Tom Bethell

Tom Bethell graduated from Oxford University and is a long-time journalist who has served as Washington editor for Harper’s, a contributing editor to Washington Monthly, and a senior editor at The American Spectator. He has written articles for many magazines, including Fortune, the New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly. Praised by Tom Wolfe as “one of our most brilliant essayists,” Bethell is the previous author of The Noblest Triumph: Property through the Ages, Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science. He resides in Washington, DC.

Archives

Darwin’s House of Cards

A Journalist's Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates
Tom Bethell
December 21, 2016
About the Book In this provocative history of contemporary debates over evolution, veteran journalist Tom Bethell depicts Darwin’s theory as a nineteenth-century idea past its prime, propped up by logical fallacies, bogus claims, and empirical evidence that is all but disintegrating under an onslaught of new scientific discoveries. Bethell presents a concise yet wide-ranging tour of the flash points of modern evolutionary theory, investigating controversies over common descent, natural selection, the fossil record, biogeography, information theory, evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, and the growing intelligent design movement. Bethell’s account is enriched by his own personal encounters with some of our era’s leading evolutionary thinkers, including Harvard …

Darwinism and Materialism

They Sink or Swim Together
Tom Bethell
September 18, 2013
Recently the Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer published Darwin’s Doubt, a book that raises many questions about the theory of evolution. As his title tells us, Darwin himself shared one of these doubts.

George Gilder on the Materialist Superstition

Tom Bethell
November 1, 2012
I WAS AT THE WATERGATE THE OTHER EVENING for a book party, held in the apartment of John Wohlstetter. He has a grand piano, a beautiful view over the Potomac River, and a book to sell. Actually there were two books: Wohlstetter’s Sleepwalking with the Bomb (see TAS, October 2012) and a new edition of George Gilder’s best seller Wealth and Poverty (Regnery Publishing). Gilder’s original text is augmented by a new prologue and epilogue and a section on monetary policy. With Wealth and Poverty (1981), Gilder, who would go on to co-found the Discovery Institute, became one of the leading supply-siders. This is a school of thought that aims to revive the economy by reducing income- and capital-gains tax rates. Also regulations. President Reagan agreed, and by 1983 the U.S. economy had …

Stephen Meyer at the University Club: Why Are We Still Debating Darwin?

Tom Bethell
March 21, 2012
In his “Socrates in the City” talk in Washington last week, Steve Meyer asked: “Is there a scientific controversy about the theory of evolution?” After quoting many spokesmen for official science who deny the existence of any such controversy, or any reason to doubt evolutionary theory whatsoever, Meyer showed that there are significant reasons to doubt both biological and chemical evolutionary theory. He first addressed the problems associated with chemical evolutionary theory, which “attempts to explain the origin of the first life from simpler pre-existing chemicals.” Here he explained the critical question of the origin of genetic information. This is the problem he addressed in his book Signature in the Cell, a problem that has beset all attempts …

The Cell Declares His Handiwork

A Turning Point in the Evolution Wars?
Tom Bethell
July 15, 2011
The evolution wars continue, although less frequently these days in the headlines. Perhaps that’s because the Darwinists are slowly losing their grip. Most of the new research is at the molecular level, studying the interior of the cell.

Darwinism at AEI

Tom Bethell
July 1, 2007
Early in May, the American Enterprise Institute held a debate about Darwinism, a faith embedded in many debates, whether scientific, religious or political. The recent irruption of atheism can be traced to the Darwinian creed, for the well publicized testimonials of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens all have recourse to Darwinism at various points. It purports to explain how we got here without any need for God or gods. Darwinism is best seen as 19th century philosophy— materialism— dressed up as science, and directed against a theological argument for the existence of God. (The only one of St. Thomas Aquinas’’s “proofs” that resonates with us today is the “argument from design.”) Richard Dawkins famously said that Darwin’s theory of evolution by …

