1. Does the Distinction Between Having an Intrinsic Tendency to an End vs. a Tendency Imposed from Without Have Any Bearing on Aquinas's and Paley's Arguments?

Feser points out that natural things have inherent tendencies to achieve certain goals, whereas artificial things achieve certain goals because they are ordered to do so by something outside themselves, and he illustrates this using a simple example: “The parts of the liana vine have an inherent tendency to function together to allow the liana to exhibit the growth patterns it does, to take in water and nutrients, and so forth. By contrast, the parts of the hammock—the liana vines themselves—have no inherent tendency to function together as a hammock. Rather, they must be arranged by Tarzan to do so.”Footnote ³ Feser claims that the distinction between “immanent teleology” and “extrinsic teleology” (his terminology, not Aquinas'sFootnote ⁴) is “vital to an understanding of the Fifth Way.”Footnote ⁵ Feser maintains that Paley fails to see the difference between natural and artificial things, envisaging the former to be ordered to their ends by having this order imposed from without in the manner in which the ordering to an end of an artifact is imposed from without. I am not sure that this is true, but will concede the point, to see whether or not it has any effect on Paley's argument from design.

Does this distinction enter into Aquinas's Fifth Way? The Fifth Way is composed of the following two syllogisms:

Aquinas understands “acts for an end” (operatur ad finem) to be equivalent to “arrives at an end due to tendency” (ex intentione perveniunt ad finem) to be equivalent to “tends to an end” (tendunt in finem). He also uses directed and ordered interchangeably in the second syllogism. In addition, he substitutes “all natural things” for “all natural bodies” in the conclusion of the second syllogism. Accordingly, I have adjusted the translations to make clear that a fourth term has not been introduced. I have slightly modified the translation in the first syllogism to make the copula clear, and have also added in “all” to modify natural bodies.

Aquinas's Fifth Way consists of two first figure syllogisms, each of which has three terms. However, two of the terms in the second syllogism are identical with terms in the first, so all told there are four terms. The terms are: 1) natural bodies; 2) things that always or frequently operate in the same mode such that what is obtained is the best; 3) things lacking knowledge that act for an end; 4) things directed to an end by some knowing and intelligent being. One can see than none of these terms is “immanent teleology,” i.e., (things) tending to an end in virtue of intrinsic principles. Even if one substitutes the definition of natural in the case of natural body, i.e., “a body that has an intrinsic principle of motion and rest” this is not equivalent to saying “a body that acts for an end in virtue of its intrinsic principles.”

Another way of seeing that the notion of an intrinsic ordering to an end does not enter into the Fifth Way is by inspecting the premises. If we look at the first syllogism we see that the major premise is applicable to artifacts despite their “extrinsic teleology:” “Everything that always or frequently operates in the same mode such that what is obtained is the best is something that acts for an end, and not by chance.” One can just as well conclude from it that washing machines act for an end, as one can conclude from it that natural bodies act for an end.Footnote ⁷ Plainly, then, this premise in no way specifies whether the tendency to an end referred to is from an intrinsic or extrinsic principle. The minor premise as well makes no reference to intrinsic ordering to an end. If it did the argument would be question-begging as it seeks to conclude that natural things tend to an end, for the minor would then read: “all natural bodies, tending to an end in virtue of an intrinsic principle (or principles), are things that operate in the same mode such that what is obtained is the best,” and yet the conclusion to be drawn is that natural bodies tend to an end. Thus, since neither premise makes reference to “immanent teleology,” this notion is necessarily absent in the conclusion. Whence one can see the inaccuracy of Feser's claim in regard to the conclusion of the first syllogism (which he translates as: “Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end”) that “designedly…must be read in an Aristotelian way, as connoting final causality or immanent end-directedness as opposed to chance.”Footnote ⁸ Aquinas, as we have seen, says nothing about “immanent end-directedness.” His conclusion is simply: “whence it is manifest that they arrive at an end, not by chance, but from a tendency” (“unde patet quod non a casu, sed ex intentione perveniunt ad finem”).Footnote ⁹

As for the second syllogism, Aquinas explicitly says that the major premise applies to artifacts: “Everything which tends to an end, lacking knowledge, is a thing that is directed by some knowing and intelligent being, as an arrow by an archer.”Footnote ¹⁰ The minor premise is the conclusion of the first syllogism, which as we have seen makes no reference to whether the tendency to an end is from an intrinsic or extrinsic principle. We see then that Aquinas does not rely on the difference as to how natural and artificial things tend to their ends in concluding to aliquid intelligens in the Fifth Way.Footnote ¹¹

Let us now consider Paley's argument which I think can be fairly paraphrased thus;

All things that have a multiplicity of parts ordered to achieve a goal are things that have an intelligent being as cause of their order.

