The clockmaker God licensed human dominion over earth through engineering

Evidence

For the mechanists, God became a clockmaker and an engineer constructing and directing the world from outside. It was Mersenne’s hope and intention to replace The Imitation of Jesus Christ by The Imitation of the Divine Engineer. The engineer’s art gave humanity not only the opportunity to imitate God “in external productions” but also the possibility of dominion over the earth. For Gassendi, God was the external governor and director of the world. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 849

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Building the panopticon produces God as an emergent architectural byproduct — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 65; The panopticon produces God the way an assembly line produces a body — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 63; The clock metaphor’s autonomy forced theological debate over God’s intervention — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 851 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Building the panopticon produces God as an emergent architectural byproduct #expands (0.85) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 65
• The panopticon produces God the way an assembly line produces a body #expands (0.85) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 63
• The clock metaphor’s autonomy forced theological debate over God’s intervention #expands (0.80) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 851
• Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic parodied Enlightenment views of God as clockmaker #complicates (0.75) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 701