By Design or by Chance?

Writing in an accessible journalistic style, Denyse O’Leary guides the reader on a fascinating journey through the world of Intelligent Design and Darwinian evolution. The author approached this subject at the beginning “with no clear convictions about it, nor any desire to enter a controversy.” What emerged on these pages is a well-organized and clear introduction to the basic question of life’s origins: What is life, and how did it come about? Did the universe arise by chance, or was it designed?

By Design or by Chance is a fresh intellectual breeze that clears away much of the smog and dust obscuring core issues surrounding the origin of life. From cosmology to theology, from the philosophy of science to the text of Genesis, O’Leary addresses all with refreshing clarity.

Praise

O’Leary provides by far the broadest popular overview yet of the ID movement. She quotes ID leaders such as Phillip Johnson, William Dembski and Michael Behe. She also quotes their sternest critics, including Richard Dawkins, Stephen J. Gould and Michael Ruse. She writes about the Wedge movement, DNA, the age of the Earth, the search for extraterrestrial life, the teaching of ID in schools, and the monarch butterfly. She anticipates the culmination of the ID revolution by writing that Darwinism “was part of our folklore.” Yet the evolutionary tales she relates are still widely taught as fact in many schools.

This well organized guidebook of O’Leary’s journey through the world of Intelligent Design has the potential to lead many of the next generation away from the evolutionary fables that now pass for science. Her book is must reading for anyone who wants to understand the history and significance of the Intelligent Design movement. It also belongs in college and even high school classrooms.

Forrest M. Mims III, U.S. Science Journalist

Denyse O’Leary provides a magnificent introduction to the people and issues involved in the greatest intellectual controversy of our time.

Phillip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial

In a world where miracles are not supposed to happen, By Design or by Chance? may represent the impossible: a clearly written, thoroughly researched book that avoids the arm-waving, bluster and politics of the most controversial question in science — Where did we come from?

Timothy G. Standish, Ph. D., Research Scientist, Geoscience Research Institute

The conflict between Darwinian evolution and intelligent design is rapidly growing into a major scientific and cultural upheaval. The issues are complex and the disagreements are often heated, but Denyse O’Leary writes about them in a way that is clear, even-handed, and entertaining. Anyone who wants to get up to speed on this history-making controversy should read her book.

Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute

Are life, consciousness, and values merely byproducts of blind, purposeless, material forces operating in cosmic history? Or are these the result of a master intelligence intrinsic to reality? Denyse O’Leary helps the nonspecialist reader to weigh this momentous option and come to the right conclusion.

William A. Dembski, author of The Design Revolution