Customer Reviews

Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith (Philosophy in Action)

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I am a thoroughly faithful 21st Century Christian with no problem with evolution or science in general. My faith is life long and I let go of any of the supernatural problems with religion over many years. This book interested me because the author endeavored to address "faith" as an integral part of the arguments over Darwinian theory. As well, the book is valuable because it is a great primer on the theory of evolution and natural selection on the one hand and a fine and sympathetic, but devastating, critique of the "non-religious" alternative of Intelligent design. All this written by a self described "secular humanist." Kitcher, as such, is remarkably empathetic toward the faithful who are threatened by Darwinian theory. And finally, he asks the faithful a key question as to just what would differentiate them from secular humanism if they gave up supernaturalism as essential to that faith. I am in this category and am satisfied that my understanding of life as essentially sacred and living as a sacramental act is a difference between Kitcher and myself that makes a difference. This is a thoughtful little book well worth reading if any of the issues it addresses bother you or which you are curious about.

It's a bit depressing, seeing a man of global outlook having to produce a book of such limited audience. Kitcher's philosophical study is an excellent summation of the false ideas forwarded by anti-Darwin forces in the US. His approach is a needed one, that "creationists" of various stripes there must be addressed in rational terms, and on their own ground. He accomplishes the task with extraordinary skill and reserve. It's a badly-needed book, but it's a pity is that this is so. It's to be hoped Kitcher's well-reasoned techniques applied here will reach a significant portion of that targeted readership.

His approach is to categorise the themes of creationist writers as regards the value of the "science" they purport to espouse. He puts creationists in three basic forms: "Genesis" - the biblical "literalists"; "novelty" - special acts of creation by some supernatural interference; and the "anti-selectionists" - composed of the newer "Intelligent Design" advocates. "Anti-selectionism" has found a niche by contesting the concept of the Tree of Life, the graphic representation of gradual change in organisms over time to produce new forms. It isn't evolution itself these writers contest, but the details not readily explained by what we know now. Aimless mutations aren't enough to explain the complexity of some elements in certain organisms, they argue. Some undetectable "force" must be involved. The first two forms are adhered to by sincere, if dogmatic followers. The third is one that must be considered on the evidence under study. That consideration must adhere to the rules of scientific investigation to be valid.

Kitcher understands that the challenge of the anti-selectionists isn't based on scientific, but on cultural, values. He recognises that the real agenda of "Intelligent Design" is to give religious people a way to grasp Darwin's concept within a framework of supernatural forces. They have been forced to concede that "young-Earth" biblical creation is untenable. They also recognise that "special creations" aren't supported by the fossil or genetic record. The only way to allow their deity a means of keeping its hand in is to give some tampering power. Bacterial flagella and some internal functions of the body argue against Darwin's "descent with modification". Building up certain proteins to perform the tasks they do today cannot be sustained, they contend. Kitcher responds by noting that while the "anti-selectionists" can make this arguement due to lack of hard fossil evidence for how these functions evolved, neither do the Darwin-detractors offer any evidence for divine tampering to establish them.

The author's classifications may be novel, but the issues involved have been presented often. What makes this book important and necessary is Kitcher's resistance to sinking into wearying invective. His prose is bright and conversational, his lining out of evidence firmly dispassionate and his conclusions irrefutable. He makes no unwarrented claims, and fully recognises that gaps in our knowledge remain to be filled.

Another gap, however, must also be contended with. What to do about those who feel that "faith" is a human necessity? The author offers an historical synopsis of what the Enlightenment contributed to our view of the supernatural. Of all the challenges to Christian belief, it was Darwin's that was the most devastating. It was one thing to displace the Earth from the centre of the universe. It was quite another to remove any supernatural element from life's workings. In particular, it's devastating to some to learn that humans are not the subject focus of divine attention. Kitcher's answer is that a new form of "faith" must emerge, and be encouraged. That "faith" will not resist natural selection, but embrace it. That new religion will combine a form of Darwinist humanism with a sense of the spiritual as a social mucilage. There will be no "god", but there will be a drive to reduce pain and suffering so far as possible. It won't be easy to establish such a concept, particularly in a nation with such vocal forces objecting to natural selection having a role in human affairs. But success depends on the withdrawal of artificial objections to Darwin's ideas. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

