William Paley Quotes on Knowledge
William Paley (1743–1805), the English clergyman whose Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802) gave early-nineteenth-century Anglican apologetic its most influential systematic statement of the design argument, opens the work with the famous comparison of the hypothetical watch found upon a heath whose obvious purposive structure compels the inference to a watchmaker. The framework presses the corresponding inference from the manifest functional organization of the natural world to the existence of a divine designer, with the consequent case that natural-theological knowledge of God is available to any careful observer of the empirical evidence the world supplies. Darwin acknowledged the work as a principal target of the Origin of Species.
Quotes
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“The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz . contempt prior to examination.”
A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794). | Variant: There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is, contempt prior to examination. As quoted or paraphrased in Anglo-Israel or, The British Nation: The Lost Tribes of Israel (1879) by Rev. William H. Poole. A simil -
“A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794).”
The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz . contempt prior to examination. -
“Vol. I, Book II, Ch. V.”
God, when he created the human species, wished their happiness; and made for them the provision which he has made, with that view, and for that purpose. -
“Vol. I, Book II, Ch. XI.”
Some excuse seems necessary for the pain and loss which we occasion to brutes , by restraining them of their liberty, mutilating their bodies, and, at last, putting an end to their lives (which we suppose to be the whole of their existence), for our pleasure or conveniency. The reasons alleged in vindication of this practice, are the following: that the several species of brutes being created to p -
“Wanton, and, what is worse, studied cruelty to brutes, is certainly wrong.”
Vol. I, Book II, Ch. XI. -
“Vol. I, Book II, Ch. XI.”
Wanton, and, what is worse, studied cruelty to brutes, is certainly wrong.