Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0830828362 ISBN 13: 9780830828364

Publisher: IVP Academic, 2006

Synopsis

With the publication of Darwin on Trial in 1991, Cal Berkeley legal scholar Phillip Johnson became the leading figure in the intelligent design movement. Exposing and calling into question the philosophical foundations of Darwinism, Johnson led the charge against this largely unquestioned philosophy of materialistic reductionism and its purported basis in scientific research. This book reviews and celebrates the life and thought of Phillip Johnson and the movement for which he has served as chief architect. Editor William A. Dembski presents eighteen essays by those who have known and worked with Johnson for more than a decade. They provide personal and in-depth insight into the man, his convictions and his leadership of the intellectual movement that called into question the hegemony of Darwinian theory. Contributors include Stephen Meyer Michael Behe Jay Wesley Richards Thomas Woodward Francis Beckwith Timothy Standish David Berlinski Michael Ruse David Keller Jonathan Wells Scott Minnich Nancy Pearcey Jay Budziszewski Marcus Ross Paul Nelson Henry Schaefer III Wesley Allen Walter Bradley Phillip E. Johnson

About this title

About the Author

About the Author

William A. Dembski (Ph.D., mathematics, University of Chicago; Ph.D., philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago) is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also a fellow at the Discovery Institute. He has previously taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University, and he has been a National Science Foundation doctoral and postdoctoral fellow. Dembski has written numerous scholarly articles and is the author of the critically acclaimed The Design Inference (Cambridge), Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press) and No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Rowman and Littlefield).

Reviews

This Festschrift from friends—and a couple of friendly critics—honors Phillip Johnson, the Berkeley law professor whose 1991 publication Darwin on Trial and later books helped intelligent design emerge as a highly visible, and highly controversial, alternative to Darwinism. While it may be premature to hail Johnson as "Darwin's Nemesis," these essays reveal him as an influential strategist and mentor within the ID movement. Contributors to the 2004 symposium that spawned this collection include leading ID advocates Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Wells and Scott Minnich, as well as Darwin defender Michael Ruse, who has engaged Johnson in debate. Other contributors address cultural and political questions beyond evolution itself, such as Francis Beckwith's timely review of legal controversies over ID in the classroom, J. Budziszewski's discussion of naturalism and the Natural Law tradition and editor William Dembski's commentary on the professional—and often personal—"backlash" against ID advocates. Readers who are familiar with the basics of ID and curious about the movement's development and inner workings will find much of interest, although for an account of the most recent and current controversies over ID, they will need to consult other sources. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0830828362
• ISBN 13: 9780830828364
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 357
• Editor: Dembski William A.