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The Evolution-Creation Struggle

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With this book Michael Ruse brings some of the fruits of his less accessible scholarship to a popular audience, and it is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on the creation-evolution divide. Unlike the first reviewer on this page, Ruse is an internationally-reputed philosopher of science who knows most of the important living evolutionists personally, and is thus admirably well qualified to speak critically on these matters. His writing style is also one of the most readable and engaging you are likely to find.

In "The Evolution - Creation Struggle" well known philosopher and evolutionary commentator Michael Ruse discusses the development of evolutionary science. I offer the following thoughts to potential readers.

First, it should be noted that this is not a book for readers seeking a rigorous examination of current evolutionary theory. This work is largely a survey of the historic developments in evolutionary thought and the corresponding responses to these developments. Ruse's overview of pre-Darwinian evolutionary thought is well done and commendable. Darwin like many other great thinkers did not work in a vacuum, but instead benefited from the work and effort of his predecessors and contemporaries. It is useful to recognise the contiguous nature of intellectual progress in an era where the contributions of an individual (no matter how insightful) can often be overstated.

Though he is clearly within the pro-evolutionary camp, Ruse does not hesitate to highlight similarities between Darwinists and creationists. Similar to Religion, a "Darwinian" worldview involves faith and offers an ontological framework for adherents. In examining the current uproar about Darwinism Ruse rightfully acknowledges that many theists are not hostile to evolution (e.g. it could just be the means that God choose to create). Rather, it appears that it is the grandiose ontological and ethical extrapolations that some commentators draw from Darwinism that raises the ire of sceptics. Ruse's nuanced voice continues to be a positive force in a discussion that is sometimes characterised by excessive emotion and inflated epistemological claims. I appreciate the author's intellectual humility - his lack of doctrinal orthodoxy, however, may make his views anathema to some hard-core Darwinists.

Ruse's use of a pre milleniumist/post milleniumist construct to analyze the reactions to evolutionary theory is an interesting but awkward approach. Granted one could argue that many atheists fall within his post -milleniumist category - focused on progress and improving the here and now. I find it difficult, however, to shoehorn more than a small minority of theists into the other category. Although when asked they may indicate that conversion is of paramount importance - their philanthropic actions speak volumes with regard to their concern for, and commitment to, improving the present world.

Ruse only touches on Intelligent Design briefly, however, his comments are useful. I share some of his musings regarding ID. Is it a science? Can it be falsified? What predictive power does it have? Whether or ID proves to be "scientific" in the narrow sense of the word, it does serve to highlight many of the challenges facing Darwinism (whether we like it or not). For instance, regardless of the reducibility of Behe's sub-cellular organisms they do highlight a nagging challenge to contemporary evolutionary theory - time. Darwin recognized this hurdle in his day when the earth was believed to be only several hundred million years old (we now think that number is closer to 4 billion). This increased time would sound good if our view of complexity had remained constant. Unfortunately, complexity has increased by orders of magnitude. In Darwin's time Aristotle's spontaneous generation theory of life was still popular and cells were seen as relatively simple structures - clearly not the case. The development of all these complex entities in the allotted time through an undirected mechanism- despite the rhetoric remains significant.

I found Ruse's writing style a bit awkward at times. For instance, I found his use of poems and quotations overdone - they often added little. A cynic could argue that the author was padding material that would otherwise have made for a couple of short papers/articles.

Overall, worthwhile, but not Ruse's best work. His tone is appreciated, as always, however, the book does not bring anything new to the discussion for readers familiar with the issue.

I hope I won't be penalized here for just writing a couple of sentences. I found Ruse's book to be very interesting. His analysis of the philosophical history of evolutionary thought is worth the price of the book. I also like that he senses that the debate between proponents of evolution and creationism is really about a much bigger question. I see it as the same question raging in the Middle East right now: will we have a secular or religious based society.

