William Paley - Darwin's theological father
After we have seen the long standing tradition of natural theology in England and Germany before the Enlightenment nurtured by scholars, naturalists and theologians like John Wilkins, John Ray, Lorenz Heister, Niels Stensen and others we will now look at Darwin's immediate theological father - William Paley. It was from him that Darwin learned the basic theological categories applied to nature which he would transform into his new theory of evolution. What was Paley's theology about?
In 1802 the theologian William Paley (1743-1805) published his book Natural Theology 1. This book is the climax of all preceding efforts of Natural Theology to link natural science with theology. Though rather expensive the book became immediately a bestseller. Starting with 1 000 copies it went through 12 editions until 1822. After that it was partly rewritten and amended by other scholars who wanted to maintain its argument against contemporary French atheistic anatomy, for instance by John Kidd (1775-1851). One of the most delighted readers of Paley's book was Charles Darwin, when he studied theology in Cambridge. According to his own witness, this theological treatise was one of the few theological ones that stimulated his mind. What did he find so stimulating in Paley's work? First of all it was the idea of laws in nature, which reflect a law-giver who governs the world through these laws like a king a country. Laws presuppose an agent who acts through these laws.
"A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the mode, according to which an agent proceeds." (Paley, W., 2006, p. 9).
Paley exemplifies this all determining divine power in designing and governing the creatures by the artifact of a clock. It's amazing ingenuity can only be understood by the work of an intelligent designer - the clockmaker of course. Likewise all creatures have to be understood by the ingenuity of their divine creator. Like a clock is made by a human clock-maker, creatures are made by a divine creator.
"There cannot be design without a designer, contrivance without a contriver." (Paley, W., 2006, p. 12).
Now it is very important to note that Paley used the same language and the same basic notions in his natural theology as later Darwin. Darwin borrowed so to speak his main scientific biological concepts from Paley's natural theology. These basic notions are: adaptation and purpose. Paley argues, that the adaptation of every organ to a specific task or purpose - like a clock for showing the exact time - necessarily presupposes a designer who has ordained the respective organ with an appropriate structure to serve this purpose.
"For, in the watch, which we are examining, are seen contrivance, design; an end, a purpose; means for the end, adaptation for the purpose." (Paley, W., 2006, p. 14).
The same is also the case not only for the clock, but also for a telescope. The telescope however resembles the human eye. So likewise the human eye with its marvelous adaptation to various changing environments and tasks requires a designer who has built this intriguing mechanisms to adapt not only to different degrees of light but also to the diversity of distance (Paley, W., 2006, p. 18). Pondering about these subtle mechanisms one can only come to the conclusion that there must be a creator. Paley borrows the authority of another scholar to substantiate this claim:
"Sturmius held that the examination of the eye was a cure for atheism." (Paley, W. 2006, p. 23).
Johann Christopherus Sturmius (1635-1703) was a professor of Mathematics and Philosophy at the German university of Altdort near Nuremberg. Now Paley raises an interesting question. He asks, why God does not execute his ends and purposes directly, why does he use contrivance? The answer is noteworthy. God uses contrivance because this is a means to communicate his wisdom to rational creatures.
"It is only by the display of contrivance, that the existence , the agency, the wisdom of the Deity, could be testified to his rational creatures." (Paley, W. 2006, p. 27).
And he does work through contrivance because he wants to limit his own power. Laws of nature, design, is so to speak the expression of God's intention not to exercise his omnipotence.
"Whatever is done, God could have done, without the intervention of instruments , in the choice and adaptation of means, that a creative intelligence is seen. It is this which constitutes the order and beauty of the universe. God, therefore, has been pleased to prescribe limits." (Paley, W., 2006, p. 27).
But does the very fact that all creatures exhibit to at least some degree some imperfection or irregularity undermine the design argument? How can a perfect designer create imperfect creatures? Paley's counter argument is not very strong in this regard. He simply states that this is not the case.
These imperfections and irregularities however could have been a starting point for another argument directed against design and advocating a cumulative process of becoming adapted to a specific purpose. Then however chance would have come into the fore. But Paley wanted to rule out this very possibility. He rejects any slightest possibility that chance could have had a role in letting creatures come into existence.
"I desire no greater certainty in reasoning, than by which chance is excluded from the present disposition of the natural world. Universal experience is against it." (Paley, W., 2006, p. 38).
For this reason he also rejects the possibility of alternative creatures to the currently existing ones which might have lived in former times and now vanished due to imperfect adaptation. Nature does not play games.
"No reason can be given why, if these deperdits ever existed, they have now disappeared. Yet, if all possible existences have been tried, they must have formed part of the catalogue." (Paley, W., 2006, p. 39).
Paley comes to the final conclusion that every purposeful adaptation irrefutably and convincingly substantiates the claim of the existence of an divine creator. There is no other possibility. Every man of education, every gentleman, every scholar - if he only uses his intelligence even without revelation in the Bible - must necessarily by means of his rationality come to this conclusion.
"Every organized natural body, in the provisions which it contains for its sustentation and propagation, testifies a care on the part of the Creator expressly directed to these purposes." (Paley, W., 2006, p. 279).
This was the theological program of natural theology which William Paley was about to execute in its most refined way, acquainted with the highest and most elaborated scientific knowledge available at his time. It is however an irony in the history of science that this most sophisticated elaboration of natural theology, based on the very notion of adaptation by a divine designer, proved to be the last nail - after Kant's refutation and some other preceding counter arguments - at the coffin of natural theology. Darwin was impressed by this very fact of adaptation. But he gave it another interpretation which had the advantage to be tested empirically in the long run. He argued that adaptation was not the result of a preconceived divine lawgiver and designer but the result of a long historical process in which a chance operated through mutation and selection to bring about the same result - adaptation. The divine lawgiver then could be dismissed. Where is he now? Operating in evolution itself? Are there 'hidden divine parameters'? Or is God operating through the contingencies of historical processes?
1) William Paley. Natural Theology or Evidence of the Existence and Attributes of a Deity, collected from the appearances of nature. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford University Press 2006.
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