Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Uncommon Dissent edited by William Dembski

This is a good collection of essays by Darwin skeptics. It is a good resource. The most surprising essay is by Michael Denton, who perhaps started a wing of Darwin Doubting with "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" but now has changed his view into an interest in self-organization as an inherent property of matter, which is perhaps just another form of materialism which most of the other authors reject. The interview of Schutzenberger is very interesting. Budziszewski is brilliant and gives real philosophical weight to the discussion. Tipler is interesting on peer review holding back scientific progress. Some of the writers seem to anticipate more recent findings of lateral gene transfer and regulatory parts of the genome, which create great problems for the "tree of life." Soon another collection of these and other authors will be needed.

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