The parts of organisms, such as the eye, are things that have a multiplicity of parts ordered to achieve a goal.

The parts of organisms, such as the eye, are things that have an intelligent being as cause of their order.

I justify the above paraphrase in the following manner. First, Paley thinks that what is true in the case of a watch is universally true:

In other words, anything in which we perceive “several parts are framed and put together for a purpose” is something that we immediately recognize to have an intelligent being as the cause of its order.

Paley then goes on to apply this general principle to things found in nature:

When Paley says that every manifestation of design that exists in the watch exists in the works of nature, it is obvious that he is not talking about the design specific to a watch (e.g., that it has a knob that allows one to set the time), but about the definitional characteristics of design, i.e., the presence of a multiplicity of parts ordered to achieve a goal. When he says that the contrivances of nature in most cases are not less evidently mechanical or accommodated to their end than productions of human ingenuity, he is simply noting that in some cases we do not know the end that certain parts of organisms are ordered to, and even when we do, we do not always know how they are ordered to achieving these ends.Footnote ¹⁴ It remains the case that Paley firmly maintains that certain parts of organisms, such as the eye, are things that have a multiplicity of parts ordered to achieve a goal.

Many claim that Paley's argument is an inductive argument rather than a deductive argument.Footnote ¹⁵ However, if it is justifiably framed as a deductive argument, doing so is desirable insofar as one ought to always present an argument in its strongest form. Later I will come back and provide further support for formulating Paley's argument as a deductive argument.

There is no doubt that Paley makes reference to “mechanisms” as existing in both art and nature. But is the idea of “extrinsic teleology” essential to Paley's argument? I maintain that it is not. This is plain if one simply examines the premises and conclusion of his design argument, none of which make any reference to extrinsic teleology. Moreover, extrinsic teleology does not follow as a necessary consequence from the conclusion of the design argument; one cannot deduce from his conclusion “the parts of organisms, such as the eye, are things that have an intelligent being as cause of their order” whether the intelligent being so orders parts to their ends by imposing the ordering extrinsically or intrinsically.

Furthermore, while in some cases Paley speaks of mechanisms, in other places he simply speaks in terms of parts being accommodated to a goal, means being ordered to an end, and this is what is essential to his argument. Take for example what Paley says about fish eyes:

Paley is not saying the fish eye requires an intelligent cause to explain it because it has an ordering to an end imposed from without rather than from within, but rather because its lens is adjusted in such a manner as to allow proper focus. Indeed, Paley explicitly states as universally true: “Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to end, relation of instruments to an [sic] use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind.”Footnote ¹⁷ This notion, and not the notion of finality imposed from without, is what Paley's argument depends on.

The reason that Paley speaks so often in terms of mechanisms is because he regards the ordering to an end of the parts of natural things to be unambiguous when we can directly compare it to a work of human art, and we are more able to make such comparisons in the case of gross structure than at the more subtle chemical level, given that we have an understanding of basic physical laws, whereas our knowledge of chemistry is more limited. This can be seen from the following two excerpts:

Paley's discussion of mechanism does not seek to determine whether the ordering to an end found in natural things is imposed from without or instilled within, but rather to establish that one can know such ordering with certitude:

2. Is Paley's Argument an Argument by Analogy?

Yet another common objection to Paley's argument can be readily addressed at this point, namely, the claim that his argument is an argument by analogy, and therefore its conclusion is only probable. There is no doubt that Paley's preferred examples of design in nature are ones where there is a direct comparison with human artifacts:

