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Uncommon Dissent UNCOMMON DISSENT UNCOMMON DISSENT Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing Edited by William A. Dembski lSI BooKs WILMINGTON, DELAWARE ------ Copyright © 2004 lSI Books, the imprint of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Second printing, 2005 Third printing, April 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Uncommon dissent : intellectuals who find Darwinism unconvincing I edited by William A. Dembski. - 1st ed.- Wilmington, Del. : lSI Books, c2004. p.; em. Includes index. ISBN: 1932236309 (cloth) ISBN: 1932236317 (paper) 1. Evolution (Biology)-Religious aspects. 2. Intelligent design (Teleology) 3. Creationism. 4. Religion and science. 5. Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882- Criticism and interpretation. I. Dembski, William A., 1960- BL263 .U53 2004 2004102726 213-dc22 CIP Published in the United States by: lSI Books Post Office Box 4431 Wilmington, Delaware 19807 www.isibooks.org Cover design by Kevin van der Leek Book design by Kara Beer Manufactured in the United States of America To the memory of Michael Polanyi, for freeing inquiry from ideology "The purpose of freedom is to create it for others." - Bernard Malamud, The Fixer CoNTENTS Acknowledgments XI Foreword John Wilson Xttl Introduction: The Myths of Darwinism William A. Dembski XVtt PART I: A CRISIS oF CoNFIDENCE 1. The Check Is in the Mail: Why Darwinism Fails to Inspire Confidence Robert C. Koons 3 2. Darwinism as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism Phillip E. Johnson 23 3. The Miracles of Darwinism Marcel-Paul Schiitzenberger 1996 Interview with La Recherche 41 PART II: DARWINISM'S CULTURAL INROADS 4. Darwin Meets the Berenstain Bears: Evolution as a Total Worldview Nancy R. Pearcey 53 5.Teaching the Flaws in Neo-Darwinism Edward Sisson 75 6. Accept No Imitations: The Rivalry of Naturalism and Natural Law j. Budziszewski 99 7. Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy? Frank]. Tipler 115 PART Ill: LEAVING THE DARWINIAN FoLD 8. A Catholic Scientist Looks at Darwinism Michael]. Behe 133 9. An Anti-Darwinian Intellectual Journey: Biological Order as an Inherent Property of Matter Michael john Denton 153 10. Why I Am Not a Darwinist james Barham 177 PART IV: AuDITING THE BooKs 11. Why Evolution Fails the Test of Science Cornelius G. Hunter 195 12. Darwinian Evolutionary Theory and the Life Sciences in the Twenty-First Century Roland F. Hirsch 215 13. Cheating the Millennium: The Mounting Explanatory Debts of Scientific Naturalism Christopher Michael Langan 233 14. The Deniable Darwin David Berlinski 263 Notes 307 Contributors 347 Index 357 AcKNOWLEDGMENTS The contributors to this volume are to be commended for a pro­ vocative and illuminating set of pieces. All but three were specifi­ cally commissioned for this collection. The exceptions are the essays by Phillip Johnson and David Berlinski and the interview with Marcel­ Paul Schiitzenberger. Thanks are due Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and the editors at First Things for permission to reprint the Johnson essay (which appeared in the October/November 1990 issue) as well as for opening the pages of that journal to dissent from Darwinism. Thanks are also due Dennis Wagner, head of Access Research Net­ work (ARN), for permission to reprint the Schiitzenherger interview. ARN orginally published the interview through its journal Origins & Design (in the spring of 1996, volume 17, number 2). Paul Nelson, the editor of that journal, arranged for David Berlinski to do the transla­ tion. I must thank the editors at Commentary for permission to reprint Berlinski's essay "The Deniable Darwin" (which appeared in June 1996) along with his responses to critics in "Denying Darwin" (the title given by Commentary to the correspondence that Berlinski's essays elicited and which was published in September 1996). Also to he thanked are the following letter-writers, who gave per­ mission to have their letters critical of Berlinski's essay to be reprinted here: H. Allen Orr, Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Arthur M. Shapiro, Paul R. Gross, and Eugenie C. Scott . In addition, thanks are due to John Wilson, the editor of Books & Culture, for writing a foreword that helpfully situates the pieces XII UNCOMMON DISSENT collected here within the broader cultural conversation. Books & Culture, like First Things and Commentary, provides a model for how the debate surrounding Darwinism should be handled: informed discussion without censorship. Finally, Jeremy Beer, editor in chief at ISI Books, is to be com­ mended for first envisioning this project, for seeing it to