The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

In late October, celebrated (former) atheist Antony Flew's long-awaited There IS a God, with Roy Varghese, appeared. It is an elegant little book, as one might expect from a British philosopher. Its sparkling clarity does more than illuminate Antony Flew's change of mind on the subject of God. It provides a window into the true views of great twentieth century scientists who are routinely portrayed as atheists. Flew is in an excellent position to correct the record because he understands clearly the concepts they were wrestling with. But more on that in my upcoming review.

I do not review apologetic literature in this space, and I am not making an exception here because There IS a God is not an apologetic in any meaningful sense. It is a retraction of earlier (negative) views on the existence of God, on account of new evidence from science about the nature of the universe. Flew's prior prominence as an atheist merits a closer look at the evidence that convinced him to change his mind, which I will shortly address in a followup review.

Flew did not become a Christian but a deist - that is, a person who believes that the existence of the universe is best explained by a divine mind that is not part of the universe but rather outside it. Some of his Christian friends would like him to become a Christian, just as some of his atheist friends would like him to revert to atheism. As of this writing (December 31, 2007), he has done neither.

When the book first appeared, its substance was overshadowed by a controversy over whether Flew really wrote it. The implication, drawn out at length by Mark Oppenheimer in The New York Times, was that Flew was senile and was being manipulated by zealous Christians.

Flew denied that, stating,

"My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 percent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I'm 84 and that was Roy Varghese's role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I'm old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. This is my book and it represents my thinking."

In any event, a long "hit" book review in the Sunday Times by Anthony Gottlieb confirms suspicion that the theists and the atheists had been fighting over Flew for years. The theists won, and the atheists are now determined to trash his value in consequence. For example, we read:

Oddly, Flew seems to have turned into an American as well as a believer. His intellectual autobiography is written in the language of an Englishman of his generation and class; yet when he starts to lay out his case for God, he uses Americanisms like "beverages," "vacation" and "candy." It is possible that Flew decided to make some passages easier on the ears of American readers or that an editor has made trivial emendations for him. But it is striking how much of Flew's method of argument, too, has changed from that in his earlier works, and how similar it now is to the abysmal intellectual standards displayed in Varghese's appendix. In fact, Flew told The New York Times Magazine last month that the book "is really Roy's doing."

Oh, come on. If Flew had suddenly, dramatically, turned back to atheism, would the same people suggest that he was senile or that he didn't really write the (later) retraction? Is that truly the atheists' best shot? Then their case is worse than I had realized. As a matter of fact, people who are senile tend to confirm their earlier views more strongly, rather than change them decisively. Change might require intellectual resources they no longer have.

In my view, the authorship attribution, "with" Roy Varghese, is the weak point that those who wish to discredit Flew latched on to and tried to exploit. The word "with", in respect to authorship attribution, is ambiguous. It can mean that the author has accepted help with style. But it can also imply that the named author could not write publishable work.

For example, if a world heavyweight champ who never went to school but has an inspiring story to tell writes an autobiography "with" a popular sports journalist, we needn't be in much suspense about which of the two is literally writing the book. To raise the question is to risk sounding naive. But Flew has written dozens of challenging books, so the question of whether he could still do so matters. Most critically, it impacts the reader's willingness to take his change of mind seriously.

In fact, Flew is identified as having written most of the book (pp 7-158) and Varghese as having written the Preface (vii-xxiv), the Introduction (pp. 1-6), and a long Appendix (161-183). There is also a long appendix by Anglican bishop N. T. Wright (pp 185-213) on the veracity of accounts of Jesus in the New Testament. But that long essay, while quite interesting, seems quite distinct from Flew's account of how he came to be a deist and Varghese's supporting documentation.

I found myself impatiently flipping through the book trying to figure out who Roy Abraham Varghese even is, and finally took to the Internet, where I learned:

Roy Abraham Varghese, author of The Wonder of the World, is the editor and author of various books on the interface between science and religion. Of these, Cosmos, Bios, Theos, included contributions from 24 Nobel Prize winners and was described as "the year's most intriguing book about God" by Time magazine. This was the best-selling book from the publishing house Open Court. Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends won a Templeton Book Prize in 1995. Great Thinkers on Great Questions was published by OneWorld of Oxford, England, and distributed worldwide by Penguin. God-Sent and the best selling God-Fleshed were two works of popular theology published by Crossworld Herder, the US division of the German publishing house Herder and Herder. Varghese was a panelist at the science and religion forum in the Parliament of World Religions held in Chicago in 1993. He was also an invited participant in the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders held at the United Nations in August 2000. He has organized several conferences with dialogues between noted atheists and theists including a conference at Yale University on Artificial Intelligence. He has worked on conferences and publications with some of the best-known atheists in the English-speaking world, ranging from Antony Flew and Sir Alfred Ayer of Oxford to Marvin Minsky of MIT as well as with prominent scientists (including a number of Nobel Prize winners).

