William Dembski

An anthology that I started ten years ago is, with the help of two good friends and colleagues, finally out. It is titled The Patristic Understanding of Creation: An Anthology of Writings from the Church Fathers on Creation and Design and can be ordered here. For the table of contents, go here. This is the first book from my own imprint, Erasmus Press (www.erasmuspress.net). The plan is to publish books, journals, and curriculum materials through it — despise not the day of small beginnings! Here is the cover illustration. Further down is the preface.

PREFACE

This anthology might have been published in 1998. Instead, it now appears in 2008, ten years later. For many books, ten years is an eternity and spells the difference between a book that is current or passé. Fortunately, the writings of the Church Fathers are of perennial interest. Going back to Roman and Byzantine times, these writings are basic to Christian theology and have set the standard for how Christians understand creation.

The need for this anthology has persisted – and indeed grown more urgent – in the years since it was first conceived. In the summer of 1998, the journal Origins & Design published a dialogue featuring Jonathan Wells, John Mark Reynolds, and Howard Van Till (available online at www.arn.org/odesign/od191/od191.htm). Van Till, in the mid-1990s, had published a number of articles arguing for creation’s “functional integrity,” by which he meant that God, in creation, had given the world all the capacities it needs to organize and transform itself.

Van Till’s bogey, throughout these discussions, was what he called “extra-natural assembly” – that God subsequent to creation needed to intervene for nature to accomplish things that, left to herself, nature could never do. For Van Till, a world requiring extranatural assembly is unworthy of the deity. More worthy, according to him, is for God to create a world that is “fully gifted” with all the capacities it might ever need to accomplish God’s purposes. Van Till portrays a God who creates a world that, once created, requires further intervention as a miser: such a Creator ungenerously withholds from the world capacities that it might usefully have possessed to carry out its business (which Van Till calls its “formational economy”).

Unraveling these crop circles constitutes a design inference that doesn’t just tell us that something was designed but also tells us something about the knowledge of the designer: SOURCE: go here.

I’ve known Karl Giberson over a decade. In the early days, he was a respectful critic of ID. That now seems to have changed with the publication of his most recent book, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (go here for the Amazon listing). The subtitle is curious. Ordinarily one believes in a religion and attains competence in a field of scientific inquiry (does it matter if I believe that quarks really exist? isn’t it enough that I can apply the standard model?). Giberson’s subtitle inverts our ordinary epistemic attitudes (was it intentional?). The title is more interesting still — Saving Darwin. Why should anyone want to save Darwin? Aren’t his ideas strong enough so Read More ›

There’s an interesting story in today’s Washington Times (go here) on Louisiana’s new science policy (shortly to be signed into law by Governor Jindal) advocating that both strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory be taught in the public school science curriculum. The other side (ACLU, NCSE, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, etc.) are claiming that such a “strengths and weaknesses” or “teach the controversy” approach to teaching evolution is a thinly veiled attempt to bring religion into the classroom. After all, so they claim, there is no legitimate controversy over evolutionary theory (it’s as well established as gravity!), so those who would question it can only do so because they are creationists wanting to inject religion into Read More ›

Ken Miller compares ID proponents to “welfare queens” (go here) and Karl Giberson denounces ID proponents for “smearing” theistic evolutionists, citing this blog (go here).

Besides displaying desperation, these people have no evident sense of irony. Miller has for years been dipping his hand into the public till, which continues to underwrite sales of his textbooks.* And Giberson, in defending Miller and Francis Collins, seems to forget that they are ones charging ID proponents with threating America’s soul and future (go here).

So, it’s okay to for theoevos to cast ID in apocalyptic terms, but it’s not okay for IDers to call them on it. Give me a break. As Denyse O’Leary has put it, theistic evolution is a solution to a problem that no longer exists. Bankruptcy is hard. Get used to the pain.

