If you happen upon a watch lying on a beach, then you’d of course assume that there was a watchmaker responsible for that watch: a designer of that watch. Even the most rational people who lived in the age of religion, before the triumph of science, found it natural to think the same about plants, animals, etc. There must be a designer of nature, for nature is too orderly to not have a designer.

Analogously, most modern people—even those very familiar with science—look at society and think that there must be a designer, here not God but the State: When society seems intelligently ordered such that good things happen systematically, then surely there’s an intelligent and benevolent individual (or group of individuals) who made that order deliberately. And when society seems intelligently ordered such that bad things happen systematically, then surely there’s the evil counterpart of the aforementioned: an intelligent and malevolent individual (or group of individuals) who made that order deliberately. But the idea of natural order makes it clear that even the most orderly system needn’t have a “watchmaker,” a designer. We don’t need to invoke God to explain nature, and we don’t need to invoke the State to explain society. The invisible hands of Darwin and Smith show how the order in nature and society actually came about, viz. via evolution.