I don't think Ruse's book will change any minds - just look at the length and depth of the other reviews and it's easy to see how passionate people feel about these questions. The real value of the book is its dispassionate look at everyone's assumptions and arguments. Should give both sides some firepower.

"My area of expertise is the clash between evolutionists and creationists, and my analysis is that we have no simple clash between science and religion but rather between two religions... Those of us who love science must do more than simply restate our positions or criticize our opposition. We must understand our own assumptions and, equally, find out why others have (often) legitimate concerns. This is not a plea for weak-kneed compromise but a more informed and self-aware approach to the issues. First understanding, and then some strategic moves. You now know why I wrote this book."


There it was; out of the blue. "You know now why I wrote this book." It is a good thing Ruse made that clear on the final page of his new book, for if he did not, I might have never known.

Michael Ruse has of late made a habit out of writing the same book over and over again. This is another "how we got there from here," book filled with much of the same history that he has given in past books (most notably, "Darwin and Design") with many of the same conclusions. I often caught myself wondering why he went through the trouble of writing this book when all he had to do was release an anthologized collection of excerpts from past ones.

This book, disjointed as it is, aims at showing us how the evolution/creation struggle developed from the pre-Darwin days to today. Ruse asserts that these two 'movements' stemmed from a 'crisis of faith' starting from the reformation. He tracks both how creationism became more and more fervent as a response to the growing evolutionary philosophy/science and how evolution became more fervent in response to that response.

Ruse has caught particular flack from the view, as seen in the above quote, that evolution has been and can be often taken as a religion. He trecks through the tired history of Spencer, Sumner, and the Social Darwinists, the believers in a directional evolution of the 1950s, up to todays 'true believers' in Dawkins, Dennett, and Wilson.

Ruse seems to be making the point that evolution is too easily seen as directional - teleological and when thus seen, it too easily becomes religion-like. This is a good point but I've seen it made better elsewhere by the likes of Mary Midgley, Steven Jay Gould, and even Ruse himself (in "Darwin and Design,' focusing exclusively on teleology and evolution).

Ruse is on significantly weaker ground in suggesting that religion and evolution can easily and peacefully co-exist. I used to be convinced of this but like Ruse, I now see Steven Gould's attempts at diplomacy as condescending to both sides. Point blankly: evolution simlpy contradicts one of the most sacred roles delegated to God in the Bible. Yes, Ruse points to Christians who have successfully balanced Christianity and evoluition, but only because they chose evolution over genesis (i.e., adapted the view that genesis and the bible are metaphorical and, hence, not to be taken at their word.) Ruse tries and tries but doesn't make any convincing case that one does not have to choose between genesis and evolution.

My big complaint, though, with this book is in its layout. If Ruse's above quote is right, and his point in the book was to suggest strategies for how the 'evolution problem' can be best fought, then most of the book was simply irrelevant. In his 'Conclusion' for instnace, he suggests that evolutionists need to band together in fighting ID instead of getting hung up on disagreements over detail. Agreed. But where, I ask myself, did he make that point in the book. The only answer I came to was, "Just now."

I fear that in trying to appeal to both sides of the evolution/Creation struggle, he will end up appealing to neither side. His arguments are often hasty, and most of the book (as another reviewer notes) just does not support, or even speak much to, his conclusions.

If you want a book that does make a persuasive case that evolution often passes into the 'zeaolot' category (I think this is true) read Mary Midgley's "Evolution as Religion." Or read Ruse's own "Darwin and Design."

Ruse's basic point is that there is evolution - a genuine science of the origin of species that begins, for intents and purposes, with Darwin. There is also a kind of a secular religion -his term - based upon evolution that he terms "evolutionism." Evolutionism is used to advance a particular progressive worldview.

Ruse says that that while it would be nice if scientists were not evolutionists, that isn't the case. Contrary to the protestations of some -eg, Stephen Jay Gould - evolution like all science itself does imply certain cultural values. Furthermore, many important evolution scientists, including Edward O. Wilson, used evolution to advance evolutionist positions, eg to comment on biodiversity and the like.