I just finished this book last evening. It is an easy read being a synoptic treatment of the evidence supporting darwinism and the modern intelligent design criticisms. Kitcher takes us through the historical discoveries that undermined the biblical creation stories. For example, the earth is clearly much older than the bible indicates. There is no evidence for a worldwide Noah's flood. The evidence was so overwhelming that christian scholars, such as the Reverend Adam Sedgewick whom Kitcher quotes, had to admit that the biblical view was wrong. Biblical literalism was untenable after this point.
Kitcher takes ID seriously but ultimately finds that it is just the argument from design. ID has much to say against natural selection, but nothing positive to say about an alternative process. It is dead science having been buried long ago.
I was suprised by some other reviewers mentioning the 'Jesus Seminar'. Kitcher does not base anything on this group. In fact, they are not even in the index. They are only mentioned in two places. One, were he quotes their opinion on the effect of Mark's Ecce Homo scene where Pilate presents jesus to the mob. Let me quote it. "That scene, although the product of Mark's vivid imagination, has wrought untold and untellable tragedy in the history of the relation of Christians to Jews. There is no black deep enough to symbolize the black mark this fiction has etched in Christian history."( page 100 ). He quotes this where he is discussing the 'sitz im leben' of the gospels' composition. The other place is when Kitcher refers back to this quote on page 162. Kitcher makes no use of them for anything. He relies instead on older scholars such as Wellhausen and others who did the early work on figuring out how the bible was written. In fact, by 19th and early 20th century standards of biblical criticism, the Jesus Seminar is a very conservative group. A critical scholar like Joachim Jeremias ( not mentioned by Kitcher ) would say that the 'abba' saying by jesus is the only thing we can trace back to jesus with any confidence. Everything else he said or taught can be found in non-biblical sources.
Of course, as the old saying goes, you can't argue someone out of something that they weren't argued into. Creationists don't believe what they do for intellectual reasons but for emotional reasons. Kitcher ends up discussing what it might mean to be a christian if you do take the book seriously. It is what I call a 'post-critical naivete'. One knows that the stories are just that. In the community of fellow christians, one finds support, hope and a sense of transcendence.
If you want a short book dealing with these issues then this is your book.
There is no lack of books on this topic, but for those wanting to dig deeper into the critical scholarship of the bible you might want to consider some of the following books.
_Who Wrote the Bible_, Richard Friedman
_The New Testament: The History of the Investigation of Its Problems_, Werner Kummel
_The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture_, Bart Ehrman
_Misquoting Jesus_, Bart Ehrman
_The Historical Jesus Question: The Challenge of History to Religious Authority_, Gregory Dawes
And the classic of all classics
_The Quest of the Historical Jesus_, Albert Schweitzer

Ever since the Origin of Species was published in 1859, Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection has been viewed as dangerous to Christian faith. This is especially true for adherents of biblical literalism who view it as a threat and have taken various steps to assuage its effects on the faithful. The most recent of which comes under the title "Intelligent Design." [ID] In his book, Living with Darwin, philosopher of science Philip Kitcher sets out to attack claims made by proponents of Intelligent Design by showing their weakness as a "scientific" as well as a "religious" hypothesis." And ultimately demonstrating why a Darwinian orthodox explanation is still the best option available.

In chapter one, "Disinterring Darwin," Kitcher refers to [ID] as "dead science" a doctrine that "once had its day in scientific inquiry and discussion but has rightly been discarded" (8). This means that at some point in the past it was seriously considered a workable scientific hypothesis but for good reasons it was abandoned and left for dead, to be replaced by a hypothesis that does a better job of explaining the natural world. But Kitcher recognizes that this is not the last word for proponents of [ID], or as he likes to call them "resurrection men." The [ID] proponents have other tricks up their sleeve as Kitcher demonstrates. For one, there isn't just one strand of intelligent design that evolutionists have to deal with. Kitcher concentrates on a total of three anti-evolution approaches: "Genesis creationism," "novelty creationism," and "anti-selctionism" respectively. This makes it a little more difficult for proponents of evolution to refer to [ID] as non-science (nonsense) because aspects of these other hypothesis could easily meet the requirements of a science. Instead, Kitcher seriously considers the [ID] program by playing their game and addressing their objections to Darwinian orthodoxy. Secondly, Kitcher recognizes a two-part distinction between a "negative thesis' and a "positive thesis" in [ID]. The negative thesis says that life as a whole is too complex to have come about the way the theory of natural selection explains it. On the other hand, the positive thesis says that there is an alternative causal agency to natural selection which is thought to be intelligent. Now it shouldn't automatically be assumed that this "intelligence" is the supernatural creator God of the Bible. Kitcher will address this subject in the final chapter (chapter 5). Suffice it to say that merely labeling something "intelligent" doesn't get one closer to the supernaturalism one wishes to prove. In fact, it may just make that understanding of a designer more problematic when one actually considers what kind of world actually exists.

In chapter two Kitcher addresses genesis creationism and ultimately says "Good-bye to Genesis" and any compatibility of a literal interpretation of the flood story with the fossil record in the layers of rocks. The initial problem for adherents of a worldwide flood mentioned in the book of Genesis is that the layers give an ordered appearance with extinct animal fossils at the bottom with the most recent animals at the top (as it should be if the earth is very old and animals have gone extinct). There is, however, a hypothesis by Genesis creationists that Kitcher entertains. Genesis creationists propose that God created all of the animals at one time. If this is the case, then it is impossible that the fossils at the bottom of the strata can be older than the fossils at the top. Instead, they believe the Noahic flood could have mixed around the fossils and distributed them the way scientists currently observe. On problem with this interpretation is that the layers are ordered by ecologies so that it would be unlikely that, barring a miracle, the flood could have washed all of the fossils in the exact arrangement we have them. Not only would one have to grant that God caused the flood, but God also meticulously controlled where each animal would be deposited in the layers of strata. Another problem with a literal interpretation that besets Genesis creationism is the scene Kitcher paints of Noah and his family trying to care for all of the animals, making sure they stayed alive and didn't eat the other. There is also the trouble of creating artificial environments for each animal. If it truly was a worldwide flood then not all animals will obviously be able to survive in a sedentary environment like the ark. When one truly thinks on these things it does become harder to take the biblical account of the flood story seriously. I even found myself laughing when I read Kitcher's account of the birds that weren't taken onto the ark trying to find shelter while Noah and his family fought them off. I suppose God would be very displeased if any other birds than the two "He" told Noah to bring with him onto the ark got on board. When one actually consider the story and the fact that there are flood myths in other religious texts, you see that this is more likely story rife with symbolism and not an account of a historical even that can be used as scientific hypothesis. Kitcher doubts that even the "resurrection men" would want to bring this story back from the dead. As Kitcher explains in the chapter, it was rightly buried in 1831 by a reverend Adam Sedgwick who was a very meticulous geologist and had done the requisite legwork. If the good reverend saw fit to bury it, why not those others who adhere to a literalist interpretation?

In chapter three, "One Tree of Life," Kitcher examines the claims of novelty creationists. But when it comes down to it there are only two options. You can either believe that newer organism's branch from older ones in a tree-like fashion, or they are specially created by a supernatural intelligence. Kitcher exhibits patience once again by taking the claims of the novelty creationists seriously but ultimately showing that their hypothesis fails. For one, Kitcher points out that we cannot ultimately trust the competence of a "designer" who has the ability to create these newer organisms but leaves traces of the structure of previous organisms. Why not start from scratch with a better design than to reuse the same stuff that possibly caused an organism to go extinct? If evolution is correct, then it would appear that the newer organism is a modified descendent of the previous organism instead of one that came into existence ex nihilo (out of nothing) at the whimsy of the "designer." Examples such as this raise more questions than the novelty creationists can answer. Ironically, this is how [ID] thrives. As Kitcher observes, the task of explaining all the details of evolution to a novelty creationist is "Sisyphean, that no sooner has this particular stone reaches the summit than another one will appear requiring the same time-consuming work" (70-71). Evolution is not as quick to answer all of the objections as [ID] is to raise them. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing since it is mostly sophistry, and [ID] still has the problem of providing answers to the objections it raises to evolution's answers. And at the end of the day Darwinian evolution by descent with modification wins out over a special act of creation by a supernatural designer that can't seem to measure up to the omnipotent and omnibenevolent God of the Bible that proponents of [ID] ultimately wish to defend.

Chapter 4 examines the anti-selectionist's rhetoric and asks if natural selection is "at the mercy of chance?" In this chapter Kitcher identifies two types of arguments at the heart of the anti-selectionists. The first type is what Kitcher calls the "cumulative case argument." This is the view which states that challenges natural selection by calling into question it ability to act on certain types of organisms that are too "complex." The eye is a common example of an organ that couldn't have evolved via natural selection because it would need all of its working parts to have evolved. This was a problem that originally beset Darwin but was addressed in his time. Kitcher observes how anti-selectionists arbitrarily decide how these organisms must have been like and why there explanation is no better than an invention of his as to why we observe the eye as complex today. I think the point he is trying to make is that we don't know the initial conditions for how something as complex as the eye evolved. However, just because we haven't solved the problem doesn't mean it is unsolvable. Furthermore, Kitcher questions the "positive" alternative that the anti-selectionists offer in the way of what most likely is a supernatural intelligence. But why is this better explanation for how certain organisms evolved? Kitcher observes that any good theory is flexible enough to undergo change. As a scientific hypothesis a supernatural designer cannot be scrutinized. If this is the case, then it seems that we have reached the end of the road in scientific investigation. This is not good science and Kitcher knows it. The second approach is what Kitcher calls the "computational case argument." Unlike the concrete case, the computational case deals with probabilities instead of the complexity of an organism being intelligently designed. And it appears that the odds are not in favor of [ID] when one seriously considers the way they use probabilities. It all seems like a carefully crafted part of their rhetorical attack on evolution since it appears that they have an agenda in the way they use probability theory to their advantage. But through careful scrutinizing Kitcher walks through several arguments (e.g., blood-clotting mechanism) and ultimately shows why they fail.

The strengths of this book lie in the final chapter which he calls "A Mess of Pottage." The phrase is associated with a story in the Bible where Esau sells his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew. Kitcher uses this phrase as a metaphor for Darwinian evolution to show the concern of a supporter of supernaturalistic religion that they are surrendering something far more valuable and everlasting for something vacuous and temporal. For some the trade-off isn't worth it and instead they choose to remain faithful to their doctrines. What Kitcher does is introduce a "spiritual religion" into the conversation. This way one could have their lentil stew and eat it too. If you take Kitcher's critique of the doctrines of providentialist faith seriously, then this may be the only alternative open to live with Darwin without falling into an extreme secularism or atheism which strips all of the value from religion or falling back into supernaturalism with the problems it contains, most notably its insoluble problem of suffering vis-à-vis an intelligent designer who is omnipotent and omnibenevolent. And you can still have your most cherished stories without taking them as literal historical happenings. It is doubtful that everyone will be satisfied with Kitcher's approach. As a matter of fact, a cursory glance of reviews of his book show that some people cannot accept Kitcher's alternative. I say, so much for those folks. Personally, I found it enlightening and a suitable alternative for the time being. But I also have abandoned supernatural religion for a naturalistic approach called "Panentheism" adopted by philosophers such as Charles Hartshorne, David Ray Griffin, and John B. Cobb just to name a few, so I have less trouble agreeing with Kitcher. The doctrine of Panentheism literally states that "all is in God." So in this panentheistic approach one could use the analogy that we are individual cells in a supercellular organism, i.e. God. It is far beyond the scope of this review to go into detail with this approach. I brought it up because I thought it would be interesting to see how Kitcher would respond to a semi-popular theology such as this. Regardless, it seems clear that in order for one to live with Darwin she is going to have to abandon her faithfulness to supernatural theology.

This little book is a devastating critique of the Intelligent Design as a religion in disguise. Prof. Kitcher continues the project begun back in the 1980a in his ABUSING SCIENCE, which demolished the old-fashioned creationism (i.e., the anti-Darwinism of the pre-ID days). And yet, in the final chapter of LIVING WITH DARWIN, "The Mess of Pottage", Kitcher is greatly sensitive and understanding of the motivations of religious believers to oppose Darwinism. I should like to say a bit more about the idas expressed in this chapter, since it is here where I find an important difference between Kitcher and other well-known critics of creationism, such as Prof. Dawkins. Prof. Kitcher offers a sort of sociological hypothesis to explain why biblical literalism and Christian fundamentalism thrive in the United States, while they are negligible anywhere else in the developed world. According to Kitcher, the church is virtually the only place of communal support in America, which is, at the same time, a country where competition and alienation are particularly fierce. Ordinary people who find in the church the last place of support and comfort see Darwin as a symbol of all that threatens the institution that sustains them in the fierce social environment. Now, Kitcher is in a basic agreement with Dawkins about the illusionary nature of religion. Unlike Dawkins, however, Kitcher does not believe that people hold onto religion because of mere stupidity. Although he doesn't develop this point in a great detail, I suppose that Kitcher implies that only a radical social change could alter the conditions of life of ordinary Americans in such a way that they would no longer need the illusion of a religion.

I found this to be a very helpful addition to the literature on the continuing conflict between evolutionists and those supporting intelligent design. Unlike some other books on this topic, the author does not try to dispose of ID by declaring it unscientific; rather his view is to demonstrate that it represents "dead science," discarded in 1859-1870, much like alchemy. In other words, the scientific "basis" for ID has not progressed since the days of Paley's "Natural Theology" (1826), while the scientific evidence supporting Darwin has grown tremendously in depth and reach. It is also helpful that the book covers the entire history of creationism, since the author addresses "genesis creationism," "novelty creationism", and "anti-selectionism." The author effectively demonstrates in language generally understandable to the layperson why each of these three approaches is defective in analysis and foundation. His discussion of how DNA and modern genetics support evolution is particularly effective and helpful.

Along the way, he poses some tough questions for those advocating ID. For example, when does "intelligence" act, and how does it affect life. The author's discussion of the "concrete case" argument, i.e., how could complex structures such as the human eye be the result of evolution, and what he terms the "computational argument" that invokes mathematical probabilities as an argument against evolution, casts much welcome light on these contentions. Kitcher is quick to admit there are gaps in the fossil records, and that as of the present some important dimensions of evolution have not yet been proven. But in his view the direction science is going suggests that more and more of these issues will be resolved in the future.

The final chapter, "A Mess of Pottage," focuses upon a key point. For the author, there really is no way Darwinism can be compatible with religion that posits supernatural dimensions. For him, it is either Drawin or God, and there is no way to compromise. There is certainly room to disagree with the book on this point. Instead, the author suggests that there is still room for what he terms "spiritual religion." Much like the author's "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creatinism" (1982), this book is very well written, and at 186 pages fairly compact, including 19 pages of helpful notes. Whichever side one is on in this debate, this book is challenging and worthy of consideration.

Philip Kitcher's Living with Darwin is one of the better discussions of the current battle between creationism and evolutionary theory. Much like the on-going feud about sexuality in Christian denominations, the creationism/evolution tussle is about much more than just the front line issues. It involves a bona fide worldview clash between naturalists and supernaturalists.

To Kitcher's credit, he seems to recognize the narrow and comprehensive levels of the debate. He addresses the former in the first four chapters of this book. Arguing that creationism/ID has several varieties, he focuses on what he calls "Genesis creationism," which denies the ancient age of the earth; "novelty creationism," which claims that at least certain species are acts of special creation, thereby denying the one tree of life foundation of standard evolutionary theory; and "anti-selectionism," which argues that selection isn't a sufficient explanation for certain transitions, either from one species to the next in the development of "irreducibly complex" organs or organisms. Patiently and logically, these positions are addressed, respectively, in chapters 2-4.

What I found most intriguing in Kitcher's book is his effort in the final chapter to reflect on the more comprehensive worldview clash that fuels the more specific ones between ID and evolution. Kitcher argues that evolution destroys the possibility of divine design in the universe, and that textual analysis and comparative religion studies destroys faith in the literal truth of sacred scripture. Supernatural religion, then, is as dead as ID. But the "music of faith" (p. 158) is still something we yearn for. To fill that need, Kitcher recommends "spiritual" rather than supernatural religion, with the former being very much what John Dewey defended in his A Common Faith: an embrace of the religious experience without ascribing to it culturally fashioned notions of the supernatural.