Don’’t Fear the Designer

Competing philosophies and beliefs.
Tom Bethell
December 1, 2005
Original Article My new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, addresses many topics, ranging from endangered species to the alleged warfare of religion and science. But two in particular have repeatedly come up in radio interviews: global warming and intelligent design (I have chapters on both). Most on the Right are agreed on global warming: It’s mostly politics dressed up as science. But what about intelligent design? On this, conservatives are divided. Many — dare I call them the rank and file? — are skeptical about evolution and, I sense, are willing to throw it overboard. Others — I’ll call them the chattering class — think things have gone too far, and that when it comes to evolution we should show Harvard and Yale a little more …

The Final Evolution

Review of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany
Tom Bethell
June 1, 2005
Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany, is a Fellow of Discovery’s Center for Science and Culture From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germanyby Richard Weikart(Palgrave Macmillan, 312 pages, $59.95)Reviewed by Tom Bethell I FOUND MYSELF WONDERING what the late Stephen Jay Gould would have made of this book. (The well-known Harvard professor and writer died in 2002.) His view of Darwin verged on idolatry, and yet, as Richard Weikart shows, Darwinis philosophy could be used to serve Hitleris purposes. Could be, and was. Gould was already uneasy on this score. In an essay published in Bully for Brontosaurus (1991) he discussed a book called Headquarters Nights by Vernon Kellogg, a …

A Map to Nowhere

The genome isn't a code, and we can't read it
Tom Bethell
April 17, 2001
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 room, and James Watson of DNA fame on hand to take a bow. There would be one more blaze of publicity about the project to decipher the human genome. The new findings were about to be published in long articles, with a comical abundance of co-authors, in the journals Nature and Science. New Mexico’s Sen. Pete Domenici, an early and eager supporter of the project on Capitol Hill, received a vigorous round of applause. He …

Against Sociobiology

Tom Bethell
January 1, 2001
They believe, or at least for the purposes of doing science they believe, that matter in motion is all that exists, and that mind and consciousness are merely special configurations of that matter. Anyone who believes this must, as a matter of logical necessity, also believe in evolution.

The Evolution Wars

Good science encounters a bad philosophy
Tom Bethell
December 1, 1999
The conference “Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe,” sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute, was held at the great hall of Cooper Union, in Manhattan. On the walls were photographs of presidents from Lincoln to Clinton in mid oration. The featured speakers on this occasion were less well known; Mike Behe, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer. All have been traveling from conference to conference, raising questions about evolution. As we know, there has been a great deal of agitation and propaganda on behalf of the theory. Less often do we hear the other side. The Evolution Wars are beginning to get interesting. The public has long been skeptical, of course. It’s one of those areas where the experts don’t encounter automatic assent. Now we are beginning …

C.S. Lewis and Public Life Book

Chapter 3: How Should People of Faith View the State?
George Gilder and Tom Bethell
July 1, 1998
Should the government be viewed as the primary agent for solving social problems? Should it seek to equalize wealth among different groups of citizens? In short, what is the proper role of government? The essays in this chapter seek to answer such questions by examining Lewis’s defense of limited government and his critique of the welfare state. Contributing authors to this chapter are: GEORGE GILDER, Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute and author of Wealth and Poverty, Men and Marriage, Life after Television and other books.TOM BETHELL, correspondent for The American Spectator. George Gilder, Discovery Institute C. S. Lewis is not normally regarded as or known to be a political writer, yet he, more than any other writer, has shaped the beginnings of my career in …

A New Beginning

Darwin revisionism goes mainstream
Tom Bethell
September 1, 1994
The good news this month is the appearance of Michael Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box, published by the Free Press. As far as I know, it is the first outright anti-Darwin book to have been published by a major New York house for decades; perhaps since the 1920’s. Behe (pronounced “Bee He”) is an associate professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University, near Philadelphia, and his field is biochemistry. Coming at about the same time, a recent issue of Commentary (June) has a cover story by David Berlinski, also pointing to grave defects of evolutionary theory. Berlinski a polymath writer and former academic (he taught at Stanford in the late 1960’s) is most recently the author of A Tour of the Calculus, published by Pantheon. Evolution is a …