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I agree, God does exist. However, here is why your argument is wrong. And use the search feature... type in 'Intelligent Design' and get the thread with that in its title. Anyways...
Paley's teleological argument, more aptly dubbed the argument from design, is essentially comprised of the premises that nature is complex and purposeful, and could not have been created save by an intelligent creator with a purpose. If we were, as Paley hypothetically puts it, to find a watch in the middle of the forest, would we say that it had come into being on its own? Given that it is a very intricate contraption, and is able (conveniently) to tell time, we would naturally assume that a watch-maker had constructed it. Similarly, Paley argues, a great variety of beings that exist are similarly complicated, and serve a purpose:, as do we: to please god. Just as no one would assume that a watch had been formed through natural processes, Paley argues, we must not make such an assumption about the universe, nor ourselves.
Unfortunately, this argument has a number of flaws. Firstly, any competent engineer understands that one of the most fundamental principles of design is that simplicity is preferable to complexity. The simplest functional method of doing something is always the best way. So, if we can detect in anything supposedly created by God any unnecessary overuse of materials, or anything that is tangled with complexity, we can infer that either the creator does not meet the criteria laid out for Godhood, or there is some alternate method of explaining the universe, other than its creation by an ultimate being.
The other aspect of Paley's argument, that creation has a distinct and discernible purpose, can be disproved soundly. If for some reason something which has supposedly been created by God exists in a form such that it is restricted in its purpose, and our theory of creation can provide no principled reason to support its being so, we must conclude that there is another explanation that does account for the state of this thing. In other words, if, given the argument that all things were created by God, we are left asking 'why are things assembled this way, when it is so obviously deficient', then we are correct to seek an alternative theory that would tell us why.
To add perspective, here is a hypothetical situation to counter Paley's. Suppose that you had a dog who, when asked simple arithmetic questions, would bark the answers correctly. You assume, based on this, that the dog has an understanding of mathematics. However, you note that the dog could (suspiciously) only answer correctly if his trainer knew the answers and was present; curiously enough, were any other individual to ask the sum of two small numbers, the dog would remain mute. The concept of the owner's presence is not connected to the concept of mathematics, and yet the dog's ability to solve problems relies on it. Given this, we must say that the dog has no knowledge of mathematics. It is not simply improbable that the dog knows arithmetic, it is conceptually preposterous given the circumstances. To apply this to the discussion at hand, were we to find an example in creation, (though the universe as a whole may on some level seem well conceived) of poor or wasteful design, we can conclude that creation is not intelligently designed, and there is no way of defining 'intelligent design' so that it would apply to creation.
In the interest of furthering these premises, it would be fitting to present several examples of markedly poor and wasteful design, that, had an omniscient creator made them, would be wantonly stupid in their conception. In many birds, the bones of the legs are hollow to facilitate easier flight, an incredibly efficient design that would seem to support Paley. However, why is the same design present in the Ostrich and the Emu, which are not only flightless birds, but depend on leg strength for their transportation? They too have many hollow bones*. There is incredible waste in all parts of nature; many animals' eggs (fish, for instance) are incredibly multitudinous, but few young survive. Of the thousands of acorns dropped from trees, only a few actually grow. Finally, it is an interesting fact of human anatomy that the eye, due to certain cells being in backwards, create a 'blind spot' present in many mammals. Despite this, the same problem does not exist in the Octopus and the squid, assumedly God's chosen creatures. There are hundreds, if not thousands of other examples of inefficient design, and it is because of this fact that we should doubt Paley's explanation as firm proof of God's existence.
We do not even require that any other theory be present in order to reject Paley; for there must simply be some alternative, whether or not we know what it is. To assume that there is simply one answer or another, the popular theories in this case being evolution and creation, would create a false dilemma. To prove one wrong does not immediately affirm the other. Another answer may exist, and we do not require knowledge of it to dismiss those currently under examination. So, despite the fact that it defeats the purpose of religion and leaves us in the dark asking 'why?', the dismissal of Paley's argument from design is the most logical conclusion to its examination.
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The follwing is By Douglas Adams.
~
'The Babel fish,' said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, 'is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
'Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
'The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
'`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
'`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
'`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
'Meanwhile, the poor Babel Fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.'
~From 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', By Douglas Adams~
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In a haze
A stormy haze
I’ll be around
I’ll be loving you
Always
Always
Here I am
And I’ll take my time
Here I am
And I’ll wait in line
Always
Always...