Varghese has been elsewhere described as a "businessman and amateur philosopher." If this information is in the book, it is not emphasized.

I am not the only person who has noticed this problem. John Haldane, Director of the Centre for Ethics, Policy and Public Affairs in the Department of Moral Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, had a ringside seat during the flap, and records:

... the predictable reactions to a book published last month entitled There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind, described as being "by Antony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese." I quote the form of the authorial assignment for it is part of Oppenheimer's suggestion that Flew had little if anything to do with the book and that it is the latest and most brazen attempt by a member of the theist forces to co-opt a declining mind to their cause.

Haldane doesn't buy the thesis:

As with the defences and denunciations on the weblogs, readers will interpret these statements and Oppenheimer's article in line with their own prejudices, but to my mind the presumption should be in favour of innocence.

I don't buy the he-didn't-write-it thesis either. As I was already aware of the controversy, I read the book carefully as an editor might, and I think that there is no question that Flew wrote the material that appears under his name. And if he didn't, he would certainly have tried to. I remember Flew from the compulsory first year religion course at the U (1967), and after all these years, ... this is still Flew. But it is also true that substantial portions of the book were contributed by Varghese, who is a "with" author and by Wright, who is not named on the cover.

That's one irritant and another has been the publisher's billing of Flew as "the world's most notorious atheist." Many have scored cheap goals by pointing out that Flew was never that. He might be better defended as (formerly) the world's best-respected academic atheist. Throughout his section of the book, a hallmark of Flew's style is a meticulous search for the best evidence, wherever it leads. I can hardly doubt that the many distinctions he earned were just and that his change of mind was reasonable. But "notorious"? Not Flew. Not unless others made him so by their calumnies.

Why did the publisher bill him thus? No big story there. Truth in advertising, I have been through the process myself with The Spiritual Brain, from the same publisher. I am well aware of the readiness with which a vigorous marketing team latches onto a vision they can really RUN with - and the dreadful difficulty of substituting a more mundane and realistic description of a book.

In my view, the book should have been attributed as follows: "Anthony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese", not "Antony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese", as it actually is, with appropriate notice on the jacket of an appendix by Bishop Wright, who is a highly regarded New Testament scholar. By choosing to reduce Varghese and make Wright almost disappear, the publisher unintentionally creates an opening for some to claim that Flew wrote no part of the book. But the evidence is against that, as most readers will see.

I will shortly post a review proper. In the meantime, I strongly recommend There IS a God as a key work in helping us understand the significance of evidence for design in the universe.

Note: Here and here are some of my comments at The Mindful Hack as the controversy was developing.

Update note January 12, 2008: Roy Abraham Varghese advises me that "notorious" was Flew's own self-deprecating choice. I wouldn't have guessed, but Marketing must have loved it.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Today at the Post-Darwinist

Alley Oop, if you lie to me one more time ...

Human evolution: It all began in Pasta City, see ...

Elite atheist scientists' views on people of faith: Bash them with a crowbar, or only a baseball bat?

Today at the Mindful Hack

Research that tells you something you already knew. Givers are happier Do people give because they are happy or are they happy because they give? Actually, it is more likely a feedback loop - it is mutually reinforcing if you keep it up.

Does religion really poison everything? "Mark Musick of the University of Texas thought, when he started his research on volunteerism worldwide, that education would best predict who volunteers, but he found that attending religious services was the strongest predictor, stronger than either education or income."

Mario Beauregard is a neuroscientist who has been studying the brain for years. His findings are surprising: he believes he has found a neurological reason to believe in the existence of the
soul.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

2006 and 2007 have been years in which a number of key science papers addressed things we know - that ain't so. One story is the serious challenges to the long contested "molecular clock" theory.

[ ... ]

In the science literature, many adjustments are offered to make the fossil record and molecular data match. Of course, some adjustment is certainly inevitable, but after a while a question arises. One can live with a clock that is routinely ten minutes slow. But if it is variably slow, slower at some times than others, there may come a point when one asks, why consult a clock anyway? Or, more to the point, should this device properly be called a clock?

Read the rest here.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Stephen Jay Gould, the great American paleontologist, liked to say - particularly in A Wonderful Life, that if the tape of evolution were replayed a million times, a species like ours would not necessarily evolve. He made this point in, and a debate rages to this day about whether he meant chance, as Daniel Dennett claims, or contingency, as Michael Shermer claims.

Biochemist Michael Denton of the University of Otago in New Zealand has an interesting take on the question in Nature's Destiny.

Go here for more.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Ann Coulter, whose wit has savaged many Important People, asks an interesting question: Why do media reports focus on potential Republican presidential candidate Huckabee's doubts about the Darwinian version of the history of life, but not on those of peole who may be suspected of knowing more about it:

The media are transfixed by the fact that Huckabee says he doesn't believe in evolution. Neither do I, for reasons detailed in approximately one-third of my No. 1 New York Times best-selling book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism."

