God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory

Overview

In the last fifteen years a controversial new theory of the origins of biological complexity and the nature of the universe has been fomenting bitter debates in education and science policy across North America, Europe, and Australia. Backed by intellectuals at respectable universities, Intelligent Design theory (ID) proposes an alternative to accepted accounts of evolutionary theory: that life is so complex, and that the universe is so fine-tuned for the appearance of life, that the only plausible explanation is the existence of an intelligent designer. For many ID theorists, the designer is taken to be the god of Christianity.

Niall Shanks has written the first accessible introduction to, and critique of, this controversial new intellectual movement. Shanks locates the growth of ID in the last two decades of the twentieth century in the growing influence of the American religious right. But as he shows, its roots go back beyond Aquinas to Ancient Greece. After looking at the historical roots of ID, Shanks takes a hard look at its intellectual underpinnings, discussing modern understandings of thermodynamics, and how self-organizing processes lead to complex physical, chemical, and biological systems. He considers cosmological arguments for ID rooted in so-called "anthropic coincidences" and also tackles new biochemical arguments for ID based on "irreducible biological complexity." Throughout he shows how arguments for ID lack cohesion, rest on errors and unfounded suppositions, and generally are grossly inferior to evolutionary explanations.

While ID has been proposed as a scientific alternative to evolutionary biology, Shanks argues that ID is in fact "old creationist wine in new designer label bottles" and moreover is a serious threat to the scientific and democratic values that are our cultural and intellectual inheritance from the Enlightenment.

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Author Information

Bio of Niall Shanks

Niall Shanks , a native of England, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is currently Curtis D. Gridley Professor in the History and Philosophy of Science at Wichita State University.

Bio of Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Literature, and an international lecturer. His acclaimed books include The Extended Phenotype , a more technical sequel to The Selfish Gene , and The Blind Watchmaker , which won the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Los Angeles Times Prize, both in 1987. His other bestsellers include River out of Eden , Climbing Mount Impossible , Unweaving the Rainbow , and the A Devil's Chaplain . His most recent book is The Ancestor's Tale . Professor Dawkins is the recipient of many prizes and honors, including the Shakespeare Prize, the Silver Medal of the Zoological Society of London, the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Award, the Nakayama Prize for Achievement in Human Science, The International Cosmos Prize, and the Kistler Prize.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Oxford University Press, Incorporated

Filesize

1.94 MB

Number of Pages

296

eBook ISBN

9780198036678