While the cruder forms of evolutionism -such as eugenics- can be intellectually discredited easily, Ruse believes that it is probably neither possible nor desirable to pretend that evolution doesn't have implications that challenge the verities of a religious tradition, or that in some sense, the troubling notion of biological "progress" can be avoided. He urges his readers to learn more about the theological and cultural issues that surround the topic of evolution.

Good points. And Ruse writes as clear and as beautifully as a summer day on an Icelandic glacier. The problem is that, given the examples he chooses, he's less than compelling in establishing evolutionism as a full-blown "secular" religion. That scientists would "metaphorize" a subject like evolution and believe it has implications that go beyond their science comes as no surprise. But nowhere, in the Wilson that he quotes, for example, do I see evidence of the reliance on faith or the desire for supernatural, ecstatic transcendence that characterizes many religious traditions.

Furthermore, the concept of evolutionism is so broad that it encompasses everyone from the eugenicists to Dawkins. That ideologues of all stripes would glom onto the latest trendy science for metaphors has been true since Descartes. This tells us very little about the current controversy.

Finally, Ruse all but sidesteps the fact that the present controversy over evolution is tied to the resurgence of the extreme right wing and that many of those advancing anti-science agendas in the US today are political activists exploiting religious traditions rather than true believers. Their interest is not science, but political power.

The book is at its most compelling when Ruse argues that all those who oppose the teaching of lies in science classes are going to have to learn to form a coalition despite their differences. Otherwise, creationists (and the so-called "intelligent design" gang) will continue to succeed in injecting religious doctrine into science. After all, there are huge doctrinal differences between Catholics, Protestant evangelicals, and IDiocy advocates like Behe and Dembski; if they can get unite for a common cause, so can those who care about teaching real science to American students.

On this last point, he is 100% right.

I think M.Ruse is one of the most profitable authors in the CED(creation-evolution-design) debate, this book is literally(was for me) a once-in-the-door-must-read-now book.
The book is an extended look at the distinction between evolution as a professional legitimate science and evolutionism as a metaphysical program which uses the science of biological evolution to create and justify it's moral, societal and eschatological worldview. As such the battle between YEC(young earth creationists) and people like Dawkins, Dennett, Gould, Wilson etc is a religion vs religion battle not as it is mislabelled and misunderstood as a religion vs science battle.

This book ought to be required reading for anyone who desires to enter into the innumerable online CED discussions, perhaps then something would actually get to the point of reasonable and fruitful conversations there, for without the distinction the argument is endless and worthless. I sure hope this book gets the eyeball time it deserves, especially from those i see everyday posting the same arguments that are category errors because they lack this distinction.

The theme of the book appears on pg3:
"The dispute (between evolutionists and creationists), as we shall see, is more than merely a matter of right and wrong. At some deeper level, it involves commitments about the nature of reality and the status and obligations of humans in this reality. In particular, I argue that in both evolution and creation we have rival religious responses to a crisis of faith--rival stories of origins, rival judgments about the meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologian call rival eschatologies--picture of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind."
as he says in a few more pages--this is a clash of rival metaphysical world pictures, evolutionism and creationism.

Chapter 1-Christianity and its Discontents
Begins with a history lesson, "the Reformation did have repercussions and implications that slowly began to undermine the very foundations of Christianity." pg 13
It is this crisis of faith that Ruse locates both the beginning of creationism and evolutionism, brothers birthed from the same Western culture, responding to the same growth of secular science and the critical and people upsetting social and cultural changes that undermined the religious certainty that had previously glued together medieval European Christendom. "The first reaction to the eighteenth century's crisis of faith was simply to opt out of the conflict. In this view, reason and evidence, made supreme, are tools of the devil, and on the really crucial issues they are deceptive. The way to God is through an open and loving heart, through emotional commitment, not rational choice--that is, through faith and conversion. Thus the Protestantism of the Reformation gave way to evangelicalism, "pg 17 The first separation, the first big battle, is epistemological, something i have come to believe over the years and really appreciate how well Ruse ties together pieces i know but didn't fully see related to the big picture, a valuable thing.

