And he next argued that the designer had manu of the characteristics of the G od whom he worshipped. To my mind his argument leads to a radically different conclusion. Let us suppose an intelligent savage to come upon one of the battlefields of World War II , and to examine tanks, artillery, rifles, land mines, and other weapons left behind in the desert. He would conclude that the British weapons had been designed to destroy the German ones, and conversely. He might have a little difficulty if he got evidence that the Germans and Italians had had a scrap on their own, but we may omit this complication.
All animals live by eating other animals or plants.
They may kill t hem, as we kill rabbits and potatoes, or merely eat parts of them, as we eat parts of the apple tree and the flea drinks parts of us. A few, such as the blowflies, beetles, and 'worms', actually mostly insect larvae, which eat our bodies if they get the chance, eat only dead food, apart from bacteria. And these exceptional pacifists are not the noblest of animals. The plants generall y compete by pushing, rather than biting. Look at a plantain spreading its leaves over the grass of your lawn, or a tree cutting off the sun from the plants below it till they die.