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Natural Theology

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William Paley · 1743–1805 1802
“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 any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever … But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground … when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose … the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer: who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.”
Natural Theology, ch. 1 — the watch upon the heath Source
William Paley · 1743–1805 1802
“Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design, and the designer, might be evident.”
Natural Theology, ch. 2 — that an imperfect watch does not weaken the inference to a designer Source