Adam Smith uses the term "invisible hand" three times in his writings (only once in Wealth of Nations) in a manner which makes clear that it isn't a description of a mechanism but rather a remarking on the unknown nature of a complex process.
Smith was immersed in an atheistic tradition (a more overt contemporary would have been Smith's close friend David Hume), and "invisible hand" immediately suggests the more theistically-themed phrase "hand of God". Smith himself was not openly athiestic, and uses religious terms and concepts elsewhere (notably in The Theory of Moral Sentiments), but does seem to at the very least be liberally-minded. His mother, with whom he lived until late in his own life, was quite religious, which may have affected his thinking and/or writing.
But "invisible hand", again, should be interpreted as "by some unknown or poorly-understood mechanism", which is to say, an expression of ignorance, where it's most often interpreted or presented as a description of the mechanism, which is really inexcusable.
Smith was immersed in an atheistic tradition (a more overt contemporary would have been Smith's close friend David Hume), and "invisible hand" immediately suggests the more theistically-themed phrase "hand of God". Smith himself was not openly athiestic, and uses religious terms and concepts elsewhere (notably in The Theory of Moral Sentiments), but does seem to at the very least be liberally-minded. His mother, with whom he lived until late in his own life, was quite religious, which may have affected his thinking and/or writing.
But "invisible hand", again, should be interpreted as "by some unknown or poorly-understood mechanism", which is to say, an expression of ignorance, where it's most often interpreted or presented as a description of the mechanism, which is really inexcusable.