Intelligent Design

I don’’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose. Clarence Darrow, Toronto, 1930 There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1955 For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as Read More ›

If William Dembski sometimes sounds more like a revolutionary than a mild-mannered mathematician from Baylor University, that’s fine with him. It suits his vision for the future of science. Dembski, a Christian and a leading proponent of intelligent design theory, will tell anyone who’ll listen that Darwinism is finished as science’s unifying framework, that its chief value to many scientists Read More ›

Berkeley, Calif. — A University of California-Berkeley professor is offering his explanation for the clash between science and religion. The intelligent design theory — a conception of UC Berkeley Boalt Law School professor emeritus Phillip Johnson — critiques science on scientific rather than biblical grounds and has created a debate in the world of science. In 1991, Johnson unveiled his Read More ›

Darwin’’s theory of evolution has always got under people’’s skin. Darwin himself sensed it, and held off publication for years for fear of the response it might spark. His fears were well-placed: even now, more than 150 years since his treatise appeared, bitter arguments still rage over its implications. They are not all fuelled by fundamentalist Christians insisting that the Read More ›

On April 12, 2001, Nature published a review of Jonathan Wells’s book, Icons of Evolution, by University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne. (Nature 410, 745-746). About half of Coyne’s review consists of personal attacks on Wells, while most of the other half took exception with Wells’s criticism of the way Darwinists use distorted drawings of vertebrate embryos to Read More ›

You know the story, the play, the movie–all based on a piece of American history. It starts when a high school biology teacher in a small, rural American community begins teaching his classes about a theory of man’s origins that defies conventional beliefs. The teacher asks his students to examine the fossil record and draw their own conclusions. He traces Read More ›

The headline on the MSNBC Web site proclaimed, “Darwin Vindicated!” In the article that followed, Arthur Caplan, a nationally noted professor of bioethics and molecular and cellular engineering, proclaimed what he thought was the most important finding to emerge from human genome research: “The genome reveals, indisputably and beyond any serious doubt, that Darwin was right — mankind evolved over Read More ›

The principal actors had appeared in the White House last June — Francis Collins of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and J. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics. Now they were back with a supporting cast and a more detailed analysis, in the Capital Hilton Hotel, with the TV lights glinting off the ballroom chandeliers, 250 journalists packed into the hot Read More ›