William Paley’s watchmaker argument

A long time ago on a planet so bear, some water and dirt that mix up with the air. Some sand and some rocks to make it just right. The stage was all set in the deep of the night. A bolt of white lightning, a great deal of thunder and suddenly there was a marvelous wonder. The rocks yielded metal, the sand turned to glass and as the years flew a new thing came to pass. The metal formed gears, the glass a watch face and little by little things fell into place. The parts came together just like a good rhyme, with ticks and with tucks and with hands that tell time. A beautiful watch began ticking one day formed all by itself in a wonderful way.

Ridiculous story you say with a grin. Impossible, laughable, surely a sin. A watch needs a watchmaker that’s plain to see. A designer and builder that makes it for me. Now all life is made of some interesting stuff – cells of all shapes, like blobs filled with fluff but looks are deceiving. And what we find there are factories and highways and gadgets to spare, assembly lines, robots, electrical cables, libraries, software. Just look if you’re able, the marvels we see with a microscope stare make a watch look so simple we dare not compare.

Now the doctors from Oxford say cells came by chance, from goo down to you, in a beautiful dance. What’s wrong with their thinking, to have such odd notions that cells could just happen from dirt and warm oceans? 

The cell and its wonders amaze all who see and a cell like a watch by chance cannot be. Those cells can build hummingbirds agile and free, bumblebee, snails, my backyard oak tree. The woodpecker built with a jackhammer nose, lightning bugs, monkeys and beautiful rose. And beetles with bombs that give frogs a surprise, comedians with camouflage and some weird eyes. All nature on earth is so perfectly fine we have to admit that it’s all by design. And our maker owns everything both great and small. He’s the masterful watchmaker Lord over all.