Why Design Arguments Necessarily Fail - The Freethinker

Why Design Arguments Necessarily Fail - The Freethinker

When he was a student at Christ’s College, Cambridge, with plans on entering the clergy, Charles Darwin was a huge admirer of the clergyman and philosopher William Paley. In his influential Natural Theology (1802), Paley famously describes walking across a heath and striking his foot against a stone. This, said Paley, no one would think unusual, as the rock certainly emerged through geological processes. But if one were to strike one’s foot agai…