Future scientists could easily find a natural explanation for the apparent “design” in nature, and then what would happen to a faith that depended on scientific theory?57 It was pointless to try to deduce God’s existence from nature, argued the physicist Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717–83), because our knowledge of the universe was incomplete: we could observe it only at a given moment of time. There was also plenty of natural evidence to suggest that far from being a loving Creator, God might in truth be willful and irresponsible.