He then makes a crucial alignment, millennial thinking and apocalytic thinking, in particular, premillennialism with creationism. This forms one of the major threads of his entire argument. But he looks at progress next, seeing it as postmillennialism, secularized and brought down from heaven to earth, applied to all of humanity not just a portion. This is the counterpoint thread to premill, and he associates it with evolutionism. How he does this is the topic of Chapter 2-From Progress to Evolution, "the cultural idea of progress led to the biological idea of evolution." pg 28 It is a good and informative chapter, perhaps if you only can skim a few pages this is the chapter to look at first. He introduces the great chain of being and the political connections to both the French Revolution and to Darwin's upper middle class British culture, thus laying the groundwork for Chapter 3-The Growth of a Pseudoscience and 4-Charles Darwin, the real meat of the book and when he introduces his really big idea.

Ruse is proposing that evolution started as a pseudoscience which incorporated cultural and social values into a system which only in the 1920-30 became a professional, a real science, as it incorporated genetics and becomes what we now call the neo-darwinian modern synthesis. Chapter 5-the Failure of a Professional Science is the years following Darwin and how the evolutionism domains the field by presenting a science-based ideology that has as it's purpose the explanation of the meaning of life and the human position within it.

Chapter 6-Social Darwinism is a short study of H.Spenser and T.Huxley and how they built "Popular evolution--evolutionism--offered a world picture, a story of origins, and a special place for humans in the scheme of things. At the same time, it delivered moral exhortations, prescribing what we ought to do if we want things to continue well."pg 122 rengthening the case for the religious nature of post-Darwinian evolutionism was its link to millennial thinking, which began to flourish in a major way in popular culture in the nineteenth century". pg 123
Progressivism or as Ruse terms it secular post-millennialism is the modern myth that most drives our modern capitalist societies, that evolutionism hooked into this thinking is crucial and most certainly one of Ruse's great contributions to the debate with this book.

Chapter 7-Christian Responses, but 8-Fundamentalism is the more interesting of the two chapters. He aligns fundamentalism with the American providential historical idea of the city on the hill, where the common ideology was that God has very special plans for America in His great scheme of things. It was nice to see a line about pew space, a crucial measure i used recently in a class i taught on American Presbyterian history, perhaps that is why i like the book, big pieces of it resonant with me...... He brings up Scottish Common Sense realism, the Civil War as a theological crisis that separated North and South, allowed the North to move more liberally religiously and socially and had the South, home to fundamentalism, react to all these as it separated and isolated after the War.

Chapter 9-Population Genetics outlines how evolution began to be a real professional science and slowly ridded itself of some of the more ideological and social values that it had. A big part of this is the definition of the two distinct levels-metaphysics with progressivism and the science with random mutation and the natural selection filter that increases population fitness to the environment without purpose or teleology.This forms the climax of the book, Ruse having presented his ideas and made his case.

Chapter 10-Evolution Today is a quick look at sociobiology and a look at evolutionism vs evolution today. Chapter 11-Nature as Promise and 12-Earth's Last Days? are basically Ruse's attempt to put himself in his opponents shoes, first liberal religious and second conservative fundamentalist to see how they can react to the distinction of evolutionism and the science of evolution. He recapitulates his major points (making this a good chapter to scan second) and asks how to solve the problem of these two battling religions.

Michael Ruse must hold some kind of record for his effort in reconciling disputes and bring calm to contentious arenas. The evolution-creation conflict has raged around him for thirty years. He's attempted to impart the issues, describe the contenders and resolve the philosophical differences. His many books have covered the viewpoints from several directions. He presents various perspectives as dispassionately as these may be conveyed. He obviously abhors strife. This book may be the penultimate effort on his part to parley the current dispute in the USA over "intelligent design" and evolutionary biology.

