Historical Apologist: William Paley

William Paley (1743-1805) was an English theologian and philosopher whose version of the argument from design was a prominent aspect of nineteenth-century natural theology.

Paley's version includes an extended analogy in which a person who has never before seen a watch finds one and concludes that the mechanism must have been designed by an intelligent being.1




1. C.Stephen Evans, Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 87.