What are the basic differences between Aquinas and Paley?

Answer 1

Aquinas offers 5 arguments for the existence of God. In the 19th century, William Paley (in his essay “Natural Theology; or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity”), redid Aquinas’s argument, and thus became famous for the “watchmaker” argument.

I’m not sure if this is “the basic difference”, but they have different views on the concept of chance. Probably one of the most common false dichotomies in the debate over intelligent design is the belief that chance and design are mutually exclusive. Paley fell victim to this mistake, but Aquinas did not.

Paley said: “I desire no greater certainty in reasoning, than that by which chance is excluded from the present disposition of the natural world. Universal experience is against it. What does chance ever do for us? In the human body, for instance, chance, i.e. the operation of causes without design, may produce a wen, a wart, a mole, a pimple, but never an eye.”

Aquinas sees the presence of chance in the world as something God intends inasmuch as chance makes for a more varied and hierarchical world than one in which nothing ever failed. He says: “Now, the goodness of the universe consists not only in one thing being better than another, but also in one thing moving another, and chance has goodness of the latter sort as well.” According to Aquinas, the world’s rising to greater goodness “consists in conquering indeterminism, by indeterminism itself, if that is necessary.”