I don't have an electronic version of the review, so I have
transcribed one section. For those who do access the review, there
is an amusing anecdote about the alternative US title: "One continual
puke" (which the publisher politely rejected).
The quote:
-------------
The chapter Jones found most difficult to write is that dealing with
one of the most vexing questions in the field: the nature of species,
what species are and what keeps them apart. Darwin called the problem
of explaining and defining species the "mystery of mysteries". Jones
says "On the Origin of Species is not really about the origin of
species at all because Darwin never really gets straight what makes
species happen, why they do not just blend into one another, how
barriers to this arise. The short answer is that we still haven't
got it quite right on that."
[snip]
He says that if creationists - "they do not make me laugh, they make
me weep"- really wanted to embarrass evolutionary scientists they
would put up their hands and simply ask what a species is. "Every
evolutionist would hum and ha and splutter, and I do quite a bit of
spluttering on that one in the book, " Jones says.
----------
Jones has put his finger on something of importance here.
Darwin set the agenda by saying evidence for variation/speciation is
evidence for evolution, and creationists have been mostly on the
defensive ever since. Instead, creationists should be asking the
question, "how much variation might be possible in created
organisms?"
Now that "Mere Creation?" is in print (InterVarsity Press, 1998,
edited by W.A. Dembski), the essentials of a coherent creationist
position can be read by anyone. I refer to the article "Basic Types
of life" by Professor Siegfried Scherer (pages 195-211). Scherer and
his colleages have demonstrated in a 1993 book that the ideas are
viable, but few outside Germany appear to have read their research.
The arguments have surfaced from time to time on this list, and I am
sure will continue to do so. In essence, the traditional darwinian
argument that "variation in nature is proof of evolution" is flawed.
There is at least one creationist model for variations in nature,
including speciation, adaptive radiations, etc. We really need to
probe more deeply as to WHAT the variations are, and whether those
variations are able to distinguish between evolutionary and
creationary models. Then we shall be doing real science, rather than
Kuhnian "normal" science.
best regards,
David J. Tyler.