Saving Us from Darwin [Multiple Book Review]

The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism
by Phillip E. Johnson
InterVarsity Press, 192 pp., $17.99

Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong
by Jonathan Wells
Regnery, 338 pp., $27.95

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
by Michael J. Behe
Touchstone, 307 pp., $13.00 (paper)

Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design
edited by William A. Dembski
InterVarsity Press, 475 pp., $24.99 (paper)

Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
by William A. Dembski
InterVarsity Press, 312 pp., $21.99

Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism
by Robert T. Pennock
Bradford/MIT Press, 429 pp., $18.95 (paper)

Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution
by Kenneth R. Miller
Cliff Street Books/HarperCollins,338 pp., $14.00 (paper)

1. It is no secret that science and religion, once allied in homage to divinely crafted harmonies, have long been growing apart. As the scientific worldview has become more authoritative and self-sufficient, it has loosed a cascade of appalling fears: that the human soul, insofar as it can be said to exist, may be a mortal and broadly comprehensible product of material forces; that the immanent, caring God of the Western monotheisms may never have been more than a fiction devised by members of a species that self-indulgently denies its continuity with the rest of nature; and that our universe may lack any discernible purpose, moral character, or special relation to ourselves. But as those intimations have spread, the retrenchment known as creationism has also gained in strength and has widened its appeal, acquiring recruits and sympathizers among intellectual sophisticates, hard-headed pragmatists, and even some scientists. And so formidable a political influence is this wave of resistance that some Darwinian thinkers who stand quite apart from it nevertheless feel obliged to placate it with tactful sophistries, lest the cause of evolutionism itself be swept away.

As everyone knows, it was the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 that set off the counterrevolution that eventually congealed into creationism. It isn't immediately obvious, however, why Darwin and not, say, Copernicus, Galileo, or Newton should have been judged the most menacing of would-be deicides. After all, the subsiding of faith might have been foreseeable as soon as the newly remapped sky left no plausible site for heaven. But people are good at living with contradictions, just so long as their self-importance isn't directly insulted. That shock was delivered when Darwin dropped his hint that, as the natural selection of every other species gradually proves its cogency, "much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."

By rendering force and motion deducible from laws of physics without reference to the exercise of will, leading scientists of the Renaissance and Enlightenment started to force the activist lord of the universe into early retirement. They did so, however, with reverence for his initial wisdom and benevolence as an engineer. Not so Darwin, who saw at close range the cruelty, the flawed designs, and the prodigal wastefulness of life, capped for him by the death of his daughter Annie. He decided that he would rather forsake his Christian faith than lay all that carnage at God's door. That is why he could apply Charles Lyell's geological uniformitarianism more consistently than did Lyell himself, who still wanted to reserve some scope for intervention from above. And it is also why he was quick to extrapolate fruitfully from Malthus's theory of human population dynamics, for he was already determined to regard all species as subject to the same implacable laws. Indeed, one of his criteria for a sound hypothesis was that it must leave no room for the supernatural. As he wrote to Lyell in 1859, "I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent."

Darwin's contemporaries saw at once what a heavy blow he was striking against piety. His theory entailed the inference that we are here today not because God reciprocates our love, forgives our sins, and attends to our entreaties but because each of our oceanic and terrestrial foremothers was lucky enough to elude its predators long enough to reproduce. The undignified emergence of humanity from primordial ooze and from a line of apes could hardly be reconciled with the unique creation of man, a fall from grace, and redemption by a person of the godhead dispatched to Earth for that end. If Darwin was right, revealed truth of every kind must be unsanctioned. "With me the horrid doubt always arises," he confessed in a letter, "whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind...?"

Absolutely wrong. Computers are purely deterministic indeed. In fact random numbers are quite hard to achieve in computers. Computers do not have free will. They follow exactly the instructions given it. They cannot think for themselves.

Besides religion bashing, what do you have to contribute to the discussion?

Your statement is just an ad-hominem at those who believe in God. It is also a completely false statement. The Christian religion has led to the freeing of humanity. It ended slavery, it has ended the cruelest tyrannies and it has led to the greatest rise of democratic self government in history. So your insults are absolutely false.

You criticise others for using guilt by association ...

Indeed I do.

Yes we do not understand why we should not call it hypocrisy Patrick. Snide, arrogant remarks are no explanation at all. Perhaps you can tell us what the difference is.

More guilt by association. How come you guys cannot refute the statements of creationists and can just insult those who believe in God? It was creationists, religious people who beat up and destroyed the greatest mass murderers of our time - the Nazis and the Communists - both (like evolution) materialistic, atheistic ideologies.

