Marcos Eberlin’s new book, Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, is a daring, high-spirited statement from the great Brazilian chemist and member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. But daring and high spirits are just what you expect from Dr. Eberlin. 

Our friend Denyse O’Leary reminds me of a wonderful post here by Paul Nelson from a couple of years back. Dr. Nelson describes a conference on intelligent design with himself and Marcos Eberlin as invited speakers. It was scheduled for the University of the Algarve in Portugal. The university bowed to pressure from censors and canceled the conference. It was then rescheduled for another Portuguese university, the University of Porto. That was canceled too. The censors again.

“Tough Kids Don’t Give Up”

As Paul Nelson wrote:

Tough kids don’t give up. If they couldn’t find a Portuguese university to hold the event, they would cross the border to northern Spain, and locate the conference in a commercial setting (i.e., hotel conference room), where breaking an agreement still means something….

I am so proud of the students who climbed into a bus in Faro on Saturday morning, drove to Porto to pick up some friends, then on to León — and then went back again on the same night of the conference. That is an almost 2,000-kilometer round trip.

They had their ID conference. As you can see from the illustration at the top of this post, three separate posters for their event had to be prepared, as it was chased from university to university in Portugal and finally across the border to Spain.

Now we have Dr. Eberlin’s new book, with its endorsements from three Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Ha! The book’s editor, our colleague Jonathan Witt, points out a paragraph from Jonathan Wells’s travelogue piece here about a visit to Brazil, where he was hosted by Marcos. From “Intelligent Design Is Flourishing in Brazil”:

On the way, Marcos and Neddy serenaded us with the Brazilian song “Maluco Beleza,” or “Cool Crazy Man.” They said this is the official theme song of the Brazilian ID movement, because only “malucos belezas” are sufficiently independent-minded to stand up for ID in the face of materialistic orthodoxy. The song had been made famous by the late Brazilian singing star Raul Seixas, and according to Marcos and Neddy he sang it better than they. “I hope so,” I said, and they laughed.

Only a “cool crazy man” is “sufficiently independent-minded to stand up for ID in the face of materialistic orthodoxy.” Indeed! Congratulations to Marcos Eberlin, who should wear the designation, maluco beleza, with pride and pleasure.