Previous material:
11/1/05
There are a few new worthwhile essays on the intelligent-design movement that are worth reading. Dan Peterson's "The Little Engine that Could Undo Darwinism" in the American Spectator (June 2005) is mostly a summary of ID with a slight rebuttal to some of theistic evolutionist Kenneth Miller's counterarguments. Jerry Coyne's "The Faith that Dare Not Speak Its Name," in the New Republic (August 22,29 2005) is a worthwhile counterpunch to the ID movement. Coyne does engage in the use of some negative theological arguments to bolster his beliefs and makes much of what is normally called microevolution. He also apparently agrees with Theodosius Dobzhansky's statement that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." (Clearly an inaccurate statement) Yet Coyne does make some worthwhile arguments that are worth looking at and at least using to explore the issues more closely.
11/13/05
Massimo Pigliucci is the author of Denying Evolution, another counterpunch to creationism. This book is another evolutionist work worth reading although my brief expose of it shows some errors in his thinking. For instance, he thinks electricity hitting a simple primordial mixture and creating amino acids is the creation of complexity, he misunderstands creationist second-law-of-thermodynamic arguments, and misunderstands what creationists mean by "randomness." Pigliucci does feature a chapter on scientific fallacies and rejoinders to some writers such as Jonathan Wells and so is worthwhile reading for at least this material.
12/21/2005
The Feb. 2005 issue of Discover magazine featured an article "Testing Darwin" by Carl Zimmer. It details the work of computer geeks at the Digital Evolution Laboratory at Michigan State University. What they have done is create digital viruses that can compete with one another, replicate, and mutate when responding to environmental pressures. These experiments put Darwin to the test, as he says, and, unfortunately for creationists, confirms evolution's power. (Zimmerman states that after the results of the experiments were published, creationists emailed the scientists for details of the experiments hoping to find a flaw in their work.) I don't really know why creationists would have problems with their work. If anything, these experiments shed light on the type of creation that would be necessary for natural selection to work. Creationists can agree that natural selection works when organisms have the design necessary to sustain the changes necessary for the species to survive. What the scientists have proven is the intelligent design aids natural selection.