I went on a massive book tour for "Godless" just last year, including a boffo opening interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today," a one-on-one, full-hour interview with Chris Matthews on "Hardball," and various other hostile interviews from the organs of establishmentarian opinion.

But I didn't get a single question from them on the topic of one-third of my book.

If the mainstream media are burning with curiosity about what critics of Darwinism have to say, how about asking me? I can name any number of mathematicians, scientists and authors who have also rejected Darwin's discredited theory and would be happy to rap with them about it.

Ann, you and I both know why. What you would tell them is just what legacy media types DON'T want to hear or broadcast. The story is so much easier to tell if we ignore the fact that the evidence does not support Darwin's mechanism as the main explanation for the evolution of life.

What's wrong with science education today. Is it the young earth creationists>?

David Warren on how Darwinism blocks our view of the past, the present, and the future.

Who actually believes in science? The answers may surprise you.

John Davison has a new blog.

New at THe Mindful Hack:
Should churches criticize bestselling atheists?

Alzheimer NOT an immediate mental death sentence

Is your brain full of anachronistic junk?

Pos-Darwinista aims for 100 000 site visitors by Christmas

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Interview with Guillermo Gonzalez, the "Privileged Planet" astronomer who was recently denied tenure at Iowa State University:

"Now if you talk about evidence of design in physics or cosmology, you are put under the category of intelligent design, and you are immediately labeled a fundamentalist or worse." - Guillermo Gonzalez

Also: Gonzalez on intelligent design: Both falsified AND unfalsifiable, right?

If you don't think that makes sense, keep it to yourself! - the Darwinbots are probably watching you.

On a good day, they could knock us over with a feather, or with laughter ...

Note: If you want to post a comment at the DoL blog: A technical problem has prevented me from approving comments. Regular tech support is currently on vacation. So am I, technically, for a few days, though I will try to post anyway. My favourite tech support person has promised to write a page for the site on how to post comments, and I hope that service in the new year will meet every reasonable person's expectations.

Also at The Mindful Hack:

Can people simply decide to die?

It used to be all my mom's fault, but now it's all my brain's fault?

Change your mind, change your brain seminar at Colorado Free University in Denver

Jewish community life takes root again in Germany

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Dennis Overbye, writing in The New York Times, explains how physicist Paul Davies had to address Internet hate.

He had written a piece for the New York Times in which he had stated:

SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term "doubting Thomas" well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into "non-overlapping magisteria," as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

But that didn't please the materialists, because they wanted THEIR faith to be certified as true, really and totally true, beyond questn and argument:

Dr. Davies asserted in the article that science, not unlike religion, rested on faith, not in God but in the idea of an orderly universe. Without that presumption a scientist could not function. His argument provoked an avalanche of blog commentary, articles on Edge.org and letters to The Times, pointing out that the order we perceive in nature has been explored and tested for more than 2,000 years by observation and experimentation. That order is precisely the hypothesis that the scientific enterprise is engaged in testing. David J. Gross, director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, told me in an e-mail message, "I have more confidence in the methods of science, based on the amazing record of science and its ability over the centuries to answer unanswerable questions, than I do in the methods of faith (what are they?)."

Reached by e-mail, Dr. Davies acknowledged that his mailbox was "overflowing with vitriol," but said he had been misunderstood. What he had wanted to challenge, he said, was not the existence of laws, but the conventional thinking about their source.

Anyone who doubts the current dogma in science - whatever it is - is liable to be misunderstood.

Also: Today at the Mindful Hack

Can people simply decide to die?

It used to be all my mom's fault, but now it's all my brain's fault?

Change your mind, change your brain seminar at Colorado Free University in Denver

Jewish community life takes root again in Germany.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

The blog for the Design of Life textbook supplement went live this morning (I'm the lead blogger).

The first three posts:

1. Welcome to the Design of Life blog!

Excerpt: " Here at this blog you will see the evidence run through a filter that accepts the possibility of purpose and design. That means that sometimes you will see the same evidence but without the just-so stories that rescue Darwinism. You will see lots of evidence you wouldn't otherwise know about. In no case will you see the kind of thing you hear increasingly from popular (and sometimes tax-supported) media. For example, here are some things we WON'T tell you: 1. What Pleistocene man "would have done". For example, he "would have had several mates in order to spread his selfish genes." Actually, I don't know what Pleistocene man would have done. Do you? Did he? When we don't know that something actually happened, we won't tell you that it did. We certainly won't tell you that it "would have happened" in order to promote some otherwise useless or failed Darwinist theory."

2. The Big Bang of flowers - an abominable mystery? Or an opportunity to really understand?

Can scientists shed light on Charles Darwin's "abominable mystery" - the Big Bang of early plant evolution? Flowering plants evolved quite quickly into five groups, according to scientists at the University of Florida and the University of Texas at Austin (ScienceDaily, November 27, 2007) ...

3. The "Copernican" myth, and other science myths - the undead still walk!

The myth that Copernicus's model of the universe "dethroned" humans is a vampire that refuses to die. In Physics Today, Mano Singham tries yet again! to drive a nail through the monster's heart. Singham writes (December 2007, page 48) about the promoters of the myth ...

