No demonstration showed more forcefully how science led to nature's God than the
argument from design. No proof of God compelled more nearly universal assent than the
argument from design.
This became known as the
Argument from Design. Maimonides, for example, had this to say as part of the "true meaning" of these verses of Psalms 94:9, 10: "Considering the humours of the eye, its membranes and nerves with their well known functions and their adaptation to the purpose of sight, can any intelligent person imagine that all this is due to chance"?
"In Darwin's own words, his goal in developing and establishing his theory was like committing a murder." What he wanted to destroy was the most common basis for believing in God--the
argument from design, sometimes called the cosmological or teleological argument.
But these arguments are problematic, for they trade on analogies between human and divine intelligence (e.g., the
argument from design) that we are in no position to verify if they are meaningful or true.
Marginal symbols indicate such categories as legislation and legal cases,
argument from design and Intelligent Design, the age of earth, and social Darwinism and eugenics.
Conversely, radicals who denied the
argument from design had to explain how the "random" collisions of material particles could result in a structured universe.
Creationism's best offering is simply the old
Argument from Design, dressed up in pretty new clothes.
The old
argument from design in Nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered.