Watch Argument an Assessment of Paley\'s Natural

Watch Argument

An Assessment of Paley's Natural theology: The Watch Argument

In this section of Archdeacon of Carlisle William Paley's Natural Theology, the author constructs a detailed yet essentially simple and straightforward argument for the existence of God in the form of some primary designer. More specifically, Paley makes an argument against atheism or the belief that there is no such designer for the universe through a lengthy analogy about a watch, or perhaps a series of watches, he imagines might be discovered on the ground. Unlike a stone that can be assumed to have lain on the ground "forever," a watch found on the ground that has specific movements that appear to serve a specific purpose must have come from a creative and purposeful mind that designed the watch; the parts and their purpose could not have coalesced by simple chance the way a stone might tumble to the ground. Paley goes on to imagine a watch with such complex workings that its movement actually constructs another watch (assuming it has the appropriate materials to hand), using what he terms the "laws of metallic nature" to use other materials in a designed and purposed fashion that could perpetuate a cycle of watches but that would still ultimately require a designer. Only after a lengthy examination of this situation does Paley actually equate his thought experiment with the line of self-replicating watches with atheism and thus implicitly with the idea that the universe as a whole has a designer, i.e. God.

The argument that Paley makes regarding the watches has a high degree of internal consistency and logic, and indeed it is difficult to imagine finding a watch lying on the ground and assuming that it came together through sheer happenstance. Paley's insistence that something with such a clearly defined and readily observable purpose as a watch, and with such neatly created constituent parts all arranged in a highly specific manner upon which the completion of their purpose depends, is more than reasonable, and though it is not based on a direct cause-and-effect relationship and relies heavily on inductive reasoning without true empirical basis the basic argument can be readily accepted. Things with a clear purpose and with designed parts that must function in a perfect order to carry out that purpose can be assumed to have been designed, and this is a more logical conjecture than assuming a watch (and especially a line of self-replicating watches) simply came into being through coincidence, and just as Paley describes in exhaustive detail it would be foolish to conclude that such a watch or line of watches would be evidence that there is no designer.

The internal consistency of Paley's argument is actually part and parcel with its central flaw, however, which is that Paley does not actually state his real underlying argument until the very end of his detailed examination and explanation. Nowhere in the entire argument contained in this section does Paley mention God or the fact that he is arguing for God's existence, and only in the very last sentence does he mention atheism -- the belief that there is no God. In other words, Paley's entire argument regarding the watch and its designer are all parallel rather than direct arguments, not actually tied to the point he is trying to make (namely, that there must be a God acting as at least the central designer of the universe) save by means of example. While his argument holds up quite strongly in direct terms, easily applied to watches and their designer(s), he does nothing to tie this argument directly to the universe and the existence for God. It is not that there is anything in his argument that is logically flawed, but his failure to make these connections means his argument simply does not demonstrate what he wants it to demonstrate. As a primary instance illustrating this gap and the problems it creates for Paley's argument, one need only ask what specific purpose the universe or any of its inhabitants serves that is as readily and empirically observable as the purpose of the watch in Paley's argument. A large part of Paley's logic hinges on the fact that the watch's purpose -- to keep time -- is obvious and clearly observable simply from the looking at the watch itself, and though Paley might have an analogous purpose in mind for what he considers to be one of God's creations he does not share this purpose in this excerpt. While God is the obvious (though unnamed) analog for the designer in Paley's argument, that is, there is no such obvious analog for the watch, and because the watch is the evidence Paley uses for the existence of a designer this lack of an analog means there is no evidence provided in the argument for God's existence.