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. --Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

What would happen if teachers in a public school classroom notified students of a book in the school library that offered scientific challenges to Darwin's theory of evolution? Call it The Book, and assume it gave a fair portrayal of evolution by natural selection but, in addition to clearly outlining Darwin's thoughts on the matter, also identified specific challenges to Darwinism. What if The Book raised the prospect of gaps in evolutionary theory for which there is no evidence? Even worse, what if The Book contrasted the ideas of Darwinism with that of creationists, clearly focusing on the diametrically opposite religious implications of the evidence? Would such notification by teachers be legal in the United States?

Two years ago this month, in a courtroom shared with Charles Darwin's great-great-grandson, a federal judge in Dover, Pennsylvania made minor history with major histrionics by ruling that a similar notification by teachers in a public high school was an establishment of religion by the government. Establishing a religion in the United States is easy, of course, when "religion" equals "any hint of Christianity" and anything remotely "biblical" is suspect by default. But in this case the establishment was even more egregious; it seems the offending book in question, and the notification to the students, crossed all constitutional limits by mentioning the two words that set Darwinists and the differently religious into a delirium: intelligent design.

Intelligent Design! The complainers in the Dover case feigned outrage over intelligent design even being mentioned because, in the words of one plaintiff, "it forces their children to confront challenges to their religious beliefs at school." Poor children. Fortunately for them, however, the good judge in Dover, being steeped in "Christianity equals religion" and "everything non-Christian is religiously neutral" ran to their side. Displaying little patience with the local school board's establishment of Anything-Friendly-to-Christianity, the judge set out with all his heart, soul, and strength to protect the plaintiff's tender religious beliefs instead. Reveling in the high-profile monkey-trial media circus, he clearly salivated at the chance to bash a few misguided school board members for their "breathtaking inanity". Being the scientific expert he is, perhaps along with the eye itself this supreme authority of science might next venture to explain how beams evolved in one eye and splinters in others.

Judge John E. Jones III, the disciple whom Darwin loves, has become the latest beloved of atheists everywhere who heralded his 139-pages of largely plagiarized wisdom as reason to rest, once and for all, calmly on Darwin's breast. After all, why bother defending a theory when one can coax a federal judge to decree one scientific idea (Darwinism) that supports a favored religious view (naturalism) acceptable against another scientific idea (intelligent design) that supports a disfavored view (theism)? But making white lab coats subservient to black law robes is the business of scientific cowards--mainstream origins science has become sadly dependent upon federally protected and subsidized truth. But science-by-robed-decree, whether by Papal Bull or judicial bunk, is rarely sustainable against contrary evidence. And no more evidence than the Dover trial is needed to show that defending evolution is more about religion than science.

Not only did Judge Jones ban the words "intelligent design" from the biology classroom, but he went so far as to make it a violation of the United States Constitution to make students read anything that disparages Darwinism. Our Founding Fathers would be rightly distressed to see such petty mishandling of their noble document. But Jones's circle of federal marshals protecting Darwinism from criticism may yet find a greater challenge. Jones's religiously motivated reasoning is beautifully misguided because while focusing on one book in the school's library, the ACLU-led inquisition totally overlooked another: The Book.

The Book details Darwinism with great precision but treats it as a scientific theory open to challenges, including an insistence that a conclusion that all species descended from other species be supported by a showing of exactly "how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation which justly excites our admiration." Thus, The Book sets out a challenge for Darwinism to show, for example, how massive amounts of non-material information could self-assemble in increasingly complex DNA molecules by natural processes alone. To date Darwinism has no demonstrable naturalistic explanation for such self assembly, and no natural mechanisms can even theoretically do the job. The Book rightly points out that until such mechanisms can be identified, Darwin's theory can be legitimately challenged.

Among The Book's greatest attributes is its frank recognition that Darwin's theory is fairly challenged by theories of those who "believe that each being has been created as we now see it." Although such a notion is not exactly what intelligent design theorists believe (most non-materialist theories allow for changed over time from original forms), the fact that The Book speaks of such a theory as a legitimate scientific challenger to Darwinism is noteworthy. In fact, The Book speaks deferentially of creationist theories, embracing thoughts of a Creator with respectful toleration. Fortunately Judge Jones is, like most Darwinists, ignorant of The Book, or else it might become unconstitutional in public schools as well.

The Book makes its strongest case against evolution by pointing out that, among the "crowd of difficulties" with Darwinism, the foremost difficulty is that the fossil record does not support Darwin's theory of gradual descent with modification. The Book asks the common sense question: "why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?" There are no unambiguous transitional forms, and few purported forms in a fossil record that should be teeming with millions upon millions of such creatures. Such knowledge is common among educated scientists, but most Darwinists treat speaking such truth as tantamount to being a knuckle-dragging, redneck creationist. Atheists in Ohio, for example, last year forced out a state science standard instructing students on the current state of the fossil record, ostensibly because letting high school students in on the "trade secret" of paleontologists establishes another government church in the classroom (in competition with their church of naturalism). But the trade secret, as arch-evolutionist Stephen J. Gould announced, remains--the fossil record does not support Darwinian gradualism. And The Book agrees.

