One teleological argument put forward for the existence of an intelligent designer of the universe was based on the watchmaker analogy refined by William Paley in 1805. It suggests that one can tell by looking at something that it must have had a designer, than it could not really have happened “naturally” as a series of random events coming together without any organization of their occurrence.

As an example to demonstrate this idea, the picture is painted of someone walking on a heath and spying a watch on the ground by one’s feet. On picking up and examining the watch, it is noticed how all its parts have been so constructed to function together to tell the time. Did it just happen, a random occurrence of atoms, or was there some intelligence behind it’s existence - a designer at work? Most people would confidently state that someone, or a team of people working together, designed and made it. Indeed, we know this to be true just as we know that such a thing did not exist until it was designed and made in that way.

And so likewise, if you look at some natural phenomenon (a particular organ or organism, the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe) for each of these too they can be easily surmised to have been designed and built by an intelligent creator/designer.

This analogy is not a complete argument in itself, but a preamble that suggests features such as purpose of design, orderliness and complexity, and plausibility lead one to consider the real possibility that the existence of things did not just happen, not without intelligence initiating, driving and orchestrating the process.

The analogy is debated strenuously by evolutionists including Charles Darwin and more recently, Richard Dawkins. But concepts of evolution and natural selection are only theories as well, despite a general misunderstanding of many that they are proven beyond reasonable doubt. Such is not so.

Today I was shown a flash animated movie that was made presumably to counter the criticism levelled at the watchmaker anaology, and it is so delightful and cleverly done that I want to present it here for others to “watch” also. It runs for only a few minutes and with no apologies for the pun, it is well worth “the watch”.