Evolutionists are quick to answer the above question in the affirmative. They argue that blind chance and natural selection are the vehicles that have brought about all the vast complexity we see all around us.
Over 200 years ago William Paley, the famous English clergyman and Christian apologist, wrote his classic watchmaker analogy argument to argue that just as a watch needs someone to design and make it, our universe also needs an intelligent designer; which he inferred was God. Paley’s classic argument in his own words follows:
“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. … There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. … Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.”1
Paley’s argument is elegant yet profound. Yet Paley’s chief critic today, the world famous English atheist, Richard Dawkins, strongly disagrees with his design argument. In Dawkins book, The Blind Watchmaker, which he subtitles – Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, he states the following: “In the case of living machinery, the ‘designer’ is unconscious natural selection, the blind watchmaker.”2
Let’s pause for a moment to look at our two options. Since no one would debate that a watch needs a watchmaker why do evolutionists fight so hard to deny that our universe needs an intelligent designer. Even Dawkins admits the following: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”3 But rather then, accept this hypothesis of the divine design of the universe, he then proceeds to argue that no designer is needed since blind chance and natural selection are the true designer.
Using simple logic consider the following: A watch is complex and needs a designer. A smart phone is far more complex than a watch and needs a designer. The human eye is much more complex than a camera and yet according to Dawkins doesn’t need a designer. And our universe is infinitely more complex than anything our wildest imagination can fathom, yet according to Dawkins, doesn’t need a designer. It takes far more faith to stand with Dawkins and his blind watchmaker argument than with Paley’s intelligent design argument. Again, I come to the question of why do atheists defend their defenseless position so vehemently.
Perhaps the answer can be found in the following quote by Professor Richard Lewontin, one of the world’s leaders in evolutionary biology:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”4
1 William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)
2 Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker (1986)
3 Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker (1986)
4 Richard C. Lewontin Billions and Billions of Demons – January 9, 1997 Issue
“Again, I come to the question of why do atheists defend their defenseless position so vehemently?”
Lewontin and thousands of others are perfect examples of scientists who are at enmity against God by suppressing the truth of a created order.
If the universe is a random existence of matter, then there are no laws and that’s the core of their argument; however, it’s impossible to have no laws. The only question is, “Whose law will you live by, Satan’s or God’s?”
Even these Babel builders have to use God’s law to build their manmade edifices and even Dawkins is unwilling to jump from a building to prove the “randomness” of the law of gravity. No atheist evolutionist wants to live in a world without morality (law), but morality can not come from matter. It takes a being to give us laws of morality, just like it takes a being to creat orderly things, like an eye or a watch.
Hey, Dawkins, if there is no uniformity in nature, prove it the next time you drive your car or take a plane ride. You don’t need brakes or a pilot to make these random objects of matter work. Who knows, you might get “lucky” and have your car stop on its own at the next stop light. Eureka! Your theory is true. I’m sorry, not this time!🤕