And Paley himself speaks of an analogy between eye and telescope.Footnote ²² However, this does not make his argument an argument by analogy. Here is an example to illustrate how an argument by analogy works: The war with the Thebans was a war with a neighbor, and it was disastrous. The proposed war with the Milesians is a war with a neighbor, and therefore is likely to be disastrous.Footnote ²³ If Paley was arguing by analogy, he would reason in this manner: The telescope is ordered and adjusted in a way that allows it to focus an image, and this ordering is explained by an intelligent being. The eye is similarly ordered and adjusted in a way that allows it to focus an image, and therefore it is likely that its ordering is explained by an intelligent being. Paley's argument, however, is based on a universal principle which he holds is evident and certain, i.e., everything that has parts ordered and adjusted to achieve a goal is a thing that has an intelligent being as cause of this order. The point of his comparing eye with telescope is to make it as obvious as possible that the eye is an instance of something that manifests order and adjustment to achieve a goal. Aquinas would find this way of proceeding reasonable, insofar as he holds that: “It is proved that natural bodies move and act for an end, granted they do not know the end, from this that what is the best always or frequently happens in their case; if their motions and actions resulted from art, they would not come about differently” (emphasis added).Footnote ²⁴ In other words, the means employed by art to achieve such ends would be the same or similar to those that nature employs.

It is sometimes also claimed that Paley's argument is an argument by analogy on the grounds that it involves comparing a watch with organic parts. Paley, however, simply uses a watch as illustrative of the universal principle that things whose parts are ordered to achieve a goal are a work of intelligence, just as Aquinas uses the arrow-archer example as illustrative of the universal principle that “everything which tends to an end, lacking knowledge, is a thing that is directed to an end by some knowing and intelligent being, as an arrow by an archer.” Neither Aquinas nor Paley are proposing inductive arguments, such as: a watch is a thing whose parts are ordered to an end and it is the work of an intelligent being, a car is a things whose parts are ordered to an end, and it is the work of an intelligent being, and therefore, all things whose parts are ordered to an end are the work of an intelligent being. Their examples point not to inductive argument where a general conclusion is drawn based on the enumeration of a certain number of particulars leaving the possibility that a contrary particular has been overlooked, but to the sort of induction spoken about by Aristotle in the final chapter of the Posterior Analytics: “Clearly then it must be by induction that we acquire knowledge of the primary premisses, because this is also the way in which universals are conveyed to us by sense perception.”Footnote ²⁵ For example, from sensed examples of wholes and parts, we grasp the universal concepts whole and part, and then from these concepts we immediately see to be true the universal proposition “a whole is greater than its parts.” Similarly, examples such as the archer-arrow and the watchmaker-watch lead us to form a confused notion of practical intelligence and allow us to eventually arrive at the definition of practical intelligence, from which we can immediately see the truth of the universal principle “things that lack knowledge must be ordered to their ends by an intelligent being.” I agree that the case of practical intelligence is not so straightforward as the case of whole and part, for sensed examples make the definitions of whole and part immediately clear, but do not seem to do so in the case of the definition of practical intelligence, since people disagree about what practical intelligence is and whether animals possess it; in addition, some deny that ordering to an end requires an intelligent being to explain it, so the principle does not seem to be self-evident.Footnote ²⁶ Be this as it may, the absence of inductive arguments in both Aquinas and Paley, and indeed the absence of argument of any sort for the major premises of both Aquinas's second syllogism and of Paley's argument suggest that they hold these premises to be self-evident, something which gives us reason to consider whether this might in fact be the case.Footnote ²⁷ (In the next section I will offer an alternative to this thesis.)

3. An Important Similarity between Aquinas's and Paley's Arguments

In order to see how close Paley's argument is to Aquinas's, we need to first consider some passages where Aquinas speaks about intelligence:

Aquinas repeats the same teaching when discussing divine providence.

In other words, the only adequate explanation of the ordering of means to an end is intellect. This is exactly what Paley maintains: “Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to end, relation of instruments to an [sic] use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind.”Footnote ³⁰

Feser fails to see that “in the manner that” [ad modum] that “an archer gives the arrow a fixed motion so that it tends to a determinate end” can refer to two different things, namely, whether the archer does so by proportioning means to an end or whether the archer does so by imparting a tendency to the arrow that the arrow of itself does not have. The former is relevant to the Fifth Way and to Paley's argument from design; the latter is not. The failure to see this results in assertions such as: “the anthropomorphism implicit in Paley's conception of God is one reason Thomists are bound to object to Paley's argument,”Footnote ³¹ the said anthropomorphism consisting in “Paley's designer imparts teleology the way human designers do, by imposing on raw materials a function they have no inherent tendency to serve.”Footnote ³² Paley may in fact have this notion of God; however, as was made plain in the previous section, it is not implicit in his design argument.

It seems that for Aquinas the very definition of practical intelligence is the ability to grasp an end as end and to proportion means to it or, at very least, he sees this to be an essential property of practical intelligence. Paley makes explicit reference to this definition or property in his design argument, albeit in a somewhat more contracted manner, when he affirms that we inevitably infer the existence of an artificer, a being endowed with comprehension, when we see several parts framed and put together for a purpose.Footnote ³³ Does Aquinas make explicit reference to the definition of practical intelligence in the Fifth Way? He does not. This leads one to wonder whether Aquinas thinks there is a need to reason to the major premise of the second syllogism in the Fifth Way in the following manner: “Everything which tends to an end, lacking knowledge, is a thing that is directed by some knowing and intelligent being” because only intelligent beings can grasp an end as end and proportion means to it. There are two positions one might adopt here. One could take the position that Aquinas would not see an independent reason being offered here for the premise; rather what intelligence is is simply being spelled out. It would be like saying: all human beings are capable (at least in principle) of appreciating a joke because all human beings are rational animals; the second proposition simply replaces a term with its definition. Thus, one might hold that Aquinas implicitly assumes in the major premise of the second syllogism the definition (or property) of practical intelligence that he habitually gives and he takes the major premise of the second syllogism to be self-evident. Alternately, one might hold that Aquinas would maintain that this premise needs to be reasoned to using the definition or property of practical intelligence. In either case, the Fifth Way is seen to rely on the same basic understanding of practical intelligence that Paley's argument explicitly relies on. This fundamental and important similarity between the two arguments is typically overlooked.

In light of the above, it is not surprising that Aquinas sees the example of a clock—an obvious equivalent of Paley's watch—as equivalent to the arrow example he frequently uses to illustrate the principle that the tending to an end of non-intelligent beings must ultimately be reduced to beings that are intelligent:

Aquinas has no qualms about drawing a parallel between artifacts and natural things insofar as the ordering to an end in both needs to be traced back to intelligence. Indeed, over and over he refers to God as artificer (artifex): “It is impossible that something would be made in vain by a wise and omnipotent and best artificer.”Footnote ³⁵ “The highest perfection ought not be absent from the work made by an artificer good in the highest degree.”Footnote ³⁶ In addition, Aquinas makes many references to “ars divina,” e.g., “All creatures are compared to God as artificial things (artificiata) to an artificer…. Whence, the whole of nature is as a certain artificial work (artificiatum) of divine art.”Footnote ³⁷ These views concord with what is said in the book of Wisdom: “Yes, naturally stupid are all men who have not known God and who…by studying the works, have failed to recognize the Artificer” (Ws. 13:1).Footnote ³⁸

Such statements do not commit Aquinas to affirming that God stands to creation as an artificer to artifacts in every respect. The comparison stands as to the need for an intelligent being to account for the ordering to an end of both. However, the manner in which the intelligent being does the ordering considered from the point of view of its mind (be it discursively or otherwise) is a separate question, and the manner in which this ordering is realized in the work of intelligence (be it as imposed from without or instilled in it) is yet another question (as was noted earlier). Feser maintains that Paley “at least by implication” maintains that the intelligent being concluded to designs things in the discursive manner that we humans do, but “with massively greater facility.”Footnote ³⁹ Regardless of whether or not Paley thinks this, it does not follow from anything that he states in his argument from design, and thus in no way weighs against it. The simple fact that Paley “model[s] his designer on human designers” does not substantiate Feser's claim. Both Aquinas and Paley get their notion of practical intelligence as the ability to grasp an end as end and order means to it from reflection on human intelligence and its artworks, which is hardly surprising as these are plainly what are best known to us. Perhaps Aquinas and Paley part ways as to how the divine mind works; however, this is a question separate from and subordinate to the question of the existence of an intelligent being responsible for the ordering to an end in natural things.

4. Some Differences in the Two Arguments

This is not to deny that there are differences in the two arguments. The major premise of Paley's argument is restricted to things that have different parts. From the very outset, Paley excludes from his argument natural bodies that are simple, such as rocks, lacking or at least apparently lacking as they do “several parts framed and put together for a purpose.”Footnote ⁴⁰ And later in his work he notes that his argument does not apply to minerals and the heavenly bodies because they appear to lack differentiated parts.Footnote ⁴¹ The major premise of Aquinas's second syllogism is less restrictive, applying, as it does, to all natural bodies. Aquinas's conclusion, accordingly, applies to all natural bodies. Given that all natural things (at least in the sense of substance) are natural bodies,Footnote ⁴² the intelligent being concluded to is a cause vis-à-vis all natural things: “Therefore, there is something intelligent, by which all natural things are ordered to an end.” Paley's argument or arguments are limited to concluding to an intelligent being responsible for the ordering to an end found in a specific complex natural feature, such as the eye.

