Intelligent Design

For Immediate Release SEATTLE, MAY 3 – Recent California voters overwhelmingly support teaching the scientific evidence both for and against Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to two new surveys conducted by Arnold Steinberg & Associates. The surveys address the issue of how best to teach evolution, which increasingly is under deliberation by state and local school districts in California and Read More ›

The federal government has spent nearly a half-million dollars on a website that encourages science teachers to use religion to promote evolution, sparking objections that the website violates the separation of church and state. The following resources document the controversy over this website.

[Note: This article first appeared in The Human Life Review 30, 2 (Spring 2004): 29-37.] A number of years ago two intelligent students surprised me in a class discussion by defending the proposition that Hitler was neither good nor evil. Though I kept my composure, I was horrified. One of the worst mass murderers in history wasn’t evil? How could Read More ›

In August 2003, Kyler Kuehn provided a critical response to our presentation on The Privileged Planet at the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation. At the time, Kuehn was at a disadvantage, since the book had not yet been published and his response was based on an incomplete manuscript of our book. In our opinion, the objections resulted almost Read More ›

This article, published by The Washington Times, contains a review of The Privileged Planet, by Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture Senior Fellows Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards:

Albert Einstein once remarked that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe was that it was comprehensible. For the past few centuries, no one has offered a satisfactory non-theological explanation as to why this should be so.

In recent years, however, a small group of scientists and thinkers have decided to try a novel approach combining science with theology, albeit not of the fundamentalist genre. The result has been the growing and increasingly influential “Intelligent Design” (ID) movement, a major project of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, where I was a senior fellow for nearly 10 years. I never worked with the ID people, but found the effort fascinating, both as hard science and hard cultural and intellectual struggle.

Specifically, Intelligent Design holds that it is possible to study the biological and physical realms for evidence of design, without positing the identity, intent, or even the competence of the designer. Throughout the ’90s, ID fought mostly against the “sacred creation myth of the materialist West.”

Evolution, the best guess of a brilliant 19th-century scientist, has not been wearing well of late. A lot of little questions are starting to add up to One Big Question — much to the chagrin of the “If it isn’t matter, it doesn’t matter” crowds in science, education, and culture.

“The Privileged Planet,” however, is not about Charles Darwin. It addresses matters pertaining to life, intelligibility, and design in the cosmos as a whole.

Ever since astronomers first figured out that the universe is a pretty big place, the assumption has been that, life-wise, bigger is better. We all know the logic. Posit 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each. If only one in a million has planets, and only one in a million of those can support life, the universe should still be a pretty fecund locale.

SEATTLE — Missouri state legislator Wayne Cooper has asked CNN to stop spreading misinformation about a bill he sponsored on the teaching of evolution. On April 4th, CNN erroneously reported that Missouri and other states are currently considering proposals that “would fire teachers who refused to teach alternatives to evolution theory….” In a letter to CNN President Jim Walton on April Read More ›