His method is almost military. Assemble the warring troops and conscript them into a single force. He introduces nearly every figure in Enlightenment Protestantism on the Continent, Britain and the Western Hemisphere. Puritan Jonathon Edwards stands, if uneasily, with Matthew Arnold and pre-conversion John Henry Newman. Ranks of evolutionists, from the Darwins, grandfather Erasmus and the renowned Charles, through Thomas Huxley and Ronald Fisher. As the phalanx swells in number, Ruse struggles to show where similarities imply some level of uniformity. Darwin started out to be a cleric and various churchmen sought to find a divine plan in the evidence Nature depicted to those willing to observe and record.

On the Continent and Britain, "creation" as a firm stance receded quietly in the background. As Ruse has stated elsewhere, it was possible for a Darwinian to be a Christian, and vice versa. In the USA, the picture was different, beginning even before independence. Distance from European influences and the sense of mission many settlers brought in their knapsacks led to the rise of "exceptionalism" there. Not only was the new nation blessed with material benefits, but the arrangement was deemed part of a divine plan. Implicit in the plan was the notion of "progress". Darwin's natural selection decreed no purpose to evolution, an idea which even ardent followers couldn't accept. Instead, the human species was placed at the top of the evolutionary tree in solitary splendour. All that was needed to fulfill the "plan" was to determine the way humans should work out their mandate.

Exceptionalism under divine mandate had no hesitation in declaring that the god's intention was to favour those who kept the faith. The Second Coming, long debated in Europe, found new, and strident, spokesmen in the USA. "Millenarianism", either pre- or post- , depending on what scenario was favoured, became a major motif in Christianity there. Versions of these themes would generate "fundamentalism" and literal - or nearly so - readings of one of the many Bibles. Ruse skims over why this movement came to such intense power in the USA, but he doesn't doubt its impact. He cites the depressing statistics of US citizens in their acceptance of a deity and firm date for the world's origins. He notes the vague understanding of the role of humans in Nature, with some accepting evolution, yet detaching humanity from the process. These muddled outlooks are reflected in the rise of first, "creationism", then "creation science" and finally today's desperate attempt to keep the divine in Nature, "intelligent design".

With the disclosure of DNA's power to guide life's path, the conflict between religion and biological science in the USA assumed a fresh intensity. In his chapter "Evolution Today", Ruse lines up new ranks of contenders. Still struggling to don them in uniforms to reduce disparities, he offers Ian McEwan as a novelist introducing altruism as a natural aspect of human life. In his description of Edward O. Wilson, Ruse shows how a lapsed Baptist could still retain a strong sense of ethics, but derived from our ancestors in the deep past, not from religious education. Nature, says Ruse, holds a promise for humanity. We need only stop contending over who can best show us what that is and how to recognise it.

The problem, says Ruse, is overcommittment. Both the religious and scientific spokesmen have become entrenched in their views. Always the peacemaker, this quietly passionate scholar seeks to have two "camps" take serious and reasonably unprejuiced looks at what the other is saying. Why do the faithful believe so strongly? Why do evolutionists tend to slide into "evolutionism" - taking "evolution beyond science"? Ruse sees both camps seeking human betterment as the goal for all. Ruse takes a sideways swipe at Richard Dawkins for his "boyish atheism" as one of the more disturbing elements. This is an unfortunate lapse for Ruse [although he's done it before]. Whatever Ruse's attempts at quieting dispute, he blithely ignores the levels of violence monotheists are capable of perpetrating. He also ignores the wealth of recent scholarship challenging the long-held tenets of Christianity. He forgets that religion is founded on dogma, science on assessment of data.

