BreakPoint
with Charles Colson
Commentary #040426 - 04/26/2004
Darwin's Doubters
Changing Paradigms,
Intelligently
BreakPoint listeners have heard me speak
many times over the years about the intelligent design movement.
Intelligent design is the argument by scientists that the world shows
clear signs that it was designed and is not simply the result of random
evolution.
This is one of the biggest cultural shifts
in recent history, especially now with school boards across the country
debating this very question and affirming the need to teach both sides of
this controversy.
How did this come about? It's been
developing for years, and a new book recounts the intelligent design
movement's history.
Doubts about Darwin: A History of
Intelligent Design, written by rhetorical historian Thomas Woodward,
tells the stories of four founders of the intelligent design
movement—Michael Denton, Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and William
Dembski—and how they used brilliant rhetorical strategy to break down
Darwinism.
Woodward notes that his reason for writing
the history is that it nurtures "the health of science itself and … the
civic health of American society." What's at stake, you see, is no less
than "supreme cultural authority," says Woodward. At the heart of the
origin debates is "our notions … of what it means to be human."
The motivation for these four founders of
the design movement to instigate this "reformation within science" is a
passion for intellectual truth-telling. "Design sees itself," writes
Woodward, "as … doing its best to restore epistemic integrity."
Woodward begins with biochemist Michael
Denton. Denton set the tone, purpose, and value of the fight against
Darwinism in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
Next he examines legal scholar Phillip
Johnson, this year's Wilberforce Award recipient. Phil Johnson began
reading Darwin and realized two things: the immense cultural implications
if the Darwinian worldview was proved false and, as a result of his legal
training, just how easy it was to prove it false. Johnson put Darwin on
trial and forced Darwinians in the academy onto the defensive.
Woodward then turns to biologist Michael
Behe, author of the "anti-Darwinist bomb," Darwin's Black Box. When
Behe read Denton's book, he experienced "the greatest intellectual shock
of his life." For years, Behe believed in Darwin's empirical proof because
he had been taught it throughout his education. Behe's "conversion," so to
speak, caused him to rethink biochemical systems, and he coined the term
irreducible complexity to describe systems that would cease to work if
any part was missing.
Finally Woodward comes to mathematician,
philosopher, and theologian William Dembski. Dembski has discovered that
telling the truth is never wrong, but sometimes it is costly, and that
Christian institutions themselves are not immune from Darwinian
stranglehold on truth. Even fellow colleagues at Baylor University have
worked to "shut down" Dembski's dissent.
Woodward makes it clear that telling the
truth never hurts the Christian cause. Intelligent Design's purpose isn't
to stop good scientific practices. Instead the goal is to open the
stifling Darwinian atmosphere to new possibilities.
Doubts about Darwin is an exciting
history lesson. While there are "no truces in view," says Woodward, these
fighters are working toward intellectual freedom. And their stories can
inspire you as you face your school board, colleagues, or biology
professors.
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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison
Fellowship
How about a Gecko in Copal ??
Wow!
http://www.crystal-world.com/html/fossils/amber/enlarged/gecko1.htm .
A perfect Gecko in Copal. Interesting web site with lot of pictures.
Also see the home page :
http://www.crystal-world.com/html/main.htm
and
http://www.crystal-world.com/html/fossils/fossils.htm
Clear indication of a catastrophic event -
think flood - think bigger, World-wide flood :)
Verse to remember... (2 Peter 3:3-6) Verse
7 is good also because it shows that what people really do not want to
face is the possibility of judgment (or being accountable for our actions)
2PE 3:3 Knowing this first, that there
shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their
own lusts,
2PE 3:4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the
fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning
of the creation.
2PE 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by
the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the
water and in the water:
2PE 3:6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with
water, perished:
Blessings,
Laurence