completion, and above all for having the courage to face the opposition that invari­ ably arises when Darwinism is questioned. In the April 7, 2003, issue of the Harvard Crimson, Richard T. Halvorson, then an undergraduate, wrote, "We must refuse to bow to our culture's false idols. Science will not benefit from canonizing Dar­ win or making evolution an article of secular faith. We must reject intel­ lectual excommunication as a valid form of dealing with criticism: the most important question for any society to ask is the one that is forbid­ den." With this volume, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute continues its long and celebrated tradition of asking the forbidden questions and thereby refusing to bow to our culture's false idols. john Wilson FoREWORD For years now, the New York Review of Books has been sending a di­ rect-mail letter that asks-in bright red letters-"Are you an intellec­ tual?" I was glad to see that the subtitle of Uncommon Dissent is Intel­ lectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing. "Intellectual" is a perfectly good noun that has fallen on hard times, particularly among conserva­ tives, where it is almost always used pejoratively. An intellectual may be, but is not necessarily, a specialist. Not all academics are intellectuals; not all intellectuals are academics. To be an intellectual is to possess a hungry mind and a willingness to question received opinion. But, contrary to a fashionable perversion of the intellectual's calling, intellectual is not a synonym for skeptic. Healthy skepticism is indeed essential to the intellectual life, but it must not be­ come an end in itself. There is a reality to which we are all accountable, a reality that invites our understanding. Since you have picked up Uncommon Dissent, there's a good chance that you would have to answer yes to the NYRB's question. And you may already know that the book you're holding is dangerous; it may get you into trouble. By questioning Darwinism, you place yourself in the company of all the cranks who have violated the taboos enforced by our current opinion-makers. In many settings, the contempt of the enlightened won't affect you. If, however, you are teaching at a college or university, the costs may be considerable. (False dramatics? Not at all. The art of blackball­ ing is practiced with great skill and ruthlessness in academia.) Of course, the ferocity of resistance merely underlines the need for informed dissent. The almost comically hyperbolic arrogance of the Darwinian establishment, well documented in William Dembski's in- XIV UNCOMMON DISSENT traduction to this volume, is representative of a larger malaise. As Steve Fuller observes in his new book, Kuhn vs Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science, Popper's view that a non-scientist might criticize science for failing to abide by its own publicly avowed standards is rarely found inside academia today. For those who have inherited Kuhn's Cold War belief that normal science is a bulwark in a volatile world, it comes as no surprise that philosophers to­ day would sooner criticize creationists for violating evolu­ tionary strictures than evolutionists for violating more gen­ eral scientific norms-an activity for which Popper had been notorious. But there's another, subtler danger to which almost every reader of this book is potentially vulnerable. The role of dissenter can be costly, but it can also be powerfully seductive. How easy it is, after reading a book such as this, to puff oneself up with pride, to wax dogmatic about the "crumbling edifice of evolutionary theory," and to fall into the very arrogance that is characteristic of Darwinism at its worst. If you really are an intellectual, and not what Solzhenitsyn calls a "smatterer," you will finish this book with more questions than answers. You won't simply accept the assertions of the authors gathered here, themselves a very diverse bunch; you'll subject them to the same sort of searching critique they have brought to bear on Darwinism. You will wonder, for starters, what precisely is meant by "Darwin­ ism"-or "evolution," for that matter, a notoriously slippery word. Is it the notion that life is merely a cosmic accident, the product of chance and natural selection? If so-and that is an essential aspect of the doc­ trine of some of the most visible proponents of Darwinism-there's no reason not to toss it overboard. But what about common descent? "Evolution," Richard Dawkins writes in his introduction to The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003, "is one of the most securely established facts in all sci­ ence. The knowledge
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