But truly these men do not reflect on the analogies even of small familiar things which might come under observation at any time, and from which they might learn that no object of any utility, and fitted to be serviceable, is made without design or by mere chance, but is wrought by skill of hand, and is contrived so as to meet its proper use. And when the object falls out of service and becomes useless, then it also begins to break up indeterminately, and to decompose and dissipate its materials in every casual and unregulated way, just as the wisdom by which it was skillfully constructed at first no longer controls and sustains it.
Dionysius of Alexandria, 190-264 AD, II--From the Books on Nature, II (translated by Rev. S. D. F. Salmond, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Hendrickson Publishers, 2004, Vol. 6, p. 85)
Is this a reasonable analogy? How should it affect our thinking?
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