Chance…sound: The repudiation of ‘chance’ as a potential author of the universe was one of the key tenets of the so-called teleological argument, or argument from design, in support of the existence of a creator-God. Influential proponents of this argument included William Derham (1657-1735) and William Paley (1743-1805), whose Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of The Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802) became, for the nineteenth century, the seminal statement of the position. See, for example, Paley, Natural Theology (14th edition; 1813), pp. 62-3:
I desire no greater certainty in reasoning, than
that by which chance is excluded from the present disposition of the natural world. Universal experience is against it. What does chance
ever do for us? In the human body, for instance, chance, i.e. the operation of causes without design, may produce a wen, a
wart, a mole, a pimple, but never an eye.