We should pay some heed to what Ruse attempts to achieve in this book. Natural selection has offered some insights into why individuals find strong stances appealing. Regrettably, there's been little suggested on means to soften them. Ruse may provide some reasonable solutions, but bending inflexible minds will take more than his calm approach. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

A Methodist minister I know often preaches that the three men in recent history who have caused the greatest harm to humanity are Marx, Freud and Darwin. I am inclined to agree with him on the first two; and although I vehemently disagree with him on the third, I do understand his position. It is often argued, by theists and non-theists alike, that Darwin gave atheists a compelling argument for their lack of faith. However, in the book The Evolution-Creation Struggle, Michael Ruse disagrees, maintaining that both evolutionism and evangelism are responses to a general crisis of faith that has its roots in the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment.

The emphasis on reason over faith during the Enlightenment was due in part to advances in science that were beginning to have a positive impact on everyday living. Many influential thinkers of this period were deists, viewing God more as a prime mover than as an active participant in his creation, a belief that was more compatible with the naturalistic worldview required of science. Thus, the crisis in faith precedes Darwin. Indeed, Ruse claims that "[f]ew people became evolutionists and then lost their religious faith as a result"; rather, these people became "dissatisfied with their religion and then went looking for something else" (p. 29). On the other hand, this clash between reason and faith led others to reject reason and science, making emotion instead the focus of their faith. Hence, Ruse concludes that "both evolution and creation" are "rival religious responses to [this] crisis of faith" (p. 17).

Charles Darwin was far from the first to propose a theory of evolution. Indeed, his grandfather Erasmus Darwin had proposed a theory of common ancestry based on the isomorphic features of living organisms. Around the same time in France, Lamarck proposed a theory of speciation based on acquired characteristics that were passed on to future generations. Furthermore, Lyell's argument that the natural world could be explained in terms of physical laws acting over eons (p. 46) gave evolution the time it needed to produce new species. Thus, Ruse comments that "[e]volution had been in the air for a long time, and many people had been looking for a reason to believe it" (p. 85). Darwin's theory of natural selection gave them that reason.

The idea of evolution, which Ruse calls evolutionism, arose during the Enlightenment and was intimately related to the idea of social progress. Both Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin interpreted the fossil record as a biological progression from simpler to more complex structures, a great Chain of Being, with humans, of course, at the top. Evolutionism also provided a vehicle for promoting social progress during the nineteenth century, and twentieth-century evolutionary biologists have tended to be progressivists as well. E. O. Wilson, Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr, at least in their popular writings, all linked social progress with biological evolution, and even Richard Dawkins' views are progressivist when he describes evolution as a "one-way ratchet of progressive innovation" (p. 222).

Ruse links the evolutionist-creationist debate to premillennial and postmillennial thinking in Christian eschatology. The premillennialist believes that the Second Coming of Jesus is approaching and that the focus of human endeavor meanwhile should be on spiritual development. The postmillennialist believes that the Second Coming is still a distant prospect and that the focus of human endeavor for the present should be on social progress. "Evolutionists are postmillennialists," Ruse maintains, because of their desire to "improve our lot and bring about heaven on Earth" (p. 267). Creationists, on the other hand, are more likely to be premillennialists.

It may seem odd to conflate evolutionism and postmillennialism, but Ruse maintains that evolutionists have made a religion of their science, offering the promise of progress as a substitute for traditional Christian faith. Thus, the clash between evolutionism and creationism is not simply a conflict between science and religion, but rather a conflict between two religions, "always the bitterest kind" (p. 267). Not only do fundamentalists object to the way that evolutionary theory challenges their faith in the Biblical story of creation, but scientists also object to the way creationists challenge their faith in methodological naturalism by insisting on bringing supernatural forces into the equation. Ruse disagrees with those, like Stephen Jay Gould, who insist that science and religion are different magisteria; rather, each impinges on the other.

During the twentieth century, Christian theologians have struggled with the question of how to integrate the science of evolution with their faith. Some, like Karl Barth, simply reject reason as a means of understanding God. Others, like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, feel that they can successfully integrate science with their faith. In general, though, Christian thinkers recognize that the process of natural selection does not necessarily lead to the development of man created in the image of God, and so they prefer a more Lamarckian worldview that paints "nature as a harmonious web rather than a parched battlefield of struggle and strife" (p. 230). However, the natural world is not obliged to cater to our preferences, and a pick-and-choose approach to integrating evolution with theology is disingenuous. In contrast, Barth's position, at least, is intellectually honest.