Related to the lack of support in the fossil record for Darwin's descent with modification, The Book draws attention to the growing line of evidence that the geological record likewise contradicts Darwinism. The Book details what no public high school students will learn--that several cases are on record of the same species presenting varieties in the upper and lower parts of the same geological formation. Creationist scientists, for example, have long documented such "anomalies" in places like the Grand Canyon. Even worse for Darwin's theory, the real problem with the geological record (as The Book notes), is the sudden appearance of whole groups of species in certain formations. Put forth as a "serious difficulty" for Darwinism, The Book accurately records how species of several main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferious rocks, particularly the Cambrian. The entire absence of fossils beneath the Cambrian strata, The Book notes, is one reason that many eminent paleontologists such as Cuvier, Agassiz, Barrande, Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, etc., and all the greatest geologists, such as Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, etc., have "unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the immutability of species." The Book is a good book.

Like most books on Darwinism, The Book gratuitously states there is "no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one." And if The Book were more widely read and its scientific principles more widely followed, few "religious" feelings would be touched at all, much less shocked. But here science gets interesting, because it seems there is remarkable irony in The Book's view of "religious feelings". For like the plaintiffs in Dover and the atheists in Ohio, it is today's devotees of naturalism whose religious feelings are shocked by any opposition to Darwinism, including the very challenges expressed in The Book. If Darwinists were honestly consistent they would attack The Book with great vigor. But fortunately most Darwinists, atheists, and materialists are unaware of The Book's content.

What is The Book that Darwinists don't yet know they hate? None other than Charles Darwin's own On the Origin of Species.

What wonderful, wonderful evidence of current Darwinism's scientific bankruptcy. Charles Darwin himself would be run out of Dover, Pennsylvania. Teachers in Ohio who dare teach straight out of his On the Origin of Species would be charged with a "violation of church and state", and likely fired. Professors in Iowa and Texas who freely profess to follow the evidence of design as a challenge to Darwinism face tenure denial. And one good scientist in Massachusetts who refused to take a religious oath to Darwinism was simply fired. All because Darwin, the honest scientist, has been replaced by Darwinists, fear mongering religionists who cook up religious motivation in every scientific challenge to Darwinism.

Poor Darwin. Like Christ removed from Christmas, Darwin has been removed from Darwinism. His spirit of religiosity lives, but his practice of science is dead. Icons have little hope of survival when their own fail to render honor.

Roddy Bullock, JD, BSME, is the Executive Director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio (www.idnetohio.com) and is the author of The Cave Painting: A Parable of Science, published by Access Research Network. Send comments to: roddybullock@idnetohio.com.

Copyright (C) 2007 Roddy M. Bullock, all rights reserved. Quotes and links permitted with attribution.

References:

For more "icons of evolution", see Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth: Why much of what we teach about evolution is wrong (Washington D.C.: Regnery, 2002), p. 7. http://www.amazon.com/Icons-Evolution-Science-Teach-About/dp/0895262002/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197690273&sr=1-2

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, online here: http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F391&viewtype=text&pageseq=1
Quoted language and cited concepts found at pages 2, 63, 133, 143, 144, 146, 150, 275, 286, 416, 422, 428, 430.

"Trade secret" quote from Stephen J. Gould, The Panda's Thumb, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1980), p. 181. Gould states:

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record: ". . . He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory."

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Recently, I received and published this comment on this post about Oxford mathematician John Lennox's book, God's Undertaker, from "curwen":

As an historian, with some background in the cultural and social history of Darwinism, I'm interested in how philosophy effects scientific practice. In my search for current material on the subject, I ran across this post, and became interested in your blog.

I am interested in your opinion on this: in what ways would scientific practice change if materialism, as a philosophy of science, was eventually replaced by design? In other words, would research and experiment be structured differently? Would standards of evidence change? Does Lennox comment on this? I apologize if this is something you've already dealt with at length, so even if you responded with relevant posts that would be helpful.

I told curwen that it is an excellent question, and I'd answer it.

I am also going to ask around and post other answers.*

My area of interest is the popular culture that grows up around science (not surprising given my background as a journalist, author, and blogger), so here are my thoughts on that:

[ ... ]

2. If the hold of the materialist atheists is broken, we will see evidence restored to its rightful place as the hallmark of science. Instead of hearing empty rhetoric like "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", we will hear "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evidence." How will this affect research? Well, for one thing, people will be able to follow the evidence without fear of losing their positions. That will - necessarily - lead to the discovery that many materialist truisms are poorly supported. Honest discussions will be possible again. I reasonably believe that advances in knowledge will result.

