sensibilities of posh visitors with his rustic observations. On one occasion, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, he observed in his broad Yorkshire accent, “I hate these nasty little chairs: they sink in the middle and throost one’s goots up into one’s braans.”

Paley became famous for his book Natural Theology (1802), in which he attempted to prove that God exists. His argument is deceptively simple and awesomely compelling (at least until Darwin stopped to think about it). Suppose you were walking along a beach and found a watch. It has no markings on it, no maker’s name, no owner’s name, no pithy Latin inscription on the back – nothing to tell you anything about where it was made or where it had come from. Nevertheless, there would still be something you could know with absolute certainty – the watch had to have a maker. All those little cogs, wheels and springs are clearly designed to do their individual jobs, and together they’re designed to do the job of telling the time. Something that complicated couldn’t put itself together, so somewhere there must be a watch-maker.

You can’t disagree with that reasoning, right? So how about nature? Nature is exponentially more complicated than a watch, but it’s just as obvious that all its little parts have been designed to do specific jobs – our lungs let us breathe, wings let birds fly, bottoms are good for sitting on. Everything’s designed – so there must be a designer; and that designer must be God! Brilliant! That’s all sorted then.

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because Creationists and Intelligent Designers are still promoting the same argument – yet with far less literary flair, and certainly with none of Paley’s earthy good humour.

Terence Green is a writer, historian, and lecturer who lives in Eastbourne, New Zealand.