Ruse closes his book by observing the political alliance that has formed between young-earth creationists, who reject nearly all of science, and the proponents of intelligent design, who generally do not necessarily reject geological time or evolutionary processes. What these two disparate groups have in common is a loathing for naturalism in science. In like manner, Ruse suggests that atheistic evolutionists cultivate Christian evolutionists as allies in the current ID war, calling for "a little more tolerance of those who might wish to make something more of the mystery of life" (p. 284). Yet, given the reluctance of Christian thinkers to accept all implications of evolutionary theory, one wonders just how fruitful this alliance would be.

Ruse is clearly on the side of the scientists. However, his painting of the evolution-creation debate as a religious war inadvertently lends support to the old creation science counter-argument that evolution is also "just" a religion. Nevertheless, Ruse provides a broad history of this debate from the Enlightenment to the present day, and he presents the various concerns that people of faith have about evolution with empathy and honesty. The Evolution-Creation Struggle is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the roots of this dispute.

It's becoming increasingly clear nowadays that there is something else going on with the discussions about creationism, Intelligent Design and evolution than merely a discussion concerning the 'facts' of evolution. Michael Ruse in this book really makes it clear that the discussions on evolution and religious belief are not about facts, but constitute a clash between worldviews, or - in James Hunter's terms - a culture war.

Ruse describes the history of the debates concerning evolution from the publication of Darwin's ideas until the contemporary debates concerning Intelligent Design. He shows (1) how scientists have interpreted Darwin's evolutionary theory in worldview terms, which, consequently, provoked responses from religious believers. Ruse argues that scientists making worldview claims based on evolutionary theory are NOT doing science, but are constructing worldviews! (2) Ruse also shows how the negative responses to evolutionary theoryby Christian theologians was often triggered by theological and moral presuppositions about e.g. human nature and the end of time (eschatology).

Ruse's main points are (1) that the clash between evolution and creationism and Intelligent Design can best be described as a clash between "religions", and (2) that there are plenty of bright theologians who have shown in a very nuanced way how evolutionary theory and Christian faith can live in peaceful coexistence.

This book simply is magnificent. Not only does this book show why scientific facts have so little impact on creation-evolution debates (they simply are irrelevant, since the underlying problems are not about the facts but go much deeper). Moreover, Ruse writes humorous and in an extremely human way.

As a theologian, I daresay that, though Ruse confessed to be an agnostic, he knows more about what religion is really about than the many American theologians and believers who embrace creationism or Intelligent Design...

FINAL NOTE:
If you liked this book and want more knowledge on the social-historical and political backgrounds of the culture war, I can warmly recommend the book "Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America" by James Davison Hunter (New York: Basic Books 1991), also available through Amazon.com.

As others have already noted, this is a book which focuses on the history of evolution and creationism rather than a text on current debates or legal battles. Michael Ruse has served "in the trenches" of this battle, having provided testimony in important court cases on whether creationism qualifies as a science or not.

As a quick note, I'd suggest starting with his conclusion and then reading the rest of the book to see how he fleshes out his analysis.

My main concern, having read creationist literature for quite some time, is that his key ideas in his book will be overlooked and the book will be mined for supposedly self-incriminating quotations. One of the hings that I loathe about creationist literature is its intellectual dishonesty in seeking out isolated (can you say "out of context"?) quotes that make it look like Gould or Dawkins actually deny the validity of evolutionary theory.

For the lazy creationists out there, you want to start at p. 266, "Rival Religions." Michael Ruse is making solid and honest points about the development of creationism and evolution (-ism), but this section will no doubt be cited by people who want to maintain that creationism and evolution are both religions...which doesn't prevent them from saying in the next breath that they're both science.

Potential abuse aside, this is a great book for those who are interested in the historical development of this debate.