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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2005
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Claim CI410:

Design requires a designer; contrivance requires a contriver.

Source:

Paley, William, 1802. Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. London: J. Faulder, p. 11.

Response:

  1. Design does not require an anthropomorphized designer. Designs appear in clouds, for example, with no more of a designer than uneven heating, evaporation, and other natural causes.

    Even an anthropomorphized designer need not be a deity. The atheistic religion of Raelianism, for example, proposes that humans were created by extraterrestrials (Raelian Movement, n.d.).

  2. Evolution is a designer. Via variation and selection, it serves to favor reproduction and shape things according to environmental conditions.

  3. If the designer does not need a designer to create it, why should other things?

References:

  1. Raelian Movement. n.d. The Raelian Revolution. http://www.rael.org/english/index.html
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created 2001-2-17, modified 2005-3-29