Despite the staggering discoveries made by science, the universe is still shrouded in awesome mystery.

“A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day’s unity.” – Charles Ives

In the not too distant past it was considered an obvious truth that the universe, nature and their respective details were the handiwork of a conscious designing intelligence. People simply observed their surroundings and noted the beauty, the ingenuity and the orchestrated harmony of the massive multiplicity of its parts – and stood awed by it. This view was perhaps most artfully expressed by the English philosopher William Paley in his well-known watchmaker analogy:

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there … There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use… Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.” – William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)

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