The fine art of the surgeon

Perhaps because they treat the body as a machine and see more than most of the grim side of human life, doctors, it used to be thought, were particularly liable to atheism. Whether or not this is so epidemiologically speaking, four of the eight authors of the Bridgewater Treatises defending the notion of a divine designer were doctors.

The Bridgewater Treatises were written in accordance with the terms of the will of the Right Honourable and Reverend Francis Henry, Earl of Bridgewater, who died in 1829, each treatise to be by a recognised scholar to illustrate “the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation . . . as for instance the variety and …