The analogical design argument

We begin our study of natural theology with design arguments, not because they are logically prior to the other arguments for God's existence, but because they are grounded in so common and widespread an experience – that of beholding the complexity, grandeur and apparent design of the world around us. How many of us have cast a heavenward glance at the star-studded sky on a spectacularly clear night and been moved to the thought “surely this could not have come about by sheer accident, but must be the work of some supernatural being”? Or, for those whose wonder is moved by the microcosmic, how many of us lazily stretched out on a lawn have fixed upon a single blade of grass, contemplated the cellular machinery necessary to produce chlorophyll, and been moved to the same thought? Surely, our initial sentiments suggest that the world and all it contains could not have arisen by accident, that it must be the work of an intelligent agent; and who better than God to produce a world of such scale and intricacy?

Whittaker Chambers, who gave important evidence against convicted Communist spy Alger Hiss during the Cold War, wrote in his book Witness: