The American Spectator

TAS Live

Darwinism at AEI

By Tom Bethell on 8.20.07 @ 12:06AM

(Page 3 of 3)

Chapman, also present, recalls no such exchange with Behe.

Incidentally, Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism, is now out. It reports on new intelligent design research, but I have only started to read it.

I have left Gilder to the end. As always, it was intriguing to hear him grope his way through ideas that he was discovering even as he spoke. "The word comes first," he said at one point. "The information precedes the proteins." He has been studying information theory for years, and one of his conclusions is that the information carried by a channel must be distinct and separate from the channel itself. DNA -- a string of nucleotides -- does not explain how the information (needed to construct proteins) got into that DNA in the first place. That, we know nothing about.

He flailed at the "materialist superstition." He castigated the idea that thought and speech, "originating in human minds, can be reduced to various secretions of the brain." Emphasizing the hopeless fluidity of Darwinism, Gilder joked that Arnhart has found himself "a beautiful Darwinism, a James Dobson Darwinism, a supply-side Darwinism." If it's true, it's also "trivial." It fits neatly inside any and every box. Like Freudianism, it's a philosophy -- a world-view disguised as a science.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Religion, Environment, Books, Conservatism