Intelligent Design

Talk delivered at CSICOP’s Fourth World Skeptics Conference in Burbank, California, 21 June 2002, at a discussion titled “Evolution and Intelligent Design.” The participants included ID proponents William Dembski and Paul Nelson as well as evolutionists Wesley Elsberry and Kenneth Miller. Massimo Pigliucci moderated the discussion. This conference focuses on skepticism’s prospects over the next 25 years. I want in Read More ›

When my book Icons of Evolution was published in 2000, critics greeted it with rave reviews. I have been truly amazed at the outpouring of warmth from some of my fellow scientists, who have been trying to outdo each other in the superlatives they bestow on my work. In my case, however, “rave review” doesn’t mean extravagant praise, but wild Read More ›

Which option (“A” or “B”) represents your view? “A. Biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it.” “B. Biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it.” Only 15 percent of adults nationally, according to a 2001 Zogby poll, agree with “A,” while 71 percent agree Read More ›

A recent Zogby International poll found that 65 percent of Ohioans believe “Biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it.” Only 19 percent favored biology teachers teaching just Darwin’s theory and only that evidence which supports it. What do these numbers mean? On the most obvious level, for every one Ohioan who wants Read More ›

For more information about David Berlinski – his new books, video clips from interviews, and upcoming events – please visit his website at www.davidberlinski.org. Stephen Jay Gould was the most important paleontologist of his generation, the impact of his life best measured by the wide-spread sense of loss occasioned by his death. Gould wrote widely on a variety of topics in Read More ›

1. Preamble

I have many critics. Some are measured and calm. Others are obsessive. Richard Wein is perhaps the most obsessive. His critique of my book No Free Lunch (hereafter NFL) weighs in at 37,000 words and purports to provide the most thorough refutation of my work to date. It certainly is long. But is it thorough and does it succeed in actually refuting my ideas? In fact, the critique fails as a refutation and skirts key issues at every opportunity. It is therefore neither thorough nor a refutation.

“As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.” — G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy In the struggle to survive, the fit win, and so it is also the fit who Read More ›