hat
rain is the product of a heavenly rain-cow, or that flashes of lightning
are spears thrown by competing heavenly warriors. It is the language
only that differs in the two cases. The frame of mind indicated in the
two cases are identical.

The attractiveness of the argument from design lies in its nearness to
hand and in its appeal to facts, combined with the impossibility of
verification. That nature is full of strange and curious examples of
adaptation is clear to all, although the significance of these
adaptations are by no means so clear. Moreover, a very casual study of
these cases show that they are better calculated to dazzle than to
convince. The presentation of a number of more or less elaborate facts
of adaptation, followed with the remark that we are unable to see how
such cases could have been brought about in the absence of a designing
intelligence, is, at best, an appeal to human weakness and ignorance.
The reverse of such a position is that if we had complete knowledge of
the causes at work, the assumption of design might be found to be quite
unnecessary. "We cannot see" is only the equivalent of we do not know,
and that is a shockingly bad basis on which to build an argument.

When, therefore, an eminent electrician like Professor Fleming says, "We
have overwhelming proof that in the manufacture of the infinite number
of substances made in Nature's laboratory there must be at all stages
some directivity," this can only mean that Professor Fleming cannot see
the way in which these substances are made. It does not mean that he
sees _how_ they are made. And in saying this he is in no better position
than was Kepler, who after describing the true laws of planetary motion,
when he came to the question of _why_ the planets should describe these
motions fell back on the theory of "Angelic intelligences" as the
cause. The true explanation came with the physics of Galileo and Newton,
and with that, farewell to the angelic "directivity." The only reason
for Kepler's angels was his ignorance of the causes of planetary motion.
The only reason why Professor Fleming says that the atoms "have to be
guided into certain positions to build up the complex molecules" is that
he is unable to isolate this assumed directive force and to show it in
operation; he is like a modern Kepler faced with something the cause of
which he doesn't know, and lugging in "God" to save further trouble. It
is an assumption of knowledge wher