Recently, the evolution/creationism debate has taken a turn. Proponents of intelligent design have launched the best offensive (at least on the political and public relations front, if not necessarily in the scientific arena) seen to date. Periodic debates have become almost daily ones. Nancy Pearcey, one proponent of intelligent design at the Center for Science and Culture, which despite its name, aims to “challeng[e] various aspects of neo-Darwinian theory”, has concisely phrased the hopes of the ID project.
“By uncovering evidence that natural phenomena are best accounted for by Intelligence, Mind, and Purpose, the theory of Intelligent Design reconnects religion to the realm of public knowledge. . . Only when we are willing to restore Christianity to the status of genuine knowledge will we be able to effectively engage the ‘cognitive war’ that is at the root of today’s culture war.”
(See the discussion on The Panda’s Thumb, a virtual pub of the University of Ediacara, where patrons gather to discuss evolutionary theory and critique the claims of the antievolution movement.)
We at 3QD first noticed the turn in the debate a few years ago on the pages of the Boston Review, where H. Allen Orr first reviewed Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, and shortly there afterwards, William Dembski’s, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence. (See the exchanges that followed here, here, and here.)
Taking an intermittent look at the debate is often startling. Richard Dawkins (alongside Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries) has recently accused Tony Blair (Labour PM Tony Blair) of effectively supporting the teaching of intelligent design.
Of interest to some on these issues may also be Dawkins comments here and here on science’s and religion’s roles in both explanation and ethics.