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The most recent Nobel prize for physics recently was awarded to John Mather and George Smoot for their contribution to the big bang theory of the origin of the universe. Smoot is a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. He has no ties that I’m aware of to the Intelligent Design community, and I know that he doesn’t have ties to Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

However, like several other prominent contemporary physicists (e.g., Arno Penzias, Owen Gingerich, and Paul Davies), Smoot has made remarks that suggest he considers the best explanation for certain features of the natural world to be a teleological or purposeful cause–what we in the ID community refer to as intelligent design and what the pope recently described as creative reason.

This is the final installment of a four-part series responding to Larry Arnhart’s comments about my book, Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. The first three installments can be found here, here and here.

5. Darwinism and Economic Liberty

Arnhart contends that Darwinian theory supports economic freedom, but in my book I argue that efforts to apply Darwinism to economics are misleading and based on false analogies. In particular, I criticize the claim that F.A. Hayek’s idea of “spontaneous order” is in any important sense analogous to Darwin’s idea of unguided evolution. I also dispute the claim that “spontaneous order,” properly understood, is incompatible with intelligent design. I further point out that in the history of ideas, Darwinism has been used much more often to stigmatize capitalism than to support it.

After posting about the law review article in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion which argued that Judge Jones went too far, I was sent an unsolicited e-mail by someone I’ll call SGB with the subject, “Intelligent Design is Not Science.” The e-mail was sent as a letter to the Editor-In-Chief and Managing Editor of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, apparently intended for public consumption. I was cc’d on it, along with Richard Dawkins and Glenn Branch (of the NCSE). It’s a long letter, which largely misunderstands ID and Mr. Italiano’s legal arguments. But SGB’s conclusion was most interesting: In a book titled “The God Delusion”, author Richard Dawkins considers “the God Hypothesis.” He defines the God Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: This blog post was mistakenly listed as the last in a four part series, when in fact it is the third. The fourth and final installlment will be published in the near future.]

This is the third installment of a four-part series responding to Larry Arnhart’s comments about my book, Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. The first and second installments can be found here and here.

3. Darwinism and Religion

In the section of my book on religion, I make clear that “evolution” can be compatible with theism in general and Biblical theism in particular—depending on how one defines the term “evolution.” If all one means by “evolution” is “change over time,” or “microevolution” through natural selection, or even biological “common descent,” then evolution would seem perfectly compatible with most forms of theism. Only if one insists that evolution is an undirected Darwinian process of chance and necessity, with no particular end in view, does there seem to be a serious problem with traditional theism. But even here there are at least two potential solutions.

A student note in Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion agrees that Judge Jones overextended the judicial arm when he decided on the question of whether ID is science. Observing that Judge Jones correctly found that the Dover School Board members had religious motives, Philip A. Italiano then explains that the ruling should have stopped its analysis there and not extended into broad questions about the definition of science. Italiano recognizes that the Kitzmiller facts did not present the appropriate case in which to decide whether ID is science: Perhaps there theoretically could exist a factual scenario in which the motives of those who write intelligent design into a public school science curriculum are nonreligious, and in which the only Read More ›

An article in Murfreesboro, Tennessee’s Daily News Journal, ironically titled “American history slips into oblivion,” shows just how dramatic the media’s misconceptions of intelligent design are. Ed Kimbrell writes “look at Kansas and Georgia, where the boards demanded that intelligent design be taught along side evolution.” But neither Kansas nor Georgia taught intelligent design. The text of the Cobb County, Georgia, School Board’s disclaimer, which has nothing to do with intelligent design, may be found here, and it merely states “Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.” Even Judge Cooper’s terrible original ruling, which was vacated by an appellate court, Read More ›

In the New Scientist profile last month of the new intelligent design research lab, there was discussion of two technical articles published in the Journal of Molecular Biology by protein scientist Doug Axe (for abstracts, see here and here). As the New Scientist acknowledged, funding for the research underlying these peer-reviewed articles was provided by Discovery Institute’s research fellowship program—thus disproving the twin canards that Discovery Institute does not support scientific research, and that pro-ID scientists do not publish peer-reviewed research. Yet the New Scientist tried its best to downplay the relevance of the articles to the theory of intelligent design, contrasting the positive interpretations of Axe’s research offered by intelligent design theorists William Dembski and Stephen Meyer with the dismissive views of unnamed “scientists.” The implication seemed to be that Dembski and Meyer have misrepresented Axe’s research by claiming that it provides evidence against neo-Darwinism and corroboration for intelligent design.

Casey Luskin recently highlighted the mocking, anti-religious attitude expressed by Darwinists promoting the so-called “Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Now in an interview with the Toronto Star, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has defended such mocking of traditional religion by Darwinists as “light hearted fun” that is “probably healthy.” Indeed, according to Branch, such mockery seems to be a perfectly legitimate activity for Darwinists “who need the chance to blow off steam” after engaging in the “tiring and often thankless chore” of battling “creationist activity.” Branch further suggests that criticism of anti-religious Darwinist propaganda by Luskin and others affiliated with Discovery Institute is illegitimate, asking: “Why would mocking traditional religion be of concern to a purely scientific organization?”

There is a perfectly obvious answer to Branch’s question, which I will get to in a moment. But first I have a question of my own: Why is mocking traditional religion in the name of science apparently OK for the NCSE?

This is the second installment of a four-part series responding to Larry Arnhart’s comments about my book Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. The first installment can be found here.

2. Darwinism, Free Will, and the Soul

In my book I pointed out that leading Darwinists and Darwin himself drew implications from Darwinism contrary to human free will and moral responsibility. In response, Arnhart says that he regards “human moral freedom as an ’emergent’ product of the evolution of the human brain.” But it is highly questionable whether the Darwinian account of evolution can account even for the emergence of human intelligence let alone the emergence of human moral freedom. After all, how does intelligence “emerge” from a completely unintelligent material process of chance and necessity? If you begin with unintelligent matter and energy alone, how do you magically get mind somewhere later in the process?

John Derbyshire, the vitriolic anti-ID crusader over at National Review Online, must have had a really bad Christmas. Or something. In his post-Christmas column at NRO, he is more shrill and bombastic in his denunciations of ID than ever, if that’s possible.