Posted on 11/23/2004 9:53:55 PM PST by nickcarraway
Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing
Edited by William A. Dembski
(ISI Books, 366 pages, $28; $18 paper)
WACO, Texas -- At one time, the debate over Darwin's theory existed as a cartoon in the modern imagination. Thanks to popular portrayals of the Scopes Trial, secularists regularly reviewed the happy image of Clarence Darrow goading William Jennings Bryan into agreeing to be examined as an expert witness on the Bible and then taking him apart on the stand. Because of the legal nature of the proceedings that made evolution such a permanent part of the tapestry of American pop culture, it is fitting that this same section of the tapestry began to unravel due to the sharp tugs of another prominent legal mind, Phillip Johnson.
The publication of his book, Darwin on Trial, now appears to have marked a new milestone in the debate over origins. Prior to Johnson's book, the critics of evolution tended to occupy marginalized sectarian positions and focused largely on contrasting Darwin's ideas with literalist readings of the Genesis account. Johnson's work was different. Here we had a doubter of Darwin willing to come out of the closet, even though his credentials were solid gold establishment in nature. He had attended the finest schools, clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, taught law as a professor at highly ranked Berkeley, and authored widely-used texts on criminal law. Just as Darrow cross-examined the Bible and Bryan's understanding of it, Johnson cross-examined Darwin and got noticed in the process. He spent much of the last decade debating the issue with various Darwinian bulldogs and holding up his end pretty well.
PHILLIP JOHNSON, AND a number of others, raised enough doubts about the dominant theory to cause a number of intellectuals to take a hard look, particularly at the gap between what can be proven and what is simply asserted to be true. Since that time, authors with more technical backgrounds, like mathematician/philosopher William Dembski and biochemist Michael Behe, have published books providing even more powerful critiques of the neo-Darwinian synthesis based on intelligent design theory. Behe's work has been particularly disturbing to evolution advocates because he seems to have proven that organic machines at the molecular level are irreducibly complex and therefore could not have been the products of natural selection because there never would have been any intermediate working mechanism to select. Now, the two team up as Dembski edits and Behe contributes to a bracing collection of controversial writings titled Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing.
Dembski displays the intellectual doggedness of the group of contributors when he uses his introductory essay to ruthlessly track down and scrutinize the footnotes offered by those who would refute Behe's case. Reference after reference claiming to have decisively defeated Behe turns out to be inadequate to the task. What passes for refutation is instead a collection of question-begging and "just-so stories." Right away, Dembski sets the tone for the book. Nothing will be uncontested. The pro-evolution community will be made to fight for every inch of intellectual real estate without relying on the aura of prestige or the lack of competent critics to bolster their case.
The best way to read the book is by beginning at the end and perusing the profiles of the contributors. There, the reader will be able to select essays from representatives of a variety of disciplines, including mathematics, philosophy, biochemistry, biophysics, chemistry, genetics, law, and medicine. The most enjoyable in terms of sheer brio are the essays by Dembski, Behe, Frank Tipler, Cornelius Hunter, and David Berlinski. Tipler's essay on the process of getting published in a peer-reviewed journal is particularly relevant and rewarding because it deals with one of the biggest strikes against Intelligent Design. ID theorists have had a notoriously difficult time getting their work published in professional journals. Tipler, a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane, crankily and enjoyably explains why.
TOP HONORS, HOWEVER, go to David Berlinski's essay, "The Deniable Darwin," which originally appeared in Commentary. The essay is rhetorically devastating. Berlinski is particularly strong in taking apart Richard Dawkins' celebrated computer simulation of monkeys re-creating a Shakespearean sentence and thereby "proving" the ability of natural selection to generate complex information. The mathematician and logician skillfully points out that Dawkins rigged the game by including the very intelligence in his simulation he disavows as a cause of ordered biological complexity. It's clear that Berlinski hits a sore spot when one reads the letters Commentary received in response to the article. Esteemed Darwinists like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett respond with a mixture of near-hysterical outrage and ridicule. Berlinski's responses are also included. At no point does he seem the slightest bit cowed or overwhelmed by the personalities arrayed against him.
For the reader, the result is simply one of the most rewarding reading experiences available. Berlinski and his critics engage in a tremendous intellectual bloodletting, with Berlinski returning fire magnificently. In a particularly amusing segment, Berlinski, constantly accused of misperception, writes, "For reasons that are obscure to me, both [Mr. Gross] and Daniel Dennett carelessly assume that they are in a position to instruct me on a point of usage in German, my first language." Though his foes repeatedly accuse Berlinski of being a "creationist," the tag has little chance of sticking to a man arguing for little more than agnosticism on the question of origins and who disavows any religious principles aside from the possible exception of hoping to "have a good time all the time." One suspects that the portion of the book occupied by the Berlinski essay and subsequent exchanges will gain wide currency.
For far too long, the apologists for Darwin have relied on a strategy of portraying challengers as simple-minded religious zealots. The publication of Uncommon Dissent and many more books like it, will severely undermine the success of such portrayals. During the past decade, it has become far too obvious that there are such things as intellectuals who doubt Darwin and that their ranks are growing. The dull repetition of polemical charges in place of open inquiry, debate, and exchange may continue, but with fewer and fewer honest souls ready to listen.
Hunter Baker is a Ph.D. student at Baylor University and contributes to the Reform Club.
Just becasue God is all powerful does not mean He is automatically going to impose his will on everyone- Bob Dobbs and even Ahban might object to that. Just because he has the power does not mean He must use it.
You are seeing a creation that according to Romans has been subjected to futility, but in the hopes that its people one day overcome it. It would not do to have a perfect creation inhabited by a sinful humanity. We must be better than the creation we were meant to rule.
With so much pain in the world, if God is loving and all powerful, then He must not be using His power to immediately impose His will on the Earth. Indeed that is what the Bible teaches. In the temptation in the wilderness Satan told Jesus that the kingdoms of the world were his (Satan's) and Jesus did not dispute that. BUt Jesus came to undo the works of the devil and make those kingdoms His- as the hearts of the people became His.
No, all this pain is not God's perfect will, but it is the inevitable result of our rejection of God.
"How intense love grows as one lives a life for the LORD."
Go thru a situation where your innocent baby daughter is diagnosed with a lifelong, incurable disease and get back to me about living life for the Lord. He has chosen to either inflict this on my daughter for no reason, or has chosen to not interfere and help her, or doesn't exist in the first place. Either way, screw Him.
Nice, but it will indeed be a waste of time. At my freeper homepage I've got dozens of links that I used to routinely post into these threads. The creationists never seemed to pay attention, and I eventually decided not to clog all the threads with the same post all the time. But go ahead and give it a try. Just don't expect any results.
Creationists, myself among them, accept exactly what GOD tells us about the issue. You too will accept it without question in the end.
MM
But think of the money you could make on the fundamentalist "lecture" circuit!
I am sure you are right, but I just get tired of typing the same replies over and over. Figure I'll just take care of all of them at once.
Darwin said that if no proof was found that macro-evolution (evolving from one species to another) was wrong.
These guys are agreeing with Darwin when they "doubt" him.
results-oriented placemarker
Designed Universe retread?
It's worse than that. FAR worse. Creationism has not just limited itself to never offering any benefit to mankind or science (pardon the double negative), but it actively seeks the retardation and denial of said benefits. It's sinister, to say the least.
Ding! And the pool on his FR lifespan?
He tells us about it everyday through his Creation, and it is the way it is, not the way we want it to be.
As you will be told, there is no such thing.
No intellectual doubts Darwin.
Anyone who doubts Darwin is not an intellectual.
(Rinse, repeat.)
Dan
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