Would Aquinas reject Paley's more restricted argument? First, Aquinas would see the major premise of his second syllogism to stand to Paley's major premise as a universal proposition to a particular one, i.e., “Everything which tends to an end, lacking knowledge, is a thing that is directed [to an end] by some knowing and intelligent being” includes the proposition that complex things lacking knowledge, but ordered to an end, are ordered by an intelligent being. Secondly, Aquinas, like Paley, acknowledges that there is an ordering of means to an end in the complex organs of organisms:

Thus, Aquinas would agree that Paley's design argument allows one to correctly conclude from the complex order of the parts in the foot which allows it to achieve the end of locomotion that there is aliquid intelligens responsible for this order.

This conclusion counters Feser's claim that Paley's argument is “a cumulative and probabilistic ‘argument to the best explanation.’” Further examination of this claim will confirm that it should be rejected. Feser's asserts that “Paley thinks the probability of design so high that he speaks confidently of ‘the necessity of an intelligent Creator.’”Footnote ⁴⁴ Yet aside from an argument based on Feser's claim regarding Paley's “extrinsic teleology” (which we have seen is not essential to Paley's design argument), the only thing Feser offers in support of this position is a footnote which points to occasional passages where Paley speaks in terms of probability and which then refers us to another author.Footnote ⁴⁵ But this hardly shows that Paley thinks he is offering an argument that is only probable. It is quite clear that he thinks it to be certain, at least in the case of the eye:

As to the cumulative nature of Paley's argument which Feser refers to, here is what Paley himself says:

Paley thinks that not just one proof, but many proofs, can be given for the existence of an intelligent being. He recognizes here and elsewhere that one may give a mistaken example of a multiplicity of parts ordered to achieve a goal, in which case one erroneously infers the existence of an intelligent being. However, he thinks that there are many cases where such ordering can be known with certitude, and that the proofs based on these cases can be regarded as a cumulative argument insofar as one can be added to another, but not as if each were a necessary part of that argument which if absent would weaken the conclusion. Paley is not proposing “an argument to the best explanation,” but many independent proofs of the same conclusion.

If we look again at Paley's argument to consider very briefly what we ourselves think of its certitude, we see that the syllogism is valid, and the major premise is no more questionable than the major Aquinas uses in his second syllogism. A question I have concerns the type evidence proposed to establish that a given feature does in fact have parts ordered to achieve a goal. For example, in the case of the eye, Paley affirms:

The evidence Paley relies on here is the fruit of scientific investigation rather than the more general and surer evidence of common experience. And this raises a question about his argument(s) certitude. We are taught in school that there is a lens in the eye, but how many of us have actually seen one? While I think my belief that the eye has a lens is quite reasonable, it is still a belief. Also, not everyone has experience with artificial lenses, and so not everyone has even a basic understanding of how they work. One might argue then that Paley should restrict his argument to examples that do not require scientific experience to be known, examples such as the one Aquinas gives of the foot which “reced[ing] from its natural disposition, is not apt [for walking],” or perhaps better yet the hand, insofar as the general ordering of the parts is patently obvious, e.g., the thumb is opposed to the other fingers in order to make grasping things possible (unlike our toes). Further examination of Paley's argument on this point is plainly in order.

5. Is Paley's Argument to be Rejected on the Same Grounds as Are Intelligent Design Arguments?

Paley's argument is sometimes assimilated to the arguments of intelligent design (ID) thinkers,Footnote ⁴⁹ and is rejected on the same grounds as they are, i.e., as being an argument from ignorance.Footnote ⁵⁰ It is true that Paley speaks in a manner similar to ID thinkersFootnote ⁵¹ on at least one occasion: “if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.”Footnote ⁵² However, this claim does not enter into his argument from design. Moreover, unlike the ID thinkers, Paley sees that the causes immediately responsible for the production of something whose parts are ordered to achieve a goal need not also be responsible for this very ordering. This can be seen from the conclusion he draws from his quaint comparison of reproduction in organisms to the imaginary case of a watch producing another watch:

To express the same thought using a biological example: canine parents are responsible for the production of their pups, but they are not responsible for the ordering to an end found in the parts of these pups. ID thinkers fail to make this distinction, as their reasoning is based on the false dichotomy that either blind natural causes produce a result or intelligent ones do so.Footnote ⁵⁴ Paley sees that the fact that blind natural causes produce a result does not preclude that an intelligent cause may also be required to explain it. His argument is not concerned with the proximate causes of the production of things manifesting design, but with the need to explain the ordering of the parts to an end in them: “This mechanism being observed…and understood, the inference, we think, is inevitable…that there must have existed at some time and at some place or other, an artificer…who comprehended its construction and designed its use” (emphasis added).Footnote ⁵⁵ It is easy to see in the case of human art that the one who designs something need not be the one who executes the design, e.g., an architect as such does not do construction work and may even be dead before his plan is executed. Paley would not be fazed if he were to become acquainted with evolutionary explanations of how organic features arose, for he maintains that while blind causes can explain the production of an effect which is ordered, they cannot explain the order in the effect.

ID arguments are critiqued on the grounds that the biologists’ current ignorance of how certain biological features have arisen does not establish that these features arose through non-natural processes. Paley, however, is not arguing on the basis of what we do not know (e.g., how certain features, such as the flagellum, originated). He bases himself on what we do know: that order and adjustment of parts to achieve goals is present in living things. Thus, his design argument, unlike ID arguments, would be unaffected if scientists came up with explanations in terms of natural causes for how biological features evolved.Footnote ⁵⁶

6. Humean Objections to Paley's Argument

Paley's argument is also sometimes faulted on the grounds that it fails to provide an answer to questions concerning the nature of the intelligence that is concluded to. This type of objection, which we see repeated over and over in the literature, traces back to Hume, e.g., “And what shadow of an argument, continued PHILO, can you produce, from your hypothesis, to prove the unity of the DEITY? A great number of men join in building a house or a ship…why may not several deities combine in framing a world?”Footnote ⁵⁷ Few seem to have noticed the irrelevance of such objections. A single argument obviously has one conclusion and not two, and it thereby answers one question. There is nothing problematic at all about Paley's argument answering one question (does God exists?) and not answering other questions concerning the divine nature, e.g., is God one? Is God a material being? Is God omniscient? Nor does the fact that no further conclusion is derived from it say anything about its soundness. It would be absurd to say that Euclidian proofs whose conclusions are never used in later proofs are for that reason bad arguments. Indeed, so far as I can see, while in the Prima Pars Aquinas uses the conclusion of some of the five ways in later establishing some of the divine attributes (e.g., Aquinas reasons to the identity of essence and existence in God on the grounds that he is causam efficientem primam,Footnote ⁵⁸ which is concluded to in the second way), he never uses “aliquid intelligens” to establish any other truth about God, including those truths that are related to intelligence, such as whether God has scientia, whether God has ideas, and whether all things are subject to God's providence.Footnote ⁵⁹ Paley himself calls attention to how people get sidetracked by other questions: “When we are inquiring simply after the existence of an intelligent Creator, imperfection, inaccuracy, liability to disorder, occasional irregularities, may subsist, in a considerable degree, without inducing any doubt into the question,” for while such raise questions concerning “the skill of the artist…these are different questions from the question of the artist's existence…and the questions ought always to be kept separate in the mind.”Footnote ⁶⁰

Christopher Martin is one of many who raise basically the same type of objection that Hume does: “The second objection to the argument from design is that it does not get us to God, but only to a Designer, A Demiurge…. The Being whose existence is revealed to us is not God but the Great Architect of the Deists and Freemasons….”Footnote ⁶¹ Yet the question of deism or whether or not God governs things after creating them is a separate question from God's existence. Paley's argument is not to be faulted because it does not address another question. (Aquinas takes up deism in the Prima Pars [I 105.5] in a separate question, long after he addresses the question of God's existence [I 2.3].) Similarly, the claim that Paley's argument is to be rejected because it only gets us to a Demiurge or a subordinate deity that crafts the material universeFootnote ⁶² is based on the false expectation that a single argument answer more than one question. Paley's argument again draws the single conclusion that there is an intelligent being behind a given natural feature that has a manifest ordering of its parts to a goal; it draws no conclusion about the nature of this intelligence.Footnote ⁶³