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Meyer and Klavan: The Tradition of British Natural Theology 

Image: John Ray, National Portrait Gallery, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Stephen Meyer talked with Andrew Klavan about the science behind what he calls the God hypothesis. As luck would have it, Dr. Meyer joined the conversation from a very special city. “Just to put it in a little historical context,” says the author of Return of the God Hypothesis, “I’m here in Cambridge, England, right now and this is the city of Sir Isaac Newton, for example, and his tutor Isaac Barrow and before him John Ray. Scholars would call this tradition of thought British natural theology, and science actually came out of this idea that that the natural world was revealing something about the reality of God.” That is Ray pictured above, whose works include The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation

Meyer explained that intelligent design is something of a back-to-the-future program, seeking to recapture the tradition of Newton, Barrow, and Ray, “challenging the way science has been done for the last 150 years and trying to take it back to the way science started.” “Back to the future” thinking like this resonates with me. Check out Klavan and Meyer for a good dose of it: