I pass this review of ID-related books on. A half hour with any
historian of science (or religion) would benefit the reviewer immensely.
He has no clue. Unfortunatly, the ID books did nothing to confront his
ignorance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joel W. Cannon | (724)223-6146 Physics Department | Washington and Jefferson College | Washington, PA 15301 |
attached mail follows:
The New York Review of Books October 4, 2001
Saving Us from Darwin
By Frederick C. Crews
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS REVIEW
The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism by Phillip E. Johnson InterVarsity Press, 192 pp., $17.99
Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong by Jonathan Wells Regnery, 338 pp., $27.95
Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe Touchstone, 307 pp., $13.00 (paper)
Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design edited by William A. Dembski InterVarsity Press, 475 pp., $24.99 (paper)
Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology by William A. Dembski InterVarsity Press, 312 pp., $21.99
Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism by Robert T. Pennock Bradford/MIT Press, 429 pp., $18.95 (paper)
Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution by Kenneth R. Miller Cliff Street Books/HarperCollins,338 pp., $14.00 (paper
It is no secret that science and religion, once allied in homage to divinely crafted harmonies, have long been growing apart. As the scientific worldview has become more authoritative and self-sufficient, it has loosed a cascade of appalling fears: that the human soul, insofar as it can be said to exist, may be a mortal and broadly comprehensible product of material forces; that the immanent, caring God of the Western monotheisms may never have been more than a fiction devised by members of a species that self-indulgently denies its continuity with the rest of nature; and that our universe may lack any discernible purpose, moral character, or special relation to ourselves. But as those intimations have spread, the retrenchment known as creationism has also gained in strength and has widened its appeal, acquiring recruits and sympathizers among intellectual sophisticates, hard-headed pragmatists, and even some scientists. And so formidable a political influence is this wave of resistance that some Darwinian thinkers who stand quite apart from it nevertheless feel obliged to placate it with tactful sophistries, lest the cause of evolutionism itself be swept away.
As everyone knows, it was the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 that set off the counterrevolution that eventually congealed into creationism. It isn't immediately obvious, however, why Darwin and not, say, Copernicus, Galileo, or Newton should have been judged the most menacing of would-be deicides. After all, the subsiding of faith might have been foreseeable as soon as the newly remapped sky left no plausible site for heaven. But people are good at living with contradictions, just so long as their self-importance isn't directly insulted. That shock was delivered when Darwin dropped his hint that, as the natural selection of every other species gradually proves its cogency, "much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."
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To read the entire review, please click on the following link:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14581
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