The selection of the authors of the Bridgewater treatises

Abstract

THE argument for the existence of God from Design using the model of Newtonian scientific methodology formed the basis of the Natural Theology of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since the proof of God’s existence rested on what God was believed to have accomplished, and His continual benevolent activity was regarded as the explanation of everything which science could not explain, the power of the argument decreased proportionally as the horizons of science expanded. Nevertheless, a steady stream of learned and more popular literature on natural theology was published during the one hundred years after Newton’s death in 1727. The spate of publications continued despite Hume’s contention at the end of the eighteenth century that the use of analogical reasoning in theological discourse had no logical validity (1). In theology, unlike science, hypotheses cannot be tested either directly or by the fulfilment of certain predictions based on the original hypotheses. Although the use of analogical reasoning in scientific discourse is an invaluable aid to the formulation of hypotheses, these always have to be tested against experience. This is impossible in theology since the design analogy does not produce (in Hume’s requirement) a constant conjunction between the hypothetical first cause, God, and its effects, the materials of the observed world. We cannot confirm the existence of a World Designer by observing Him make one. Even so, as has been pointed out recently, the design argument continued to be used after Hume because ‘previously acquired and emotionally grounded prejudices in its favor’ were psychologically persuasive (2). In fact, this kind of natural theology remained a subject of considerable popularity, and it survived, in Great Britain at least, until the biological theory of evolution demolished the last vestiges of the design argument’s empirical foundations.