/lit/ - Literature

>>16667258
>None of them is even slightly convincing.

C'mon, man. Even Dawkins acknowledges that argument from design is a strong and persuasive argument.

Consider his remarks in the Preface to The Blind Watchmaker:

>"The complexity of living organisms is matched by the elegant efficiency of their apparent design. If anyone doesn't agree that this amount of complex design cries out for an explanation, I give up."

Thus, Dawkins acknowledges that the inference to a Divine Designer or Creator from the appearance of design in nature is a perfectly plausible and persuasive argument, but his position is that the discovery of evolution by Darwin trumps and entirely defeats the design inference.

But Dawkins stretches Darwin too far -- Darwin doesn't address the origin of life, much less that not insubstantial interval of time between the Big Bang and those earthly life forms that, in Darwin's view, preceded the origin of species.

Thus, design in nature, and Paley's watchmaker argument,* and the various and multifarious evidences undergirding such arguments, remain viable evidence of the existence of God.

*https://pages.uoregon.edu/sshoemak/323/texts/william_paley.htm

>In crossing a beach, suppose I hit my foot against a stone. Suppose I 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. It would be difficult to show that this answer is absurd.

>But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be asked 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--would be an acceptable answer.

Open your eyes, anon. Look in the mirror. Note the symmetry of the eyes, the nostrils, the ears, the teeth and the tongue. It's all very elegant. What do you think is behind that obvious evidence of design?