What counts as gradual? Any evidence of transitions between body types in the fossil record, whether those transitions took millions or thousands of years, hardly helps the theist’s design argument. The point is that the fossil record helps to show that nature does all the work. We have the record left by the genetic code, too, which lays out the transitions between phenotypes.

I haven’t read much Paley, so I’m not familiar with the overall logic of his argument as it’s set out in his words. If his argument isn’t analogical, then it’s certainly been misreported in the popular record since again his argument is known as an early watchmaker analogy. But maybe he’s been misinterpreted.

If his central point is what you say it is, I hardly think it’s a strong one. We have extra information when it comes to the invention of things like telescopes, since we collectively are the inventors and we have an insider’s view of ourselves and our purposes, through introspection. We have no such information when it comes to the source of nature or of organic life in general.

Maybe Paley’s argument is based on extreme empiricism, like Hume’s effective reductio of empiricism? If we confine ourselves to stimuli from the external world, perhaps the evidence would be comparable. But that’s to unnecessarily tie our hands behind our backs. We needn’t approach telescopes like we’re aliens from another galaxy, whereas we are in fact alienated from nature’s mindless physicality.