In the News

Michael Angove sent a letter to the editor to Scientific American regarding their April Fool's Day In Focus column entitled "Okay, We Give Up". ID is a more compelling answer to macroevolution than chance mutation and natural selection, but SciAm would rather make a joke of it. Below is Michael's letter, free to be read by all.

Dear editor...

While I did find your April 1st In Focus column (“Okay, We Give Up” click HERE) mildly amusing, the fact that SciAm would even feel a need to “go there” suggests there is a frustrated underpinning to this story: "Why won’t these people just go away?" I’m not talking about those that would “suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon,”—there can be no reasonable scientific basis for supporting these claims. But Intelligent Design will continue to present a problem for the exclusively secular worldview, because when it comes to explaining evolution, it (ID) simply offers a more compelling story than does neo-Darwinism.

Notice I said ID explains evolution, rather than replaces it. For political reasons Eugenie Scott and others would characterize anyone who questions the neo-Darwinian mechanism (random mutation plus natural selection) as an “anti-evolutionist.” But serious ID theorists (I know—an oxymoron in your estimation) stipulate that, in its broadest context, evolution occurred. They would also not argue that extrapolating neo-Darwinian adaptation to the nth degree is one possible explanation for what on the surface appears to be an unfathomable array of diversity, complexity and, yes, design that is the whole of Life on Earth. But here is where worldview comes into play. The secularist is by definition tied to either neo-Darwinism, or some as of yet undiscovered naturalistic process that accounts for the apparent design in nature. There would really be no argument if all there was to explain was finch beak sizes, or even the development of web feet. But neo-Darwinism has much more ‘splainin’ to do than that. It must account for wings that slowly and systematically emerge form “extra” skin folds. It must offer a satisfying account of the eye developing—one critical piece at a time—from random patches of light-sensitive skin. It must convince us that DNA can, in effect, self-assemble into a structure that yields an information storage capacity trillions of times greater than man-made media such as compact disks. “Mount Impossible” indeed.

So this is really not a theistic question at all. Most theists would have no problem with a God that gives the “gift of Darwinism” to life forms in order to diversify on a grand scale. But theists are not limited to purely naturalistic mechanisms. This allows us to bring the explanatory power of neo-Darwinism into question (as opposed to the secularist who lacks a viable alternative). For many, a critical examination of the Darwinian account yields an “information gap” that leaves us intellectually cold. It is for this reason...a reason not at all related to religious conviction...that unless “science” can come up with a more resonant naturalistic explanation for the entirety of what even secularists have described as the “miracle of life,” ID—in some form or another—will never go away. Sorry for the inconvenience, but at least you’ll have good April Fools Day material for the foreseeable future.

Michael Angove

Jay Mathews of the Washington Post did an op-ed piece on ID a while back. He received hundreds of e-mails regarding the piece. Many were hostile to the idea that ID could be taken seriously. But, others praised him for his ideas.

This is a summary of his experience after the op-ed piece.

For the full commentary, click HERE.

The Gallery, J.C. Williams Center

Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio

Saturday, April 9, 2005
12:30-2:30 P.M.

Dr. Paul Nelson, Ph.D., University of Chicago Mr. Hugh Owen, Director, the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation

Sponsored by the IDEA Club @ Franciscan University (A Student Life and FUSA sponsored organization)

Dr. Paul Nelson is an Intelligent Design theorist with a focus on the philosophy of biology.

Mr. Hugh Owen is the founder and director of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation. He has extensively traveled while speaking to audiences on the topics of creation and evolution.

Professor Alvin Plantinga of Notre Dame is the most distinguished philosopher of religion alive. Ten books have already been devoted to his work. He is devoting the final years of his academic career to completing the particularly significant research he has undertaken on the relationship between religion and science. Professor Plantinga will conduct a series of lectures at the University of St. Andrews over the next several weeks.

all The Gifford lectures will be held in
SCHOOL III
St Salvator's Quadrangle
at 5.15 p.m.

Tuesday 12th April Evolution and Design

Thursday 14th April Divine Action in the World

Tuesday 19th April Evolutionary Psychology and Scripture Scholarship:
more alike than you think

Thursday 21st April Methodological Naturalism and Games
Scientists Play

Tuesday 26th April On Christian Scholarship

Thursday 28th April Materialism and Christian Belief

Tuesday 3rd May 2005 Naturalism Defeated

Thursday 5th May 2005 Naturalism versus Science