The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence For An Intelligent Designer [Paperback]

"...Sure enough, I located eight volumes of the Bridgewater Treatises, published in the mid-1830s. Some of them were last stamped with a withdrawal date thirty years ago. I was not in the mainstream of modern thought.

"'The Right Honourable Earl of Bridgewater by his last Will and Testament directed Eight thousand pounds . . . that persons should be appointed to write print and publish one thousand copies of a work On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation; illustrating such work by all reasonable arguments, as for instance the variety and formation of God's creatures in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms . . . .'

"The eight authors were individuals of great distinction; five were members of the Royal Society. Each produced a definitive work of contemporary science pointing to the design and order behind all phenomena. While they were penning their words, Charles Darwin was a-sea. He and many others were developing the scientific information that by the 1860s would lead to violent confrontation with the followers of the Reverend Francis Henry, the Earl of Bridgewater. . . .In addition to not foreseeing Darwinism, the post-Newtonians had, curiously, neglected an important idea from the past: The God of the argument from design is not the God of the Old or New Testament.

". . .[These] physicotheologians . . . ended up with a kind of pantheism: universal intelligence or world mind. The God of Judeo-Christianity interacts directly in human affairs and therefore exists outside of nature. The post-Newtonians, in introducing the argument from design, were ignoring the profoundly historical epistemological foundations of Western religion and were thus undermining the basis of the theology of the Church of England, which they wished to support. Identifying God with nature can lead to the piety and belief of Spinoza but cannot lead to the God of history, who interacts directly in the affairs of humans with little concern over the fine points of obeying the laws of physics."

Do be careful. In your attempts to push a God--any God--into the public classroom, you may well succeed in harnessing the public schools to teach explicit pantheism to your children. Is this what you really want? If not, then I suggest that you take this book with a large grain of salt.

The text itself proves the lack of erudition amongst the self-avowed "scholars."

"Astronomical Evidences for a Personal, Transcendent God."

I rest my case.