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*Here are some quotes from seven of Miller’s biology textbooks, textbooks underwritten with your tax dollars. As you read these quotes, ask yourself where is the “theo” in Miller’s “theoevo.” Read More ›

Darwin Defeated in the Bayou: Louisiana Encourages ‘Critical Thinking’ Richard Monastersky | Chronicle of Higher Education | June 12, 2008 The title of this article is self-explanatory (teaching Darwin critically seems now to be becoming the big thing at the state level). Here are some of the reactions: “It’s Louisiana. If they can abuse it, twist it, or turn it upside down from the original intention…they will.” “Raise the kids as stupid as there parents and there parents and what do you get, religion.” “The idea that one can distinguish between ID and astrology is ludicrous.” “Critical thinking should only be applied to approved beliefs.” “Didn’t God invent astrology? I don’t have proof but I have faith therefore I think Read More ›

Tim Russert died today. He gave journalism a good name. Combining gentleness and toughness, he asked the right questions and persisted till he got straight answers. He was a Mensch. During the Iowa caucuses, my wife asked to take a photo of him with our daughter. He interrupted a phone call to oblige (see his right hand below). My daughter cried today at his passing. He will be missed.

Theistic evolutionists hold that Darwinian evolution is God’s way of bringing about the diversity of life on earth. They used to be content to criticize ID on scientific grounds. But that’s no longer enough. They are now charging ID with undermining the very fabric of civilization and even the Christian religion itself. Ken Miller’s most recent book, just out, makes this point in the title — Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. From the title, you’d think that Darwin is the Messiah and that until his ideas about evolution gained acceptance, our souls were in jeopardy. Miller has called himself an Orthodox Christian and an Orthodox Darwinian (cf. the 2001 PBS Evolution Series). But one has Read More ›

Michael Behe responds on his Amazon.com blog to Richard Lenski’s latest piece in PNAS regarding the evolution of 40,000 generations of E. coli (go here). [[Patrick and I posted on this simultaneously; please post all comments regarding Behe/Lenski on his thread, which is the the one immediately preceding this one.]]

Here’s an excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle about Obama. Adjectives like “fawning,” “effusive,” and “unhinged” don’t quite capture this article, which is titled “Is Obama an Enlightened Being?” “Messianic” is more like it. Interestingly, the highest praise that this article heaps on Obama is that he will “help us evolve.” Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly Read More ›

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter’s signing of a transgender anti-discrimination bill points up the lunacy that ensues in a world without design (see here).

Here’s an interesting article in the NYTimes regarding science education in Texas. Laura Beil, the author, outlines the long-standing (pre-Dover) attempt by critics of evolutionary theory to teach the theory’s “strengths and weaknesses.” Although mandating that the weaknesses of evolutionary theory be taught falls well short of attempts to mandate the teaching of intelligent design, this too is unacceptable with hardcore evolutionists such as the National Center for Selling Evolution (NCSE). Their strategy to counter it? Treat any attempt to teach weaknesses of evolutionary theory as stealth creationism, therefore as religion, and therefore as unconstitutional. This approach, however, may backfire. The NCSE cannot simply deny that there are any known weaknesses to evolutionary theory, because laundry lists outlining failures of Read More ›

“There is no controversy.” “There should be no controversy.” “It’s okay to expel those who pretend that there is a controversy.” “Academic freedom does not apply where the scientific consensus says there is no controversy.” … The Washington Post has a ridiculous editorial that elevates evolutionary theory to the same status as gravitational theory and the truths of mathematics (go here). Meanwhile, the Altenberg meeting coming up this summer brings together biologists who see the contemporary state of evolutionary theory as in upheaval (go here). Yes, the field is in disarray, but there is NO CONTROVERSY. What, are we living in a Kafka novel?

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has a new set of entries as a result of Ben Stein’s EXPELLED. And then there are some, like Richard Dawkins, who have a long history in the IMDb:

Critics of the ID movement often complain that we’re fabulously well funded by right-wing extremists and in it for our own aggrandizement. Fortunately, money leaves a trail. When one follows it, Darwinists seem to be doing much better financially than ID theorists (perhaps an indication that they are serving Mammon more faithfully). Let’s consider a few better off Darwinists: (1) Saint Charles himself. By present standards, Darwin would probably have been worth about US$20 million. He was a gentleman scholar who lived very comfortably. (2) Francisco Ayala. A recent New York Times article indicated that Ayala and his wife Hana own 6,000 acres of vineyards in California. Even with the real estate market as it is, the Ayalas seem to Read More ›