Recently I was interviewed by Jonathan Morrow for his excellent new book Thinking Christianly (Zondervan, 2011). He asked me about Darwinism as well as reaching the next generation. Here is my brief excerpt. Enjoy!

Jonathan Morrow: It is commonplace to hear about the “overwhelming evidence” for evolution. Have you found this to be the case? Can you talk a little about the role that Darwinism plays in our culture?

Sean McDowell: There’s a well-known joke for lawyers that says when the facts are on your side, argue the facts. However, when you don’t have the facts, use emotion and state your case with absolute certainty. This is precisely what is going on with claims about the “overwhelming evidence” for evolution. We live in an information age, and materialist theories such as Darwinism are slowly going the way of the Dodo. Intelligent design (ID) is on the move. Many Darwinists know this, which is why they focus their primary attacks on ID being religiously motivated or based on ignorance and avoid engaging the actual arguments. But they can ignore the substance for only so long.

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Last week I showed my students the movie Expelled by Ben Stein, where he argues that intelligent design proponents have lost jobs, lost tenure and had their reputations smeared. One of the memorable scenes of the movie featured William Provine, Cornell University Professor and outspoken atheist, articulating the implications of Darwinism. If Darwinism is true, says Provine, then there is no God, life after death, purpose, objective morality, or free will. They are all illusions fostered on us by our genes and environment.

Provine also criticizes intelligent design for being boring: “Can you imagine anything more boring? The boredom attached to ID is supreme. It is so boring that I can't even be bothered to think about it for a second. It's just utterly boring.” He said this with utter contempt for anyone who doubts Darwinian evolution.

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William Dembski has done it again. His recent book “Intelligent Design Uncensored” (co-written with Jonathan Witt) is a marvelous introduction to the controversy surrounding the ID movement. If you’re unfamiliar with intelligent design, or you want a primer, this is the book for you. While they cover the usual ground for a book on intelligent design, the uniqueness of this book comes from its engaging and sometimes even humorous writing style.

This book is very timely because there is a pressing need to get the message of ID to young people. While the arguments for ID have been developed considerably, many people still assume Darwinism is the only game in town. Last week I received an email from a high school student in Orange County who had a class debate on intelligent design versus evolution.

Last year defenders of Darwinian evolution came out in full force to celebrate the 150^th anniversary since the release of “The Origin of Species” and the 200^th anniversary of Darwin’s birth. New books were released, lectures were sponsored, and “new” missing-link fossils were discovered (Ardi and Ida). The goal was simple: to convince the public that Darwin’s theory is overwhelmingly true and competitors such as ID and creationism are false. Were they successful?

Last Friday night Biola University sponsored an event with Stephen Meyer, leading ID proponent and author of “Signature in the Cell,” that shows ID is alive and well. About 1,500 people attended, and many more watched the event live by simulcast (some were even watching in Kenya!).

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The concept of Intelligent of Design (I.D.) teaches that there is a design in the universe. The design may be observed in several areas such as the intricate astronomical evidence of the universe’s origin or the detailed information discovered in DNA. Most proponents of I.D. believe that it is more probable that the universe was designed purposely by some form of Intelligence than by pure chance or luck. Although proponents of I.D. do not necessarily believe that the universe was designed by God, it is true that many of them will acknowledge that only a Being who is very powerful (like God) could design the universe. Even the famous atheist Richard Dawkins, who claims to be antagonistic towards the concept of an Intelligent Designer, in his interview with Ben Stein hinted at the possibility that aliens could have designed the world.[i]

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I started reading What Darwin Got Wrong (2010) assuming it was written by two creationists or proponents of intelligent design. To my pleasant surprise, I could not have been more wrong myself! The authors, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, explicitly describe themselves as “outright, card-carrying, signed-up, dyed-in-the-wool, no-holds-barred atheists” (xiii).

The authors make it clear from the outset that they are not trying to undermine naturalism or even give a boost to creationism or ID. In fact, they probably fear that people like myself will pick up a copy and use it as a critique of naturalism. The main thesis of their book is that “natural selection is irredeemably flawed” (p. 1). They are careful to distinguish between common descent and natural selection, clarifying that they have no problem with the former. But they do consider the neo-Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutation as “radically untenable” (p. 44). Natural selection may play a minor role in the development of life, they say, but not possibly the major role assigned to it by evolution supporters. Why?

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A coupe of weeks ago I spoke at Snellville Baptist Church in Georgia. The youth pastor, Jody Shelton, is a friend of mine. Check out his brief blog about my visit there. You can listen for free to the three talks I gave: (1) Shattering the Myths of Evolution; (2) Understanding Intelligent Design; and (3) Why the New Testament Can Be Trusted.

Jody also gave a little shout-out for the Apologetics Study Bible for Students, which was just released last week. This Bible is revolutionary for students. I just received a message on Facebook from a fellow apologist, Lenny Esposito from Come Reason Ministries, who helped write some of the articles in the Study Bible. He received this note about the Bible from a brand new user:

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Nice.  Prominent philosopher Thomas Nagel--no friend to Christianity--names Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design as one of his books of the year:

Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause. He examines the history and present state of research on non-purposive chemical explanations of the origin of life, and argues that the available evidence offers no prospect of a credible naturalistic alternative to the hypothesis of an intentional cause. Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.

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For those of you who missed it, Dawkins made his second appearance with Stephen Colbert. It's a must see! As always, Colbert is hilarious, but also gets to the heart of the matter between naturalism and Christianity. This is a great teaching opportunity for teachers, youth workers, and even parents. Enjoy!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

 

Sean

1. Design Detection
If nature, or some aspect of it, is intelligently designed, how could we tell?

Design inferences in the past were largely informal and intuitive. Usually people knew it when they saw it. Intelligent design, by introducing specified complexity, makes the detection of design rigorous. Something is complex if it is hard to reproduce by chance and specified if it matches an independently given pattern (an example is the faces on Mt. Rushmore). Specified complexity gives a precise criterion for reliably inferring intelligence.

2. Looking for Design in Biology
Should biologists be encouraged to look for signs of intelligence in biological systems? Why or why not?

Scientists today look for signs of intelligence coming in many places, including from distant space (consider SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence). Yet, many biologists regard it as illegitimate to look for signs of intelligence in biological systems. Why arbitrarily exclude design inferences from biology if we accept them for other scientific disciplines? It is an open question whether the apparent design in nature is real.

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