To judge from previews, the new Darwin biographical movie Creation will emphasize the challenge Darwinian theory posed from the beginning to religious belief. Yet the life of evolution’s co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, suggests that properly understood, and that’s a major proviso, evolution needn’t upset faith at all. On the contrary, Wallace reasoned from what he knew about life’s history to a belief that an “Overruling Intelligence” guided life’s development, much as intelligent design (ID) does today. Science historian Michael A. Flannery calls Wallace’s evolutionary thinking a “preamble” to ID. An opportunity to evaluate this provocative claim is now before us in the form of Flannery’s new edition of Wallace’s great work, A World of Life (1910), which slims the dense Read More ›

CSC director Stephen C. Meyer launched his important new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and Evidence for Intelligent Design, with a speech today at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. In Signature, Dr. Meyer exposes the increasingly evident hopelessness of materialist explanations of life’s origins and makes a fresh, powerful, and seemingly conclusive new scientific argument for intelligent design. Dr. Meyer began by noting that in this Charles Darwin dual anniversary year, we should keep in mind that Darwin’s presumed “primary legacy is that he refuted the design argument.” That argument, in turn, had long been regarded as the most compelling that exists for religious belief. The phenomenal success of the New Atheist movement, represented by Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens Read More ›

Blogger David T. at Life’s Private Book has a good post on our modern priesthood. David quotes Baron d’Holbach from the18th century: “Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity; nothing has been offered to his mind, but stories of invisible powers, upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of his priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and directing his actions.” David notes that we still have priests, but they are secular priests–Experts–and they provide us with a semblance of meaning and healing: …the referents have changed. The “invisible powers” offered to man today are not Read More ›