This is a commendable argument. But it's one that leaves me dissatisfied for three reasons. First, it seems to me that Kitcher has illegitimately jumped from science to metaphysics--from a methodological naturalism, if you will, to a metaphysical one--in his conviction that evolution destroys the possibility of supernaturalism. Second, while it's absolutely the case that theology and God-belief needs to come to terms with (rather than denying) the Darwinian evolution, it's not at all clear that the only way to do that is by self-erasure. John Haught, for one, has worked on a consistent and sophisticated post-Darwinian theology. Finally, it's not clear to me that the human malaise which Kitcher thinks spiritual religion will ameliorate are just symptoms of social and economic injustice (which Kitcher believes). This account seems to me to ignore deeper questions of what might be called existential despair or loneliness with spiritual religion may simply not be equipped to deal with.

Kitcher identifies three different, anti-evolution approaches: Genesis creationism (i.e., "young-Earth creationism"); novelty creationism (which accepts Earth's antiquity, but rejects common descent); and anti-selectionism (a minimalist hypothesis, commonly known as "Intelligent Design" [ID], which proposes only that natural selection is not sufficient to explain the history of life on Earth).

Kitcher spends most of the rest of the book reviewing the historical record of all three anti-evolution approaches, showing that the modern variants are as flawed as the originals, which were rejected by mainstream science around 1830, 1870, and 1930, respectively. Interestingly, the different types of anti-evolutionism are most effectively rebutted by different types of argument.

Genesis creationism is rebutted most effectively by the numerous examples of fossil sequences that are diametrically opposed to what would be predicted by the Genesis account of Noah's Flood.

Novelty creationism is rebutted most effectively by evidence related to biogeography (the geographic distribution of fossils and living organisms) and shared anatomical and genetic features, especially vestigial features. (Kitcher omits the evidence of shared embryological features, but Darwin himself relied very heavily on that, and, as Sean Carroll's books demonstrate, evo-devo is one of the most exciting areas of modern evolutionary research.) Kitcher also points out that there are many, many, many novelties to be explained; and simply proposing ad hoc, "deus ex machina" explanations for each one is obviously a non-starter.

Regarding anti-selectionism (ID), Kitcher argues that, given a philosophically sophisticated understanding of what "science" is, ID could be (and historically was) considered a genuinely scientific hypothesis. He quickly adds, however, that current Supreme Court precedents could still bar teaching such a hypothesis in public elementary and secondary school science classes, if its minimalist scientific merits are outweighed by pervasive religious implications. (The second prong of the "Lemon test" [see Lemon v. Kurtzman] prohibits governmental acts whose religious effects outweigh their secular effects.) Obviously that poses huge problems for ID. ID-iots themselves openly admit that ID is indeed minimalist (minimalist, apparently, to the point of meaninglessness, since there is no -- repeat, no -- actual research based on specifically ID principles), and only a fool would deny ID's pervasive religious implications, since those same ID-iots specifically emphasize those religious implications whenever they address friendly congregations. Kitcher also observes that ID-iots disingenuously oscillate between advocating anti-selectionism in their "scientific" writings addressed to professional audiences, and novelty creationism in popular articles addressed to less educated (Christian) audiences.

(Both the flip-flopping between cautious, minimalist science and energetic, religious evangelizing and the slippery equivocation between novelty creationism and anti-selectionism provide abundant evidence for expert witnesses like Barbara Forrest, whose testimony in the Kitzmiller trial, transcripts of which are available at the National Center for Science Education's website, was so damaging to the ID-iot's case.)

Kitcher identifies ID's two main types of negative arguments against evolution: "concrete case" arguments about "irreducibly complex" [IC] features which allegedly could not have evolved through natural selection; and "computational" arguments implying that some evolutionary scenarios are statistically "impossible." Kitcher shows that the IC argument relies on a straw-man caricature of evolution; obviously, no legitimate conclusions about evolution can be drawn from such a straw-man. Kitcher also shows that ID's statistical arguments all require making convenient guesses about initial conditions. Once the arbitrariness of those guesses is exposed, the persuasiveness of the statistical arguments collapses. Indeed, the statistical arguments are so flawed, it's obvious that the ID-iots who concoct them are either dunces or dishonest. Kitcher illustrates his argument with a vivid example that bridge players everywhere can easily appreciate. One hopes that someone will take Michael Behe and William Dembski by the hand and walk them through the example as well.

