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Mere Creation; Science, Faith & Intelligent Design

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_Mere Creation_ (MC) is an advanced-level volume that should only be approached by serious readers who have previously been introduced to Intelligent Design (ID); one should at least read _Darwin's Black Box_ (DBB) before tackling MC. I think that the best way to explain what this book is about is to explain what it is not about, and I therefore think it is necessary to first correct misrepresentations created by some other reviewers. (So read the other reviews first to make more sense of mine.)

Most of the contributors are Old Earth (OE) or Progressive creationists, but none of the contributors are deists (i.e., they don't reject the notion that God might break the laws governing the universe). This does not mean that it is assumed in the book that evolution and intelligent design are mutually exclusive concepts. Ratzsch's contribution, "Design, Chance & Theistic Evolution," is a study of whether chance could be a method of design. He concludes, "Theistic evolutionists can even take specific features of the cosmos, of organisms, as empirical evidence of design - design built into the founding of the cosmos" (p.309). This does not mean that any of the contributors (not even Ratzsch) believe in theistic evolution. Rather, he concludes, "although the gap between design theory and theistic evolution is thus not as broad as generally believed, ... design theory has available to it resources beyond the reach of theistic evolution" (p.309) (i.e., ID involves arguments of postcreation design and intervention).

At first glance, once might come away with the impression that ID is essentially the same as the OE view. But in reality, at least four of the contributors do believe in the Young Earth (YE) view - so if one enjoys this book, one should be made aware that some contributors might be offended by labeling YE, "irrational" or "untenable." In particular, I speak of philosophers Nelson and Reynolds, who defend the YE view in _Three Views on Creation and Evolution_, edited by Reynolds and Moreland. Nelson and Reynolds list two other contributors to MC in the YE camp: anthropologist Hartwig-Scherer and her biologist husband, Scherer. (It should also be noted that at least two contributors to another ID book, _The Creation Hypothesis_, edited by Moreland, are also YE theorists: paleontologist Wise and linguist Oller.) Why can't one tell which contributors believe in what? Because it has always been held by YE creationists that Darwinism can be destroyed apart from age questions - so why not concede billions of years? As Dembski says in the Introduction, ID is "a theory of creation that puts Christians in the strongest possible position to defeat the common enemy of creation, to wit, naturalism. Throughout history common enemies have been invaluable for suspending in-house squabbles and uniting people" (pp.13-14). OE and YE are specified subdivisions of ID.

The two essays concerning the Big Bang should not discourage YE theorists. Craig concludes, in "Design & the Cosmological Argument," "the cause of the universe must be a transcendent Personal Agent" as opposed to being caused by abstract objects (p.354). I think all ID theorists can agree with that. Ross's essay, "Big Bang Model Refined by Fire," does give a brief defense of the big bang model, but is mostly about the fine-tuning of the universe, with three tables of evidence, including an estimate of the probability for attaining the necessary parameters for life support. Strangely, Ross starts his chapter with what seems to be an advertisement for his books. More surprisingly, he claims in Table 15.2, without empirical support, that "intelligent physical life is [only] possible" in a universe that is 10 to 24 billion years old. This claim appears impossible to prove, especially since an Intelligent Designer could bypass any rules that Ross imposes on creation. If there is to be a truce between OE and YE creationists, then both sides will have to give up making vague, unsubstantiated assertions, and rather concentrate on the unity that Dembski described.

You don't need to know much about this book or its contributors to know that the mutation/ natural selection mechanism has been rejected. For example, Johnson doesn't hold natural selection in high regard in chapter 2 of his _Darwin on Trial_. Or take Behe, whose DBB sought to be a formal disproof of the idea that mutation and natural selection can create molecular machines.

Contrary to what one reviewer wrote, ID is not an assumption; it's a deduction from the evidence - an inference to the best explanation. Design can only be inferred when law and chance have been eliminated. The authors certainly have no plans of following "in Charles Darwin's footsteps." Darwin's mission was to explain how to get designed products without invoking a Designer. To follow in Darwin's footsteps would mean to set up and destroy straw men and to hold to materialistic philosophy no matter what the evidence reveals. (Read Pearcey's contribution for more on this point - it's the lightest of the 18 chapters.) Of course, many of the authors have dedicated over two decades individually to the meticulous study of the physical evidence; and combined, the authors have dedicated over two centuries.

It has been over three years since the Mere Creation Conference, and participants are making great strides. ID theorists are continuing their research and will continue to get their books published by university presses: Dembski's _The Design Inference_ (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Nelson's _On Common Descent_ (University of Chicago Press, 1999) are just the beginning. Also, look for future works by Meyer and Wells. And although the future looks bright, I'm not so sure I'm as optimistic as Johnson is in the Afterword: he foresees a celebration marking "the demise of the Darwinist ideology," perhaps as early as 10 or 20 years from now (p.448). If Darwinism were just a scientific theory, then perhaps Johnson's dream could come true. But as the foundation of a philosophy - materialism - defeating Darwinism might be difficult. Evidence by itself cannot change hearts or open minds.

