August 17, 2001

Why Bad Things Have Happened to Good Creatures

By DAVID P. BARASH

In 1829, Francis Henry Egerton, the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, bequeathed £8,000 to the Royal Society of London to support the publication of works "On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as Manifested in the Creation." The resulting Bridgewater Treatises, published from 1833 to 1840, were classic statements of "natural theology," seeking to demonstrate God's existence by examining the natural world's "perfection."

These days, biologists are often inclined, similarly, to

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