Why We Care About Darwin Wars
We can expect more battles about Darwin before school boards across the country. But who cares? Impatient by now with the legal and religious debate around intelligent design, many of us may wonder just that. In fact we all need to care — Darwinian theory has practical ramifications beyond the narrow question of what mechanism drives evolution. Darwinists say the Read More ›
Judging Darwin and God
Issuing theological statements isn’t normally thought of as the job of a federal judge. Yet, this week when U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III released the first federal ruling on intelligent design, there was at the core of his written decision an unambiguously theological ruling: that evolution as formulated by Charles Darwin presents no conflict with the God Read More ›
Murderous Science
From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, by Richard Weikart (Palgrave Macmillan, 324 pp., $59.95) It is an open question whether civilization will survive Darwinism, whose inspiration for Nazism, militarism, racism, wars of extermination, eugenics, abortion, and euthanasia is amply documented in Richard Weikart’s excellent new book. In precise and careful detail Weikart narrates an indispensable Read More ›
Review of From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany
To most Germans, Hitler never appeared to be an evildoer, and thus subsequent attempts to portray him as a fanatical madman betray a misunderstanding of the epoch in which he ruled, Weikart argues. Instead, Hitler was very much a man of his age. The moral justifications for the evil he unleashed were developed long before he rose to power. Weikart Read More ›
Does Darwinism Devalue Human Life?
[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 ›
Institute Supports Accurate Science
When students study Darwin’s theory of evolution, should they learn only about its strengths, or should they also hear about its weaknesses? And should they learn about the best current evidence for evolution, or should they study outdated examples that have been discredited by the scientific community? Those are the real issues Discovery Institute has raised with the Texas State Read More ›
The Methodological Equivalence of Design & Descent:
Reprinted from The Creation Hypothesis, ed. by J.P. Moreland (InterVarsity Press, 1994) During the last thirty years the idea of design has undergone a renaissance in some scientific and philosophical circles. Developments in physics and cosmology, in particular, have placed the word design back in the scientific vocabulary as physicists have unveiled a universe apparently fine-tuned for the possibility of Read More ›
Darwin in the Classroom
After months of debate, the Ohio State Board of Education unanimously adopted science standards on Dec. 10 that require Ohio students to know “how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory.” Ohio thus becomes the first state to mandate that students learn not only scientific evidence that supports Darwin’s theory but also scientific evidence critical of Read More ›
Blinded by Science
Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human, by Matt Ridley (HarperCollins, 336 pp., $25.95) This is a very strange book, and I am not quite sure what the author is attempting to achieve. At the very least it appears that he wants to shore up genetic determinism as the key factor in understanding human nature and individual Read More ›