Mere Creation is an excellent collection of current thoughts on the weaknesses of evolutionary theory. This book has been put together with the specific objective of addressing just one question, "Is nature a result of design or not?" What a breath of fresh air to not have to wade through all the theological assumptions of an author to get to the meat of their argument. The fact that a group of scientists and thinkers like those in this book, coming from divergent philosophical and religious traditions can still look at the data and logically reason to the conclusion that design was involved in the origin of life is remarkable. That they could do it without invoking their theology is amazing. No, this book will not make the most conservative creationists happy and the most extreme evolutionists will smart at the conclusions. The people who will be made happy reading a book like this are those who appreciate logic, value data and want to understand the thinking on both sides of the creation evolution debate.

...A number of specialists laboring in different fields beganto come to the conclusion that the universe they perceived couldhardly have arisen by chance, but seemed at every turn to be guided by intelligent design. William A. Dembski, who managed to obtain advanced degrees in both mathematics and philosophy, brought together a number of these persecuted souls for a conference on the singularly unhip topic of creationism.

The ensuing essays in "Mere Creation" are guaranteed to change the way you view the world. To glean some highlights from the numerous arguments favoring intelligent design of the universe:

The Universe began with the Big Bang, the instant of time when all matter and energy came into existence in an enormous explosion. Despite the Universe's seeming complexity, it is governed by only a tiny handful of physical laws. Should any of these governing principles be altered in the slightest (a bit less gravity, for example), life could not exist. The odds of life arising naturally are infinitesimally small. Genetic mutation, the means for transferring traits so crucial to the theory of evolution, always results in the loss of information, making beneficial mutation much less likely. There is no evidence of interspecies evolution extant.

If you have the slightest interest in how our Universe came about, or pondered the existence of God, or even simply distrust the dogma constantly shoveled around by tweed-jacketed academics who haven't had a new idea since Che Guevara's book came out, you'll thoroughly enjoy "Mere Creation."

A stout collection of essays by an eclectic array of scientists -- Dembski (PhD Chicago in Math, Ph.D. Illinois in Phil. of Science), Berlinski (PhD Princeton), Walter Bradley (Ph>D. Texas, prof. Texas A & M), etc. High powered sharp guys who are all willing to stand up against the Darwinian establishment and ask the questions everyone is afraid of -- why are so many folks eager to defend Darwinism dogmatically and fideistically? Why is scientific evidence for an Intelligent Designer of the Universe dismissed?

Dembski et al have firmly planted this wedge of truth into the side of a scientific establishment dogmatically committed to error. Pray that this crowd of Intelligent Design theorists will have the courage to continue pressing for real science in the face of stiff opposition.

I'd highly recommend other books by these contributors -- especially Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Hugh Ross, and WIlliam Dembski.

In addition to Behe's book <<Darwin's Black Box>>, I also recommend reading Mayr's <<Growth of Biological Thought>> before tackling this groundbreaking work. This will give you a firmer basis for evaluating the arguments put forward here.

If you're like me, you've resolved by now to accept certain basic understandings about life without question. You have to tell your kids about Santa because it's fun, you don't have to fire your President when he has an affair, you should pay your taxes without thinking too hard about where it's going, and so forth. It's always earth shattering when someone undermines one of these fundamental beliefs, because it makes you realize that some arena of your life was governed more by habit than clear reason. "My goodness!" you would say after such a revelation, "I guess a cup of coffee isn't really worth $3.50 after all!" And you would stop going to Starbucks.

Now a team of scientists, philosophers, and a stray lawyer are after one of the most fundamental presumptions of the modern mind: naturalism. After Phil Johnson cracked the Darwinian tyranny with Darwin on Trial, word spread that you could, in his words, sink the battleship. After a 1996 consortium to discuss the crumbling edifice, Bill Dembski put together a collection of their work. It's called Mere Creation, and it's destined to be remembered as one of the key stepping stones to undermining modern scientific arrogance.

Thomas Kuhn exposed the secret. Dembski is giving us the first real case study. Watch what happens.

The book offers eighteen essays arguing the case for the intelligent design of the universe. Their sources are varied: biology, cosmology, biochemistry, philosophy, astronomy, and history. But their goal is the same, and it is NOT to defend Genesis like an archaic, "Inherit the Wind" kind of stereotype. The goal is a refined, intellectual critique of a religiously held paradigm: Darwinian naturalism.

