By Design: Science and the Search for God

by Larry Witham

The triumphal Darwinian Centennial in 1959 seemed once and for all to end the argument between science and religion that had been raging since Thomas Huxley took up the cause of evolution in the Victorian era. As far as science was concerned, God was dead--case closed. But in the past two decades, as prize winning science writer Larry Witham shows in By Design, the case has been reopened. Advances in science suggest that the materialist "laws" may be incapable of comprehending the subtleties of evolution. Independent scientists and those involved with organizations such as the New Discovery Institute are now using the cutting edge tools of physics, biochemistry, genetics, information theory, and neuroscience to reconsider whether "intentional" fine-tuning was required for life to be possible. At the heart of "By Design" are two inter-related movements. One is the "science and religion dialogue," which stretches from the laboratories of Nobelists to inner sancta of the Vatican. This dialogue attempts to build bridges between two worlds formerly thought to be implacably hostile and incompatible. The other is the intelligent design movement, which by reviving a natural theology of design in nature has challenged the Darwinian strongholds in science and public education. Larry Witham introduces some of the most colorful characters in these movements, and summarizes the scientific developments that have made this dramatic new dialogue possible. After reading "By Design" we understand how what was once a battleground between God and science is now becoming a meeting ground.

Genres: Science, Philosophy, Religion

236 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2003

About the author

Larry Witham is an author, editor, journalist, and artist. His new novel, The Haunted Artist (2025) is the fourth in the Julian Peale Art-Crime Investigator Series. Witham is the author of nineteen books (six of them novels), and was a finalist in the 2015 Pen Literary Awards for biography. He began his writing career as a daily newspaper reporter in Washington D.C. Witham has received several national awards for his newspaper work and books, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for a newspaper series he co-wrote. He was Project Editor for the ten-volume Templeton Press science-and-religion series. A painter by avocation, his new novel character, Julain Peale, investigates crime and intrigue in the artworld. Witham lives with his wife in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C.

Reviews

[قصي بن خليفة · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب يؤرخ للحوار بين العلم والدين... أو العلم والمسيحية أو غيرهم ممن يرى لابد من وجود أصل خارج هذه العالم المحسوس... ولكنه حوار عظيم جنّد له الناس المال والوقت والعلم والفكر سعياً للوصول إلى نتيجة منطقية توافقية بينهما

وقد يكون الحوار بين الداروينيين من جهة وأنصار التصميم الذكي من جهة أخرى فهؤلاء وإن لم يكونوا متدينين فهم علماء وجدوا التفسير الدارويني قاصر ولا بد من مصمم... فالحوار متشابك بين كل هذه الأطراف
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الكتاب لا ينصر طرف على طرف وإنما يسرد تاريخ هذا الجدال... ولكن بالطبع عندما تعرض قول هؤلاء على قول أولئك سترى لمن تميل الكفة وهي عادة ضد من لا يريد حواراً أصلاً

ولذا أراه كتاباً تاريخياً، ولكن عمق المادة وكثرة الشخصيات جعلتني أعاني بعض الشيء... ربما لو كان عندي خلفية كافية عن المواضيع سابقاً لاستوعبت هذا الجدال التاريخي الخطير
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ومما تعلمت أن انصار داروين والتطور والعلمويين وصلوا للقمة في الخمسينات من القرن الماضي وظنوا أنهم قادرون على كل شيء... ربما بسبب قلة العلم نسبياً في ذلك الزمان وتسلط أهواءهم عليه... أما الآن فحجتهم أضعفهم ولا يملكون سوى السلطة الإدارية وليس سلطة العلم

ولذلك في نهاية التسعينات وفي الحوار بين الأديان ظهرت ملاحظة أن العلم بدأ يُظهر ليونة أكثر أو "موضوعية" أقل خصوصاً بعدما رأوا عظمة الخلق وعجز العلم
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مما تعلمته أن فكرة أن مصدر الحياة الأرضية هو كائنات من الفضاء الخارجي، ربما أرسلت جراثيم أو نواة الحياة أو شيء لبدء الحياة، هي فكرة منتشرة بين العلماء فوق ما كنت أتصور، علماء الأحياء... ربما لأنهم علماء متجردون للعلم، وقد اصطدموا باستحالة بدء الحياة هنا، ولأنهم لا يستطيعون الاعتماد على الدين لجهلهم بالإسلام، أخذوا هذا الخيار العجيب! وكثير منهم يؤمن بوحدة الوجود لأنه لا يعرف أي دين مقنع

وكذلك ملاحظة العلماء أن موضوع التصميم يفتح أبواب العلم ولا يغلقها على عكس نظرية التطور التي تقيّد الباحث في نسق معيّن بل وفيها إضاعة للوقت والجهد... ولذلك ينبغي أن نبحث عن التصميم نفسه في الموجودات وسنرى الكثير، في السابق لم نكن معنيين بهذا البحث ولكن إن فعلنا سنرى الأمثلة تتوالى... وأيضاً وضع المصمم آثار تدل على تصميمه وأنها لم تأت عبثاً فمثلاً لم خلق هذه البكتريا ذات المحرّك، لنراها نحن!! وكذلك الكسوف