I am going to bed rather than jump in this one. gore3000 has gotten to the point where he can whup up on five evos at once without any help. They used to get the better of him, but not lately. I wonder if that makes any evos nervous?

I do have one question though. You guys who are so quick to equate IDers with the Taliban, do you then accept the MUCH stronger link between yourselves and communist and nazi ideals? If we are = the Taliban because we agree that God (though a different God with a very different nature and Holy Book) created living things then WHY are you evos not = Nazis and commies? You all believe that THE VERY SAME evolutionary forces are responsible for all living things. Hmmmmmm?

<sigh> he's so tiresome, it's not really worth the effort. Maybe if he proved to us that he finally understands the difference between a "gene" and a "genome", a duck and a duckbill platypus, etc. etc. then maybe. But until then, why bother (yet again)?

I for one am not trying to equate creationists with the Taliban. Just pointing out the poverty of the "God-believers moral, atheists immoral" argument.

I'll give the Protestants one thing: The idea that each of us has the capability to decide for ourselves what the Bible really means eventually led to political systems where different religions/philosophies have to compete fair & square in a free market of ideas. If it wasn't for the Reformation, we'd have lots of officially Catholic countries - probably just as free & safe & prosperous as all those officially Muslim countries are today.

Thank Jefferson for the separation of church & state!

... do you then accept the MUCH stronger link between yourselves and communist and nazi ideals?

Absolutely goofball statements like this deserve my special rebuttal links, with the same kind of thinking, but in reverse. Look what creationism will do:
IS GOD A COMMUNIST? chapter & verse quotes from the holy bible.
SODOMY AND THE CLERGY. Supernaturalists exposed as pederasts, perverts, boy molesters, rapists, and murderers.
SWAGGART, A FALLEN CREATIONIST Remember this creationist?

And here's the truth about communism and evolution:
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko This guy, not Darwin, Was Stalin's biologist.

There you go with the character assassination. The reason you and your friends do not refute my statements and resort to insults is that I am telling the truth. It is quite tiresome to see you guys turn the whole thread into blaming Christians (for that is what the intelligent design movement consists of) for the sins of some whacked out followers of Islam.

Like the article at the top, all that the "scientists" of evolution can do is attack religion.

I for one am not trying to equate creationists with the Taliban. Just pointing out the poverty of the "God-believers moral, atheists immoral" argument.

Your statement is false. The evolutionists are indeed immoral. You can read through everything Darwin wrote and not see a single word about morality. In fact, his only morality is "necessity" or do whatever you have to survive. This is the creed of all those who wish to excuse their barbaric acts.

If it wasn't for the Reformation, we'd have lots of officially Catholic countries - probably just as free & safe & prosperous as all those officially Muslim countries are today.

Maybe, but I hate 'what if' questions. For the record Johnson, and other 'holier than the pope' Catholic clowns disagree with the Vatican's view of evolution.

Also Johnson has a whiff of Opus Dei about him (the constant babble about 'materialism') and I'd love to have someone nail him as a member.

Well, I've read the full so-called book review and it is none such. It is a very biased opinion piece fraught with value-laden blatently pro-evolutionist rhetoric. It is also highly doubtful that the author has even read the indicated books because if he had, with an open mind, he could not have written this "review".

Wasting my time here, so have a nice day.

Thank you for displaying some graciousness to at least the Protestant part of Christianity. I also don't think it was pure coincidence that the countires that adopted a comprehensive protestant culture were also the ones to develop morally advanced social, political systems, along with economic prosperity and advanced technology.

In evolutionary terms, Christian "fundamentalist" societies were sucessful. Muslim fundamentalist societies, like communist ones, bring poverty and death. It is not by chance IMHO.

You are no dummy, but you are using your intellect to AVIOD seeing the truth rather than finding it.

Those links don't make the case for what you imply. I suppose their are pedophiles and other deviants in any large group, but those that are in a CHristian group practice that AGAINST the dictates of the faith. When atheists practice such things they are NOT violating their beliefs, since they claim they have none to violate.

Stalin is not communism. It has been overwhelmingly documented that communism draws on evolution for a large part of its inspiration. THe whole point is to reshape man by reshaping his society.

As for calling God a communist, better tone down those blashemies PH. All of us will one day, and that soon, for human life is very short, stand before Him to give an account of how we lived our lives. And of how honestly we searched for the truth.

Those links don't make the case for what you imply.

Once -- just once! -- I'd like to encounter a creationist with the capacity to understand irony when it's presented to them. Okay, it's "Run, Spot, run!" time:

My dear Ahban, of course my links don't make the case for what they seem to imply. I said as much. But the allegation that mere association is proof of causality is present with my links, as it is with your allegations about evolution being causally linked to communism and nazi-ism. You don't see what I'm getting at? You're not alone.

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