Apropo of our evolution discussion, the New York Times has a review of a book, INTELLIGENT DESIGN CREATIONISM AND ITS CRITICS: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives.Edited by Robert T. Pennock at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/14/books/review/14HOLTLT.html
To read the article you need to register - it's free, and I think very worthwhile, anyway - but here are a couple of extracts: In the last decade or so, creationism has grown sophisticated. Oh, the old-fashioned creationists are still around, especially in the Bible Belt. They're the ones who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that God created it and all its inhabitants in six days and that fossils are a product of Noah's flood. In the early 1990's, however, a new breed of creationists appeared. These ''neo-creos,'' as they have been called, are no Dogpatch hayseeds. They have Ph.D.'s and occupy positions at some of the better universities. The case they make against Darwinism does not rest on the authority of Scripture; rather, it proceeds from premises that are scientific and philosophical, invoking esoteric ideas in molecular biology, information theory and the logic of hypothesis testing. ... The neo-creos are right to think that evolution is not religiously neutral. If nothing else, it undercuts what has traditionally been the most powerful argument for God's existence, the ''argument from design.'' No longer is the God hypothesis required to explain the intricate complexity of the living world. Christian intellectuals who accept Darwinism insist that evolution still leaves ample scope for a Creator-God, one who got the universe rolling in just the right way so that, by sheer chemistry and physics, beings like us would inevitably appear without further supernatural meddling. ... To regain the advantage for religion, the neo-creos have devised a two-part strategy. First, they try to establish their intelligent-design theory as the only alternative to Darwinism for explaining life. (The content of intelligent design is deliberately left vague: it can mean either creation by the designing agent or purposefully ''guided'' evolution.) Then they proceed negatively, deploying various arguments to show that Darwinian mechanisms could not possibly do the trick. The logic of this strategy is impeccable: Either Darwinism or intelligent design. Not Darwinism. Therefore, intelligent design. Armed with that conclusion, they hope to pry scientifically minded people away from a purely secular worldview. Cheers, Brett
