Walter L. Bradley is a retired professor of engineering,

old Earth creationist Old Earth creationism (OEC) is an umbrella of theological views encompassing certain varieties of creationism which may or can include day-age creationism, gap creationism, progressive creationism, and sometimes theistic evolutionism. Broadly sp ...

and an advocate of

intelligent design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for its bold attempt to ...

Academic career

Bradley taught mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University. He is a professor at

Baylor University Baylor University is a private Baptist Christian research university in Waco, Texas. Baylor was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the ...

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...

college in

Waco, Texas Waco ( ) is the county seat of McLennan County, Texas, United States. It is situated along the Brazos River and I-35, halfway between Dallas and Austin. The city had a 2020 population of 138,486, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the st ...

Intelligent design

Bradley is the co-author, along with Roger Olsen and Charles Thaxton, of ''The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories''. This book, published in 1984, presents a

creationist Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 'th ...

interpretation of

abiogenesis In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...

, attributing it to "Special Creation by a creator beyond the cosmos", and says that Special Creation holds "that the ''source that produced life'' was intelligent".

William Dembski William Albert Dembski (born July 18, 1960) is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the ...

has described Bradley as one of the originators of the

intelligent design movement The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific Article available froUniversiteit Gent/ref> idea of intelligent design (ID), which ...

, and the book as seminal in the ID movement. Bradley was one of the pioneers of the concept of

, attempting to explain topics not yet understood by science as the activity of God. Bradley's writings on the subject anticipated some of the concepts later articulated by William Dembski and

Michael Behe Michael Joseph Behe ( ; born January 18, 1952) is an American biochemist and author, widely known as an advocate of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID). He serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsy ...

, and he was a participant in early meetings regarding the

wedge strategy The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the ...

, a religious public relations campaign with a goal of reshaping American culture to adopt

evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

values. As of 2007, Bradley was on the selection committee for the Trotter Prize, which rewards work on intelligent design.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bradley, Walter 21st-century American engineers Christian Old Earth creationists American Christian creationists Intelligent design advocates Living people 1943 births