(B.) The Evolution Objection.
(1.) The meaning of Evolution: it is a process, not a cause.
(2.) The effect of Evolution on the present argument: it increases the evidence for design.
(C.) The Free Will Objection.
(1.) Its great improbability: for several reasons.
(2.) Free Will and Foreknowledge not inconsistent; so the chief argument in its favour cannot be maintained. Conclusion.
Having decided that the universe had a Creator, we have next to examine whether the Creator designed the universe. Now by Design is meant any voluntary action, combined with foreknowledge of the results that will follow from such action. So when the Creator originated the universe, if He foreknew the results of His action, it would be to design those results, as the word is here used. And these include, either directly or indirectly, the whole course of the universe, everything that exists, or that ever has existed in the world.
By the word foreknew it is not meant that the Creator necessarily thought of all future events, however insignificant, such as the position of the leaves on each tree; but merely that He was able to foresee any of them He wished, and in this sense foreknew them. Compare the case of memory; a man may be able to remember a thousand events in his life; but they are not all before his mind's eye at the same time, and the insignificant ones may never be. In the same way the Creator may have been able to foresee all future events in the world's history without actually thinking about them. At all events, this is the kind of foresight, or rather foreknowledge, which is meant to be included in the term design.
(A.) Evidence of Design.
Passing on now to the evidence of design, this is of the most varied kind, especially throughout organic nature, where we find countless objects, which seem to point to the foresight of the Cause which produced them. The evidence is indeed so vast that it is difficult to deal with it satisfactorily. Perhaps the best way will be to follow the well-known watch argument of Paley, first showing by the example of a watch what it is that constitutes marks of design; next, how a single organ, say the human eye, possesses these marks; and then, the cumulative nature of the evidence.