From Paley to Darwin: Intelligent Design to Natural Selection

摘要

The argument from design has two parts. In one familiar formit asserts, first, that organisms evince to have been designed; se-cond, that only God could account for the design. The argumentfrom design was advanced, in a variety of forms, in ClassicalGreece and early Christianity. Its most extensive formulation isdue to William Paley in his Natural Theology (1802). The eye –as well as all sorts of organs, organisms, and their interactions –manifest to be outcomes of design and not of chance, thus showto have been created by God. Darwin's (1859) theory of evolution by natural selection di-sposed of Paley's argument: the adaptations of organisms arenot outcomes of chance, but of a process that, over time, causesthe gradual accumulation of features beneficial to organisms,whenever these features increase the organisms' chances of sur-viving and reproducing. In the 1990s, the design argument was revived in the UnitedStates by several authors. The flagellum used by bacteria forswimming and the immune system of mammals, as well assome improbability calculations, were advanced as evidence of"intelligent design" (ID). There is "design" in the living world: eyes are designed for se-eing, wings for flying, and kidneys for regulating the composi-tion of the blood. The design of organisms comes about, not byintelligent design, but by the interaction of mutation and naturalselection, in a process that is creative through the interaction ofchance and necessity.