Voltaire, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The argument is this: the world is a machine, and a machine implies a maker.1 Look at the planetary orbits — they follow the laws of the profoundest mathematics, laws that Plato could not even state, yet Plato had instinct enough to call God the eternal geometrician, to feel that a forming intelligence must exist somewhere.2 Spinoza himself confesses it.3
Go further and look at your own body. There is not one superfluous vessel, not one that does not depend on its neighbors; from the roots of the hair to the toes, all is art, design, cause, and effect.4 The man who says the mouth was not made to speak with, that the eye was not contrived for seeing — such a man has not looked carefully at an eye.5
Now, Lucretius will answer me that what I call design is only necessary existence, that after an infinite number of combinations matter happened upon the arrangement we see, that the organs of generation were dispersed and then collected, that the sun was long diffused before it conglobated into a luminary.6 It is a possible story. But consider the arithmetic of it: take only six planets in their present positions, and the chances against chance reproducing that arrangement are seven hundred and twenty to one.7
Against the whole machine? The number is not expressible. I am asked to prefer that improbability to a forming intelligence, on the grounds that the intelligence is also unproven. I decline. What the argument does not give me — and I say this plainly — is a catechism. From order I reach an ordering mind; I do not reach the Trinity, or a revealed book, or the right to break a man on the wheel for his opinions.
The eternal geometrician of Plato is not the God of the Inquisition, and anyone who slides from one to the other has done something the argument does not license.8
The world is assuredly an admirable machine; therefore there is in the world, somewhere or other, an admirable intelligence. This argument is old, but is not therefore the worse.A Philosophical Dictionary Vol 02
The motions of the stars, that of our little earth round the sun--all are operated according to the laws of the profoundest mathematics. How could it be that Plato... had nevertheless so fine a genius, so happy an instinct, as to call God the Eternal Geometrician--to feel that there exists a forming Intelligence?A Philosophical Dictionary Vol 02
Spinoza himself confesses it. It is impossible to controvert this truth, which surrounds us and presses us on all sides.A Philosophical Dictionary Vol 02
there is not one superfluous vessel, nor one that does not, in the exercise of its functions, depend on neighboring vessels... From the roots of the hair to the toes, all is art, design, cause, and effect.Romances, Complete in One Volume
we cannot suppress feelings of indignation toward those who presume to deny final causes, and have the rashness to say that the mouth was not made to eat and speak with--that the eyes are not admirably contrived for seeing, the ears for hearing, the nerves for feeling.Romances, Complete in One Volume
after an infinite number of forms and combinations which matter had assumed, it was found that the humors, and the transparent horn which compose the eye... were united in the head, and animals began to see.Works Vol IV, Romances III and A Treatise on Toleration
add Saturn; and there will then be only seven hundred and twenty chances to one against putting these planets in their present arrangement, according to their given distances.A Philosophical Dictionary Vol 02
There is then a great calculator whom Plato called the eternal geometrician... Conceive, then, the power and patience, the genius, of the eternal architect, if we may apply such terms to the supreme being.Romances, Complete in One Volume