Note: George Hunter's Science's Blind Spot meticulously records the decline of the importance of evidence in science, as opposed to ideology. See also Evolution in the light of intelligent design for a limited list of topics on which reasonable discussion can become possible.

3. Another key change I expect is this: Promissory materialism will cease to be obligatory mental furniture - the monstrous overstuffed sofa that lurks in the picture window of the minds of most educated people today.

As a result, people who insist that

- computers are going to become conscious - soon!
- apes can write autobiographies with appropriate training
- the mind is a user illusion
- there must be aliens out there because otherwise we would be special (and we "know" we're not special)
- there is a "God spot" in the brain which explains religious convictions and experiences
- there is no free will and you are controlled by your selfish genes

will slowly cease to be treated as authorities by popular media, as they presently are. They will come to be seen for what they in fact are: Materialist cranks flogging up ideas that do not withstand scrutiny or evidence - people whose positions are largely maintained by the organized ridicule or persecution of the holders of better supported alternative positions.

4. Some unproductive projects will probably be simply abandoned. For example, origin of life research is presently handicapped by the fact that such research MEANS research on how life came about by chance. Virtually everyone I have read in the field stoutly defends the view that that is what OoL research means - and the only thing it can ever mean. They would actually regard any other conclusion as a failure - even though, as Design of Life demonstrates, their efforts have gone nowhere and come up with nothing for the better part of a century. Unable to consider the possibility that life didn't come about that way, they battle each other over theories that are probably all incorrect. I suspect that human evolution research suffers from the same problem: Researchers search for a hairy, half-conscious proto-human who may never have existed at all. But he must exist according to materialist theory, and therefore he does. And in the present state of science, materialist theory trumps honest examination of the evidence.

5. Last and best, science may be separated from religion, to the benefit of both. Much that is called "science" in the popular media is simply the metaphysics of materialist atheism, using science as stage props. We will no longer endure experts who claim to know things like "the cave man was unfaithful to his mate so he could spread his selfish genes" Oh, was he now? That expert knows what cave men did in the same way that a witch doctor knows when my ancestors are displeased with me and a local fundamentalist knows exactly what God wants me to do.

When general acceptance of the religious view that drives any form of non-evidence-based knowledge declines, it ceases to be considered knowledge. Atheistic materialism is long overdue for that.

Do you have thoughts to share? Go here to post them (in the comments box).

*Note that I am interested in hearing from people who think that design is a reasonable inference. If you don't, materialist blogs are anxious to hear from you so go there.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

It is unfortunate that Oxford mathematician John C. Lennox's book, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (Lion, 2007) has received so little attention in North America. (It originally appeared in German, later English).

Although well respected as a mathematician and a Christian apologist, Lennox, who had been an atheist in his youth, is currently best known for his debate with Richard Dawkins (More information here).

God's Undertaker is a solid contribution to the debate over design in the universe and life forms. It comes down clearly and without waffling on the side of design, but what impresses me is that Lennox manages to avoid a number of sinkholes that have engulfed many other fine contemporary minds.

Who is John C. Lennox?

John C. Lennox MA MA (Bioethics) DPhil. Ph.D. DSc.
John Lennox is Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green College, Visiting Fellow at the Mathematical Institute, and Lecturer at Wycliffe-Hall, all at the University of Oxford. He Studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University and was subsequently Reader in Pure Mathematics in the University of Wales at Cardiff. He has been a Senior Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Wuerzburg and Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany. He has published over 70 articles in Algebra (Group Theory) and co-authored two research monographs in the Oxford Mathematical Monographs series - "The Theory of Subnormal Subgroups" (with S.E. Stonehower) 1987 and "The Theory of Infinite Soluble Groups" (with D.J.S. Robinson) 2004. He is currently particularly interested in the interface between science, philosophy and theology and lectures in Science and Religion at Oxford University.

In Christian apologetics, he is also David W. Gooding's co-author on Key Bible concepts and The Definition of Christianity.

Next: Part Two What a design argument is - and what it isn't

Parts:
Part One Introduction God's Undertaker?: Well, you know, that undertaker is 001 in the unemployment line, ... and still waiting
Part Two What a design argument is - and what it isn't
Part Three Information is the key to understanding
Part Four What, if anything, is the use of creationism? Plenty!
Part Five God's Undertaker - little known but much recommended!

With admirable clarity of thought, Lennox avoids confusing design in the universe and life forms with either creationism or Scriptural literalism. A design argument asserts that the evidence for design in the universe and life forms should be taken at face value, that is as evidence that the entities are designed. And Lennox does just that.

There are several contrary materialist positions:

1. Design is an illusion. In recent years, that has increasingly come to sound like whistling in the dark.

2. Or perhaps there are uncountable numbers of flopped universes out there and ours just happens to be unusually nice. That idea goes down well in popular culture - just think of the FILMS! It can spawn - but it is presently untestable.

3. Lastly, some argue that the question is not a proper concern of science - in common parlance, "Let's just rule it out of order, and ignore the evidence." That raises the question of what science is, if it is not an effort to learn more about the universe we live in.

