Charles Darwin penned three-quarters of a sequel to his famous book On the Origin of Species, but he never finished or published it. Why not? On a new episode of ID the Future, I’m pleased to bring you an exclusive excerpt from author and professor Dr. Robert Shedinger’s new book Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished.

I kick off my reading by sharing two endorsements of Darwin’s Bluff from paleontologist Dr. Günter Bechly and scholar Neil Thomas. Next I read Shedinger’s Introduction to the book, which asks the question: Do we really need another book about Charles Darwin? If it’s a book that dives deeply into Darwin’s private correspondence and unpublished work to reveal the man behind the myth, then yes, we do. Today, Darwin’s theory of natural selection is being challenged on all sides by modern scientific evidence. If we are to finally move beyond it to more satisfying explanations for life on Earth, it’s essential to understand more clearly the man that brought the theory to the world.

I round out the reading with a brief excerpt from Chapter 6 of Darwin’s Bluff, wherein Shedinger reveals a Darwin who continually promised his “big book” full of missing evidence to many of his correspondents but failed to deliver it. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Dig Deeper

• Get a copy of Darwin’s Bluff, now available from Discovery Institute Press.
• Listen to my two-part interview with Dr. Shedinger: Part 1 and Part 2.