The ID Report

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, author of Edge of Evolution, a powerful challenge to essentially magical claims for what Darwinian evolution can do, protests - in his usual pacific way - the ridiculous claims that it can produce vast amounts of intricate machinery in a short period of time.

Of course, the scandalous American Scientific Affiliation list has a huge investment in misrepresenting him.

A key issue is whether he is a creationist - that is, does he think that specific divine acts of creation are necessary?

Recently, he wrote me to say,

I tried to make my views as clear as possible in my books, and I even have a section in Chapter 10 of Edge of Evolution entitled "No Interference" where I say ID is compatible with absolutely no "intervention" (although, of course, in reality there may have been intervention -- who knows?).

Here's the money quote:

"But the assumption that design unavoidably requires 'interference' rests mostly on a lack of imagination. There’s no reason that the extended fine-tuning view I am presenting here necessarily requires active meddling with nature anymore than the fine tuning of theistic evolution does. One can think the universe is finely tuned to any degree and still conceive that 'the universe [originated] by a single creative act' and underwent 'its natural development by laws implanted in it'. One simply has to envision that the agent who caused the universe was able to specify from the start not only laws, but much more." (p. 231)

[Some tenured nobody] apparently has not read my stuff too closely.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Mike. Don't count on any of those people reading your stuff too closely. I remember the ridicule they heaped on you when the book first came out.

Here is my view, for what it is worth: The ASA list types thought they could front God to people who should really believe in materialism - like Darwin - in reality - did, from his early adulthood, and not as a result of his science research. [I will post on this topic soon].

The ASA types would give us the right to believe in God - on their terms.

But suppose we just kick them upside the moon, and believe the evidence instead?

Now that changes everything. Indeed, that is the change that is taking place. So hang in.

Human evolution: Quest for primitive human backfires

Human evolution: Hype, tripe, trumpets, and (lagging some way after, way out of breath) truth and realism

Human evolution: The spin machine in top gear

Intellectual freedom in Canada: "human rights" commissions, spreading the oppression, may trigger their own well-deserved destruction

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 Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (Harper 2007).