كثيراً ما سمعت أن الله سبحانه وتعالى هو أصل المعرفة، ولكني لم أستوعب معنى هذه العبارة: أصل المعرفة... جاء في الكتاب ضمن حجج أهل التصميم الذكي أن القانون الطبيعي+ الفرصة العشوائية لا يمكن أن تعطيك نسق معلومات صحيح غير المعط لها سابقاً، ولكن في حال وجود المعلومات المسبقة أو الذكاء فذلك ممكن ونراه دوماً في كل شيء... لاحظت أن الإنسان ذكي فكيف أصبح كذلك؟ لأن له خالق حكيم وهو أصل المعرفة
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رغم تحريف المسيحية الظاهر إلا إنهم مجتهدون في سعيهم، أقول ليتهم عرفوا الإسلام... وأمثال هؤلاء العلماء بيهي وماير وديمبسكي هم من جنود الله وإذا دخلوا الإسلام ماذا يحدث؟ ... فتأمّل ذلك

[Melissa Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an easy-to-read journalistic account of the design debate and its major players over the past half-century. Witham is a theist but is not actually an advocate of Intelligent Design Theory; regardless, he treats the subject with an admirably even hand, chronicling the latest data from cosmology and biology that are changing the direction of the science and religion dialogue.

[Richard Crater · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author, a prize winning science writer, delves into the history and specific arguments of science and religion. This book discusses the research on both sides, starting with Copernicus, through the Darwinian Centennial of 1959, and up to the modern body of knowledge in physics, biochemistry, genetics, information theory, and neuroscience. Discussions on materialist laws, "irreducible complexity", and "intentional fine tuning" were very thought provoking. Not an easy read, with LOTS of players/names to keep straight (not my strong suit), but I found the particulars fascinating.

[Kei-Lynn Wheaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely breakdown of history as it pertains to science and theology.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A CHRISTIAN JOURNALIST SURVEYS THE EVOLUTION/CREATION DEBATE

Larry Witham is a journalist who wrote in the Preface to this 2002 book, "When I conducted my first interview for this book in 1995, I was thinking of a short journalistic project. The next five years flew by, of course. Fortunately, they were some of the most eventful and colorful in America's great debate between evolutionists and creationists. A similar interest in science and religion seemed to crest as well. What results in these pages, I believe, is a story of people, places, events, and ideas that is both pro-science and pro-religion. But its predominant theme is how we, a religiously inclined society, try to understand nature, which is mostly the bailiwick of science...

"This book talks mostly with scientists and science educators, and as to what science is as a whole, they will all have something to say... the journalist's task is ... to give full compass to reasonable voices. What is more, this book is a cultural history. Who can doubt that evolutionists and creationists, for example, are equal forces in American culture?"

He notes that "The great [Theodosius] Dobzhansky, who criticized Bible fundamentalists but never lost his ties to Russian Orthodoxy, liked [Paul] Tillich's religion as `ultimate concern,' but he embraced Teilhard [de Chardin]. He served as president of the Teilhard Society and wrote The Biology of Ultimate Concern... But he was in good company, for no less a pioneer evolutionist than Sewall Wright, the geneticist, became a process biologist. Wright let slip his flight from a purely mechanistic view of life in his 1953 president's address `Gene and Organism' to the American Society of Naturalists. Not a few of his materialist students thought he had lost his grip." (Pg. 31-32)

He adds about the British ornithologist David Lack, "In 1947, at the height of his evolutionist fame, Lack had abandoned agnosticism for an Anglican evangelical faith. His 1938 study of finch survival and change in the Galapagos Islands was key empirical evidence for the New Synthesis. Yet like the neo-orthodox, Lack preferred to compartmentalize his faith and his science. Unperturbed that a good God could reign over nature's deathly struggle, he said that `man is surely unqualified to judge whether this [natural] ordering is in any way evil, or contrary to divine plan." (Pg. 32)

He points out, "Philosopher of science Karl Popper cast such doubts on evolution when, in his 1976 autobiography, he called it more `metaphysical research program' than real science. Only theories that could be `falsified' by a test were scientific, he said, and so the proposition that dinosaurs evolved into birds was outside science. Before he died, in a much-cited letter to the editor from 1980, Popper conceded that evolution was valid on other lines of scientific logic, but his famous doubts are part of science's cultural history. Who has the authority to demarcate what is true science from what is not---especially in the theoretical realms of the evolutionary past? This intellectual fallout of the 1960s gave creationists an important tool." (Pg. 34-35)

He concludes, "This book has tried to show the many places the argument has unfolded, all of them in some sense places where Darwin meets the Bible. As examples from the year 2000 show, the academic and cultural debate can be as explosive as the legal and political conflicts that typically make the newspaper headlines. But what of the future? Will it get worse and then better, or has science already morally and technically won? Will some form of creationism, on the other hand, gain ground in one of the areas covered by this book---schools, textbooks, churches, museums, the science profession, public debates, media coverage, or the study of human nature?...

"[S]peculation may be worth a try in three American contexts that might color the future debate of evolutionists and creationists. First is a new kind of social stratification of America, second the demise of apocalyptic creationism, and third the fall of Darwinism but survival of materialism in biology." (Pg. 262)

While this is not the best "journalistic" overview of creation/evolution issues, it contains some interesting material not easily available elsewhere. It will be of some interest to those studying the debate between creationism, Intelligent Design, and evolution, as well as science/religion issues in general.