Science and Culture Today | Page 1267 | Discovering Design in Nature

Editor’s Note: This is crossposted at David Klinghoffer’s Beliefnet blog, Kingdom of Priests.

I’m a big fan of Rod Dreher. His Crunchy Con blog rarely fails to enlighten me, so I’ve been looking forward to his reflections on faith and science, generated by his current visit to Cambridge University as a Cambridge-Templeton fellow. Rod blogged today in response to a lecture and discussion in which evolution came up. He writes that “Darwinism wasn’t initially opposed by Christians” and credits William Jennings Bryan with rallying the faithful against evolution. This is worth some further elaboration. How soon did opposition to Darwinism develop? Among whom, and why?

The question matters because if anti-Darwin sentiment only developed 60 years after the Origin of Species appeared, that might suggest it came from historical causes rather than reflecting fatal flaws in the evolutionary idea itself. With the passing of those historical circumstances, opposing Darwin today might then seem hopelessly outdated.

Darwinism means belief in the mechanism of unguided natural selection as fully capable of producing life’s countless forms, thus supplanting any meaningful notion of design in biology. The idea was controversial from the start, scientifically and morally. In fact, early critics of all stripes, Christians and others, clearly perceived the worldview to which Darwin gave scientific-seeming confirmation. And they trembled.

On the new Faith and Evolution site, Benjamin Wiker reminds us that purely scientific resistance to natural selection arose quickly, including from some of Darwin’s closet scientific allies — even Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discover of evolution:

CSC senior fellow John West has an article up at Washington Post‘s “On Faith” blog highlighting the importance of an open and broad debate on faith and evolution — one that includes intelligent design proponents. Dawkins and Collins are often put forward as the two alternatives in discussions over faith and evolution, but since they both embrace Darwin’s theory, they represent only a thin slice of the overall debate. Largely shut out from current media coverage are the growing number of scientists, as well as the vast majority of Americans, who view Darwin’s theory with skepticism. In an effort to broaden the conversation, Discovery Institute has launched www.faithandevolution.org, a website featuring scientists and scholars who aren’t afraid to ask tough Read More ›

I believe it was Philip Johnson who once said that if you replaced the word “evolution” in biology textbooks with the word “design,” almost nothing of substance would change. I think he was right. We wonder at nature, not because we are so ignorant, as some people think, but rather because it is so amazing. As Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt explained in A Meaningful World, nature displays true genius. And it is this plain fact that drives design-deniers to deify, or at least personify, Evolution. Take as just one example this extremely fascinating article, “To Be a Baby,” (a play on Thomas Nagel’s question of what it is like to “be a bat”) from Seed Magazine. The article is Read More ›

The scientists at Biologic Institute have noticed something sure to challenge and trouble Darwinian biologists: physicists are recognizing perfection as a principle in biology. When we think of simple, elegant, unifying principles in science, we think of physics. It’s not surprising then that physicists who examine living systems are looking for principles of this kind. And it seems they have found one. Simply stated, it is that biological processes tend to be optimal in cases where this can be tested. Life’s complexity can make it hard to pinpoint what “optimal” means, but sometimes physical limits provide a crisp definition. Because these limits cannot possibly be exceeded, they serve as an objective standard of perfection. Interestingly, in cases where it is Read More ›

This Sunday, May 30, Wilberforce Forum will feature a special online radio program featuring Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture. He’ll be discussing his new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, demonstrating that the digital code embedded in DNA points to a designing intelligence and brings into focus an issue that Darwin did not address. Go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wilberforceforum at 6 pm EST, 3 pm PST this Sunday to listen, and ask Dr. Meyer a question by calling in or by posting in the conference forum online.

Editor’s Note: This is crossposted at Professor Scot McKnight’s Beliefnet blog, Jesus Creed. In his article “Five Streams of the Emerging Church,” Scot McKnight identifies with Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger’s description of emerging Christians. One of the nine hallmarks of such Christians, according to the authors, is that they “create as created beings.” And it is this theme I would like to explore with reference to Darwinian evolution and intelligent design (ID) in a series of three posts. First, we will consider how to consider ID. Second, we’ll assess conceptions of God in this debate. And third, we will reflect upon aesthetics and Darwinian theory. What to make of intelligent design? Years ago, before I had heard of Neil Read More ›

Editor’s Note: This is crossposted at David Klinghoffer’s Beliefnet blog, Kingdom of Priests.

A pair of dueling websites, one that just went live, are engaged in an important argument over whether religious believers should continue to be fed the “opium of the people.” That’s the famous phrase Marx Karl used to deride all of religion. One kind of faith actually deserves the description, however. It’s called theistic evolution, a convoluted justification for thinking that belief in God and belief in Darwin’s mechanism of blind, churning, unguided, and purposeless evolution can be meaningfully reconciled.

The new website is Faith and Evolution, from the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. It features all kinds of resources — writing and video, debates, questions and answers, and much else, including a number of contributions from yours truly. Do check it out and let me know what you think.

Faith and Evolution presents a striking contrast with Dr. Francis Collins’s theistic evolution site BioLogos, courtesy of the Templeton Foundation. Dr. Collins and his associate Karl Giberson also blog here at Beliefnet. At F&E, you’ll find my analysis of Dr. Collins’s ideas on religion and evolution. One very useful thing about F&E is that it highlights debates both on the science of evolution and on the social impact of Darwinism, whereas BioLogos is more like a single-perspective sermon.

Collins and Giberson are sincere Evangelical Christians — as far as I, a Jew, can tell — and undoubtedly innocent of all guile, but they represent an insidious trend in religious and intellectual life. This genuine opiate of the masses works as a stupor-inducing fog, enveloping the debate about intelligent design versus Darwinism. The fog lulls you with the thought that between the idea of design in nature, and that of no design in nature, there is actually no need to make a choice.

A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article from last month, “Education Board in Texas Faces Curbs,” revealed how the Texas evolution-lobby has been seeking to use both censorship and power grabs to promote their agenda.  First, they sought to censor from Texas students any instruction on scientific weaknesses in evolution. Having lost that fight before the Texas State Board of Education (TSBOE), they have tried to use other tactics to punish the board for adopting science standards that teach evolution objectively, or to grab power away from the democratically elected board. In a move that can only be attributed to political retribution, today Texas evolutionists successfully blocked the reappointment of Dr. Don McLeroy as chair of the TSBOE.  Practically speaking, this Read More ›

Since the beginning of 2008, we’ve seen the publication of some excellent popular books introducing the topic of intelligent design (ID), including Intelligent Design 101 (with contributions by Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, J.P. Moreland, William Dembski, and Jay Wesley Richards) and William Dembski’s Understanding Intelligent Design. Another book just out is a small self-published book that is a gem, titled Probability’s Nature and Nature’s Probability, by Donald E. Johnson. Johnson holds two Ph.D.’s — one Ph.D. in Computer & Information Sciences from the University of Minnesota and another Ph.D. in Chemistry from Michigan State University. Given Johnson’s background, it was unsurprising that he has a good grasp of the issues. What was pleasantly surprising was Johnson’s ability to communicate some Read More ›