PALEY

William Paley, who lived from 1743 to 1805, was one of the most influential English authors of his time. He argued forcefully in his Natural Theology (1802) that the complex and precise design of organisms and their parts could be accounted for only as the deed of an Intelligent and Omnipotent “Designer.” The design of organisms, he argued, was incontrovertible evidence of the existence of the Creator.

Paley was an English clergyman intensely committed to the abolition of the slave trade and, by the 1780s, had become a much sought-after public speaker against slavery. He was also an influential writer of works on Christian philosophy, ethics, and theology. The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) and A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794) earned him prestige and the kind of ecclesiastical benefices that allowed him a comfortable life.

In 1800, Paley gave up his public speaking career for health reasons, providing him ample time to study science, particularly biology, and to write Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, the book by which he has become best known to posterity and which would greatly influence Darwin. With Natural Theology, Paley sought to update the work of another English clergyman, John Ray, author of Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation(1691). But Paley could now progress beyond Ray by taking advantage of a century of additional biological knowledge. Natural Theology is a sustained argument for the existence of God based on the obvious design of humans and their organs, as well as the design of all sorts of other organisms, considered by themselves and in their relations both to one another and to their environments. The argument is twofold: First, organisms give evidence of having been designed; second, only an omnipotent God could account for the perfection, multitude, and diversity of the designs.

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