William Paley

1743-1805 · English · Natural theology, moral and political philosophy, Christian apologetics

There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver.

He was an archdeacon of Carlisle who wrote the three books every Cambridge undergraduate had to know for the better part of a century, and he wrote them in prose so lucid that his opponents complained it made bad arguments look obvious. He was not an original thinker and never claimed to be. What he had was an extraordinary gift for the decisive illustration — the watch found on the heath, the eye compared to a telescope, the pigeons dividing the heap of corn — and a willingness to state a case so plainly that it could be attacked.

Topics William Paley addresses

• the watchmaker analogy
• the argument from design
• contrivance and adaptation
• the eye and the telescope
• natural theology
• the argument from testimony
• the credibility of miracles
• theological utilitarianism
• the will of God as collected from expediency
• general consequences
• the doctrine of expediency
• virtue as doing good to mankind for the sake of everlasting happiness
• civil obligation and the collapse of the social contract
• the pigeons parable
• the happiness of animals
• the benevolence of the deity
• the imperfections objection
• Horae Paulinae and undesigned coincidences
• the evidences of Christianity
• the willingness of the apostles to suffer
• the state of the poor
• population and subsistence

Converse with William Paley on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in William Paley's own writing, cited to the page.