But a design argument is not an argument for special creation -. the sudden appearance of multicellular life forms out of nothing. Design does not require such events and does not provide direct evidence for them either. In a designed universe such events are at least a possibility, but other inferences and evidence must establish them. The mere fact of design does not establish them.

There is much confusion on this point in North America. Many on both sides profit from the confusion. The materialist atheist benefits the most because he evades the looming falsification of his central idea - an accidental, purposeless universe - by loudly insisting that design means special creation or a universe created in six days (144 hours). Because he usually has the ear of a sympathetic media corps, he can buy a lot of time for his interpretation.

Meanwhile, the special creationist hopes that the powerful arguments for design can be co-opted as arguments for special creation. Having little incentive to help set the record straight, he doesn't.

And at the same time the Scriptural literalist - usually a young Earth creationist - is primarily interested in finding science evidence that conforms to his favoured interpretation of the words of Scripture. Actually, many people in that camp do not even like design arguments, as such because design arguments are not drawn from the Scriptures and can be advanced and defended in the absence of any scriptures.

Next: Part Three Information is the key to understanding

In the midst of all this confusion, Lennox usefully points out that the central fact about "information" - what life has and non-life doesn't - is entirely consistent with the Scriptures of the Judeao-Christian tradition.,

This key notion,. That the Creator is God the word, is reflected in the repeated phrase 'And God said [Let there be light ...]' of the Hebrew creation narrative and it is emphasized in almost all of the statements made in the Bible relative to creation. Of particular interest for our discussion is the statement, 'By faith we understand that the universe was formed by God's word, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.' This quotation from ancient biblical literature is remarkable in that it draws attention to a basic characteristic of information, namely that information is invisible. The carriers of information may well be visible - like paper and writing, smoke-signals, television screens or DNA - but the information itself is invisible. (p. 168, God's Undertaker)

Not only that, but information, as Lennox goes on to demonstrate, is immaterial. Example: The knowledge that the concert you hoped to attend has been cancelled due to an ice storm is immaterial. The storm is quite material, but your knowledge that the concert has been cancelled is immaterial, even though it may have been conveyed by material things.

Shades of George Gilder, actually!

What about the debate between John Lennox and key New Atheist Richard Dawkins

The John Lennox-Richard Dawkins debate, Birmingham, Alabama (October 3, 2007) was sponsored by Fixed Point. (Local details here).

Available for download here.

CD or DVD here.

Live blogged by Daniel Devine

Dawkins's view

Observations from Lennox fans...

Next: Part Four: What, if anything, is the use of creationism?

Lennox also defends creationism as a useful concept for getting people thinking in a scientific way:

" ... the rise of science would have been seriously retarded if one particular doctrine of theology, the doctrine of creation had not been present." (God's Undertaker, p.22)

Why is a doctrine of creation important? Lennox points out that it frees science from the idea that we ought to be able to deduce what is happening in the universe from fixed prior principles. If - in contradiction to such an idea - we assume that God is entitled to create what he likes (trilobites, giraffes, and whales, to name some examples), then our duty is to address what exists rather than to set rules for what can exist. Unfortunately, centuries ago, many scientists attempted to proceed by setting rules about what can exist, according to their theories. Many of their ideas were in conflict with reality, and unproductive conflicts were common.

Having taught sections of the Design or Chance? adult night school course at St. Michael's in the University of Toronto, I also have a clear sense of another issue: A doctrine of creation encourages people to believe that the universe is worth studying because it puts a limit on the things you would need to know in order to understand. For one thing, even by positing an actual beginning of time, it closes off an infinite past in which virtually anything could have, and has, happened.

Assume, for example, that our theory of the universe does not include a doctrine of creation. We might assert - as some cultures have - that the universe is supported on an infinite series of turtles who (in some greater infinity) are swimming in an endless sea. Why study it? The information gained from one turtle may be no use in interpreting another, and then - even if you could get to the end of the turtles (which you cannot, because the series is infinite) - you would then confront the endless sea. All the information you have accumulated is a mass of interesting sludge, really. The prospect of understanding the universe is actually impossible. Lennox aided my understanding of this question by noting that the Jesuit Fathers who visited the advanced kingdom of China in the early modern period had difficulty at first persuading the Chinese scholars that many features of the universe can be understood by simple equations. They had not expected to find the unverse comprehensible in that way.

So a doctrine of creation imposes limits on what we must understand in order to gain a picture of our universe. That is critical for science as we understand it. If we assume that if the Big Bang happened roughly 13.7 billion years ago (conventional dating), then anything that could not have taken place within that period by random movements alone either did not happen or happened because of exterior or prior guidance. Or something else? At any rate, we are justified in seeking an explanation.

Next: Part Five Lennox's book - little known but much recommended!

Oxford mathematician John Lennox's book God's Undertaker is an excellent introduction to the key issues in the controversy between intelligent design and unguided evolution.

