Henry Peter Brougham Quotes

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!

The combination in time and space of all these thoughtful conceptions exhibits not only thought. It shows also premeditation, power, wisdom, greatness, prescience, omniscience, providence. In one word, all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know, adore, and love.

We must prove design before we can infer a designer.

No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design.

But there are still many who continue to marvel at the wisdom of God in so planning the universe that big rivers run by great towns, and that death comes at the end of life instead of in the middle of it. Divest pleas ... of their semi-philosophic jargon, reduce his illustrations to homely similes, and he is marvelling at the wisdom of God who so planned things that the two extremities of a piece of wood should come at the ends instead of in the middle.

Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself.

Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.

God provides for him that trusteth.

The question is: exactly how did life get here? Was it by natural selection and random mutation or was it by something else? Everybody - even Richard Dawkins - sees design in biology. You see this design when you see co-ordinated parts coming together to perform a function - like in a hand. And so it's the appearance of design that everybody's trying to explain. So that if Darwin's theory doesn't explain it we're left with no other explanation than maybe it really was designed. That's essentially the design argument.

There is in this Universe much of what seems to be design.

God is weaving His tapestry according to his own grand design. All flesh is in His hands. We have no need to fear. We have no need to worry. Our imperative need is to be found doing our duty.

Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.

Just as the telescope and microscope show us that there is order and design in all the works of God's hand, from the greatest planet down to the least insect, so does the Bible teach us that there is wisdom, order, and design in all the events of our daily life. There is no such thing as 'chance', 'luck', or 'accident' in the Christian journey through this world.

God's hand never slips.

Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain.

Prayer honors God, acknowledges His being, exalts His power, adores His providence, secures His aid.

My computer is a very complex gadget and it was designed by many designers, so why must the universe have only a single designer and not many designers?

Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic...could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot.

In the works of Nature, purpose, not accident, is the main thing.

Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What is in me dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the heighth of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.

Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality...which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?

Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as Dutchman's Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman's Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.

The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it.