The American Spectator

home
ADVERTISEMENT
Print Email
Text Size

TAS Live

Darwinism at AEI

Are conservatives and Darwinists friends -- or foes?

(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.

Page:   1 23

topics:
Religion, Environment, Books, Conservatism

About the Author

Tom Bethell is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages, and most recently Questioning Einstein: Is Relativity Necessary? (2009).

Letter to the Editor View all comments (1) | Leave a comment

louis vuitton| 4.27.10 @ 1:14AM

Many of my readers are entirely convinced that Thomas is a fraud. This wall of secrecy around the New Republic during this investigation is not helping that magazine's reputation. canada gooseAfter the immigration bill failed in the U.S. Senate, the postmortems deplored the new power of bloggers and the Internet.

Leave a Comment

N.B. We encourage readers to share and discuss their thoughtful and relevant comments about this Spectator article. Comments are routinely monitored and will be deleted if profane, bigoted, or grossly impolite. Please be respectful. (And don't feed the trolls!) Thank you.

Related Articles

More Articles by Tom Bethell

More Articles From TAS Live

http://spectator.org/archives/2007/08/20/darwinism-at-aei

ADVERTISEMENT

SPONSORED LINKS

Special Feature

Better that we become a nation of choosers rather than beggars. Our symposium on choice from the May, 2012 issue:

A Time for Choosing

James Piereson

The Road from Serfdom

Stephen Moore and Peter Ferrara

FLASHBACK TO: 1984

Clip of the Day

Most Popular Articles

Meet the Flukes!

F. H. Buckley | 5.25.12

In Search of Muhammad

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi | 5.25.12

The Wisconsin Turning Point

Peter Ferrara | 5.23.12

Follow Me

Jay D. Homnick | 5.25.12

Age and Kyl

Quin Hillyer | 5.25.12

How About the Record of DOE Capital?

William Tucker | 5.25.12

In a Class of His Own

Daniel J. Flynn | 5.25.12

The Great Debate

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. | 5.24.12

ADVERTISEMENT