William Paley and the Divine Watchmaker

In Natural Theology, a book that Charles Darwin studied as a young man, the theologian William Paley pointed out that if you found a watch on a heath you’d naturally assume it had a designer. The human eye was like a sophisticated piece of machinery: so just as you’d know any watch must have had a designer, so, Paley argued, you ought to recognize that the human eye, a brilliant piece of biological machinery, must have had one too.

Narrated by Gillian Anderson. Scripted by Nigel Warburton.