Design Argument's History

The original argument, formulated most famously by Archdeacon Paley back in 1803[1], says simply that the world around us--specifically, the apparent design features we observe in living organisms--have all the hallmarks of intelligent design, and that this design is best explained by attributing them to the work of a Designer, namely, we might go on to say, "God."

Of course, the theistic conclusion of this argument has been made a lot less intuitively plausible since the development of a well-confirmed naturalistic alternative, namely the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. But the trends of philosophical fashion are rarely so simple. Just as one set of scientific developments has been seen as undermining an argument for God's existence, another set of developments has opened up a rich new seam of possibilities. The design argument has shifted ground without abandoning its basic principle. This shift has given rise to a new variant of the design argument, which I wi...