These days few biologists would try to pin their religious faith, if they have any, on biological evidence, and the apparent design to which Paley referred would be attributed instead to the evolutionary mechanism which Charles Darwin called natural selection. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is universally accepted among serious biologists (except for a few so-called creationist scientists), even if arguments continue over the details. Darwin proposed a three-stage cycle that starts with variation in the form and behaviour of individuals. In any given set of environmental conditions some individuals are better able to survive and reproduce than others because of their distinctive characteristics. The historical process of becoming adapted notches forward a step if the factors that gave rise to those distinctive characteristics are inherited in the course of reproduction. Suppose, for example, that an individual bacterium happens to have heritable characteristics that make it resistant to an antibiotic. While all the others are killed by the antibiotic, this one will survive and multiply rapidly. Before long, the world is full of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Darwinian evolution requires no unconscious motives for propagation — let alone conscious ones.