The Invisible Paw

Abstract

One of Darwin's purposes in writing The Origin of Species was to rebut the doctrine of separate creations. Moreover, the argument he was chiefly concerned with?which was both his target and the model of his own argument?was the familiar argument from design. In one well-known version of this argument we are asked to consider the human eye, to consider its complex design and the functioning of its various parts, and ask ourselves if it is any less wonderful a contrivance than a telescope.2 Now we would never suppose that telescopes came into existence through the concurrence of physical forces; neither then ought we to think this of the eye which is equally complex. As surely as the telescope is witness to the ingenuity of man, so is the human eye witness to the greater ingenuity of God. And if a creator is responsible for the eye, he must also have created the species to whom that organ belongs. Darwin clearly felt the force of this appeal, and writes: