d then see how far the actual result realises
it.

Design, in short, although it may be expressed in a physical form is not
a physical thing, but a psychic fact. You cannot by examining physical
processes and results reach design. You cannot start with a material
fact and reach intention. You must begin with intention and compare it
with the physical result. Things may be as they are whether design is
involved or not. It is only by a knowledge of intention, and a
comparison of that with the fact before us that we can be certain of
design. Proof of design is not found in the capacity of certain clusters
of circumstances or forces to realise a particular result, but in a
knowledge that they correspond with an intention which we know to have
existed before the result occurs.

To warrant a logical belief in design in nature three things are
essential. First, one must assume that a God exists. Second, one must
take it for granted that one has a knowledge of the intention in the
mind of the deity before the alleged designed thing is brought into
existence. Finally, one must be able to compare the result with the
intention and demonstrate their agreement. But the impossibility of
knowing the first two things is apparent. And without the first two the
third is of no value whatever. For we have no means of reaching the
first except through the third. And until we get to the first we cannot
make use of the third. We are thus in a hopeless impasse. No examination
of nature can lead back to God because we lack the necessary starting
point. All the volumes that have been written, and all the sermons that
have been preached depicting the wisdom of organic structures are so
much waste of paper and breath. They prove nothing, and can prove
nothing. They assume at the beginning all they require at the end. Their
God is not something reached by way of inference, it is something
assumed at the very outset.

What the theist does at every step of his reasoning is to read his own
feelings and desires into nature. The design he talks so glibly about is
in him, not outside of him. As well might a maggot in a cheese argue
that the world was designed for him because the agreement between his
structure and it are so harmonious. In relation to their surroundings
man and the maggot are in the same position. And in the economy of
nature man is of no more consequence than the maggot. There is a more
complex synthesis of forces here than there, a m