Kitcher also scrutinizes ID's positive claim, which boils down to: anything too complex for natural selection must be attributed to intelligence. Kitcher argues that it is difficult to attribute intelligence to anything without knowing something about the processes through which the intelligence manifests itself, and that the ID-iots' refusal even to attempt to specify those processes undermines the ID-iots' claim to be doing science. Kitcher suggests that the ID-iots' evasiveness follows from their realization that trying to be too specific would: 1) eventually raise the same problems that doomed novelty creationism; and 2) raise embarrassing questions about why an allegedly provident God, capable of designing incredibly complex creatures, would fail to take simple steps to eliminate some obvious examples of human suffering, such as sickle cell anemia.

Kitcher neglects to point out that a negative argument is embedded even in ID's positive claim: infer intelligence, only after eliminating evolution. That kind of negative argument raises the "false dichotomy" issue which Judge Jones highlighted in his Kitzmiller decision. (See my review of "What's Darwin Got To Do With It" for an explanation of false dichotomies.) In effect, ID's negative argument boils down to: we don't know what produced this feature, therefore we do know what produced it. That's not only illogical, it's nonsensical.

The last chapter points out that the evolutionary view of the history of life may seem to be opposed to the idea of a providential God. That may be an interesting issue for people concerned about how many angels can dance on pinheads, but it has no relevance in science.

I highly recommend this book for its lively, informative, thoughtful analysis.

One final note: a previous reviewer implied that Richard Dawkins' discussion of the evolution of the vertebrate eye was completely invalid, because Dawkins mistakenly claimed that one small part of the evidence consisted of "computer modeling." In reality, the modeling was mathematical. That raises the question, why does that reviewer think that mathematical modeling is necessarily less persuasive than computer modeling. Making a big deal out of the difference between "mathematical modeling" and "computer modeling," especially when the mistake related to just one small part of Dawkins' overall argument, is just one more example of the deliberately misleading word games that creationists engage in.

Kitcher divides creationism into three broad areas: Genesis creationism, novelty supernatural intervention, and antiselectionism. The last two are pretty close together except that antiselectionism has undergone ad-agency type modifications to make it more politically correct. It does not name a designer, but this is the area of current interest of the Intelligent Design movement.

All three of these are old theories, starting with the creation story in Genesis. The idea of an intelligent designer started with Paley's analogy about a watch in the early 1800's. Kitcher shows how science, especially Darwin's theories, pretty much disposed of these theories in the eighteen hundreds. Since then, they have been intermittently recycled despite overwhelming evidence from geology, physics, chemistry, and biology that evolution by natural selection has occurred.

That is not to say there aren't other mechanisms helping natural selection along. Certainly we don't know everything about how life has evolved, but every piece of new evidence falls into or close to its appropriate spot - confirming, sometimes slightly tweaking the overall theory. Evolution is about as likely to overturned as gravity.

Kitcher is not unkind to the anti-evolutionists, but states firmly that science and an interventional supernatural entity are not compatible. Religious folks are correct to be jarred by the implications of Darwinism, as Darwin was himself. Kitcher addresses this issue in his last and best chapter - "A Mess of Pottage." Buried in this chapter is a mini-essay about that bronze age document, the Bible. It appears to Kitcher that every verse in the New Testament was either adapted from mythology, taken from the Old Testament, or written to prove a theological point. I couldn't agree more.

This is an easy read, a nice primer on evolution, and an excellent history of the creationist/ID movement. It closes with an interesting push for spirituality. After all, science does little to provide comfort for the those facing death or other tragedies of life. I recommend this author's approach highly.

I very much enjoyed Professor Kitcher's book. In a few short chapters he summarizes the tortuous logic of the Intelligent Design program--but also seriously addresses the concerns that many Christians have about evolutionary theory's affect on society--and why this makes them easy targets for the Discovery Institute and others that try to exploit this anxiety in order to force a crude creationism into the public school science classroom.

While I found his last chapter poignant in describing his own inability to reconcile personal religious faith with Darwin, I think that his uncritical acceptance of the "findings" of the Jesus Seminar seriously undercuts his position. (This credulity is surprising given how well read he seems otherwise.)