We've been taught (and lazily acquiesced to) the doctrine that humanity evolved from different species in the soup of time, chance, and natural selection. If we have a theological bent, we may have rationalized God into the picture as a silent but present agent. But what happens when 150 years after the fact, hard scientific data has still not closed a convincing case (I thought the O.J. trial went long!)?

The book is fascinating for it's analysis, courageous for its vision, respectable for its calliber, and deadly for its force. While the uninitiated may be lost in some of the detail, the thoughtful participant in the debates over intelligent design and human origins will find in this data a heavy sword with which to march back into the scientific arena.

And chances are, the tides really are turning. The establishment, having failed to produce an airtight defense, is now resorting to name-calling to avoid the present danger. While I remain unthreatened by the possibility that life has evolved, this book made me doubt that our family photo album will really read that way.

Although the store mailed off the book, I never received it. When I advised the store, they were helpful and quickly refunded my money.

Despite it's lingering popularity evolutionary naturalism is a dead horse. The origins wars of the 21st century will be primarily fought between the Intelligent Design (ID) movement and the Biblical Creationist movement.

The battle lines between the two have not yet been clearly drawn, and many within the ID movement today are biblical creationists. Christians and other traditional theists will find this volume worthy reading, but should be forewarned that not all the authors are interested in developing a Bible-based or biblically consistent theory of origins.

The book is largely derived from the 1996 Mere Creation conference.

This volume contains essays by numerous Discovery Fellows who presented at an early intelligent design conference at Biola University in 1996. As Henry F. Shaefer III explains in the forward, the conference was not a typical "creationist" event, as "virtually none of the conference participants were creationists of the sort one frequently reads about in the popular press" and "a very large majority of the participants had no stake in treating Genesis as a scientific text" (pg. 9). The conference even included non-Christian participants, for Phillip Johnson stated in his concluding address that he "would welcome to this group earnest atheists who are convinced there must be a better scientific explanation of life than the dominant mutation/selection scenario." (pg. 9)

The essays cover a wide range of topics. Philosopher and mathematician William Dembski (Introduction) explains that science need not fear invoking design now that rigorous criteria can distinguish between designed and non-designed objects in nature. Biologist Jonathan Wells (Chapter 1) recounts that only the principles of design engineering applied to biology can account why widely different species are "convergently" found to have the same genes. This conclusion is reiterated by philosopher of biology Paul Nelson (Chapter 6) who recounts the re-usage of embryonic regulatory genes in widely different organisms. Michael Behe (Chapter 7) explains that the many irreducibly complex systems in the cell "not only are tall problems for Darwinism but also are the hallmarks of intelligent design." (pg. 179) Siegfried Scherer (Chapter 8) develops a design-based "basic type biology" view of systematics and taxonomy, which is then applied by paleoanthropologist Siegried Hartwig-Scherer (Chapter 9) to the hominid fossil record, concluding that our genus Homo belongs to a distinctly designed "basic type" from the ape-like genus Australopithecus.

Ecologist and trained evolutionary biologist Jeffrey P. Schloss (Chapter 10) explains that Darwinian accounts of altruism through "kin-selection" fail to account for the wide range of human behaviors, which often are antithetical to familial reproduction. He concludes that a design paradigm could have radical implications for explaining basic human needs for relational intimacy and wide-ranging cultural proscriptions for the "golden rule." Hugh Ross (Chapter 15) recounts the dozens of cosmic "coincidences" which permit advanced life to inhabit our universe, concluding that design is the best explanation. Finally, mathematician David Berlinski (Chapter 17) explains that Gödel's theorem implies the specified complexity inherent in nature cannot be accounted for by mechanistic Darwinian causes.

The book also contains advice both for established scientists and younger scholars interested in pursuing design as a science. Social commentator Nancy Pearcey (Chapter 3) warns that design theorists must be wary that they will likely face many of the same red herring political, theological, and philosophical objections which Darwin's supporters used to fight design in the 19th century. Finally, Phillip E. Johnson (Afterward) explains that Johnson explains that design critics will try to resurrect the "Inherit the Wind" stereotype by labeling design theorists as close-minded religious fundamentalists, when in reality it is evolutionary science that is based upon naturalistic dogma rather than hard experimental data. Bruce Chapman (Postscript) explains that the driving force of opposition in this battle is the cultural entrenchment of materialism.

Critics who read this book will be impressed by the wide range of disciplines which can interact with the design hypothesis. After a brief peruse at a volume like this, objections that intelligent design is a "science-stopper" are exposed as hot air which dissipate into a puff of smoke. The undeniable conclusion is that design is a serious intellectual project.

It can no longer be argued that the only detractors to evolution are fundamentalists practicing pseudo-science. The range of subjects offered by numerous professional scientists, doctorates in various fields shows on just how many levels evidence can be seen against Evolution. Now if we can evaluate this hypothesis on it's own merits rather than as the current best guess (and therefore only acceptable solution)...