I really enjoyed Jay Richards’s conversation with Eric Sammons, editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine. The subject was the new book, God’s Grandeur: The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design, edited by biologist Ann Gauger, to which Dr. Richards contributed a 7,000-word (!) essay on the meaning of randomness in the context of the evolution debate. Jay has a great sense of humor and Sammons is a very personable interlocutor who realizes, by the end of the interview, that he was an intelligent design proponent all along without realizing it.
I liked this line from Richards about the causes behind the disdain for ID emanating from certain quarters: “At the very least if intelligent design is right then the standard materialistic explanations across the academic disciplines are at best inadequate or, I would say, actually false. So there are a lot of oxes being gored on this. It’s hardly surprising that Wikipedians and the media hate intelligent design with a kind of [white-hot] passion otherwise reserved for pro-lifers.” True! He also offers helpful comments about the Genesis account of creation and the difference between God’s “days” and our own. The text seems to be prompting us to think they are not the same. Excellent.