Other reviews: There is a dearth of other reviews I can point to just now, apart from Colin Tudge in the Guardian, who attempts to smooth things over by declaring that Lennox shows that the materialists might not be intellectually triumphant.

No, they aren't triumphant, but the problem isn't merely that their claims are not true. The materialist currently hopes to prevail by brute force: political correctness (the last refuge of a false idea), summary dismissals of dissenters, claims that human rights are violated by dissent from materialism, et cetera.

At present, the materialist view is no longer subject to any process that takes evidence into account. Yes, the materialist's claims would fail on the evidence but ... evidence no longer matters. God's Undertaker is a welcome change from this increasingly claustrophobic environment.

Looking in the Distance blog offers some thoughts.

Return to:
Part One Introduction God's Undertaker?: Well, you know, that undertaker is 001 in the unemployment line, ... and still waiting
Part Two What a design argument is - and what it isn't
Part Three Information is the key to understanding
Part Four What, if anything, is the use of creationism? Plenty!
Part Five God's Undertaker - little known but much recommended!

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

The tyrannosaur and his buddies ain't talking, so the world's cartoonists have come up with a great many guesses.

Well, they either died this way or that way. Or maybe this way (if you are a young earth creationist)?

Or was it that they SMOKED? No! Say it's not TRUE!

Here is another series of key dinosaur extinction theories, including key theoretical concepts like downsizing and divorce woes.

Political correctness department: Here's a politically correct theory about SUVs and here's one about global warming.

Still and all ... it's coming down to a tight race, folks ... .

Note: For a serious look at extinctions, try paleontologist David Raup's excellent book, Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?

Also: A chicken discovers his dinosaur heritage and raising a baby pterosaur.

Here, US president George W. Bush is denounced for doing nothing to stop dinosaur extinctions. And just think, he had all that time, too.

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

(This was posted at Uncommon Descent.)

Since the revelations from Monday's press conference in Iowa regarding the true reason for Guillermo Gonzalez's tenure denial, I have been studying the comments of Darwinists, to this and this post. The comments intrigue me for a reason I will explain in a moment.

Some commenters are no longer with us, but they were not the ones that intrigued me.*

I've already covered Maya at 8, 10, and 12 here, arguing a case against Gonzalez, even though the substance of the story is that we now KNOW that her assertions have nothing to do with the real reason he was denied tenure.

Oh, and at 15, she asserts, "The concern is not about Gonzalez’s politics or religion but about his ability to serve as a science educator."

So ... a man can write a textbook in astronomy, as Gonzalez has done, but cannot serve as a science educator? What definition of "science" is being used here, and what is its relevance to reality?

And getawitness, at 18, then compares astronomy to Near East Studies, of all things. NES is notorious for suspicion of severe compromise due to financing from Middle Eastern interests! I won't permit a long, useless combox thread on whether or not those accusations are true; it's the comparison itself that raises an eyebrow.

Just when I thought I had heard everything, ...

For the rest, go here.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Well, the jig is up now, re the Guillermo Gonzalez case. I've just seen the whack of documents Discovery Institute is releasing. [Note link at bottom for updates. Also go here for reflections on the amazing revelations in the case.]

1. It appears that the decision had been made to turn Gonzalez down for tenure before he had actually applied for it, and the reason was his advocacy of intelligent design.

Read this story in the Des Moines Register last week by Lisa Rossi

ISU President Gregory Geoffroy said in June that Gonzalez's advocacy of the "intelligent design" concept was not a factor in the decision to turn down his request for tenure.

Geoffroy said he focused his review on Gonzalez's overall record of scientific accomplishment as an assistant professor at ISU.

and then this one, to get some idea what I mean:

The disclosure of the e-mails is contrary to what ISU officials emphasized after Gonzalez, an assistant professor in physics and astronomy, learned that his university colleagues had voted to deny his bid for tenure.

[ ... ]

In response to a question about why the influence of intelligent design in the physics and astronomy tenure decisions was not acknowledged publicly by the university earlier, McCarroll said, "I can't speak for every one of those individuals" who voted on Gonzalez's tenure.

2. The alleged tenure review was in fact a fishing expedition whose purpose was to find any grounds at all for denying tenure to a man who emerges clearly an outstanding scientist (in flat contradiction to some of President Geoffroy's other claims), and far more so than the colleagues who were doing the fishing. For example, the fact that some of his widely cited papers were cited less often than others was grounds for a focus on the less widely cited ones. The fact that he published a textbook was dinged as an unwise use of his time.
Much of the most damaging stuff won't make it to Gonzalez's Regents' appeal on a technicality, but it's now going to be out there for all to see.
Anyway, brava! to journalist Lisa Rossi for exposing the vast credibility gap between what President Geoffroy was claiming to the media and the facts of the case. When oh when will administrators learn, do NOT tell stretchers to the media.? Even journalists who support you get mad if they think you are lying. As I said, more later.

Go here for updates.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).