- Hardcover: 338 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc (1 Oct 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0195150457
- ISBN-13: 978-0195150452
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 17.5 x 2.5 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,804,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Where Darwin Meets the Bible
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Product Description
Review
... provides a wide-ranging, and useful, review of the participants in the debate ... Larry Witham is fair and unbiased in his reporting. Expository Times Witham's impeccable reportage, his erudite analysis and his ability to synthesize complex and nuanced strains of thought all make this book an invaluable roadmap of the evolution-creation controversy in America. Publisher's Weekly
Product Description
Since the publiction of Charles Darwin's On the Origins of Species in 1859, the conflict between creationist and evolutionist has proven one of the most enduring and volitile schisms in American life. Like any long lived ideological war, this one has seen its high profile clashes, such as the epic scopes Monkey trial or the 1999 endorsment of creationism by a Kansas school board and the decades of steady, grinding bourder skirmishes. And yet, even as generations of Americans have fought and refought the same battles, the contours of the debate have in recent years shifted dramatically. Tracking the dizzying heights and opportunistic political lows of this controversity, Where Darwin Meets the Bible takes us to the very epecenter of the conflict. Drawing on dozens of interviews and eyewitness accounts, and ranging across the country, from California to New York, from Illinois to Tennessee, Larry Witham travels to America's churches, schools, universities, museums and government agencies to present creationists and evolutionists in thier own unfiltered voices. We meet leading creationists such as Michael Behe and Phillip Johnson; evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins and Ernst Mayr and theistic scientists who descride how they reconcile God and Nature. All the while, Witham like any engagging guide fleshes out his tour with compelling naritive and anecdotes, noting, for instance, that even as Americans hold science in the highest esteem, when asked to choose the most important book in history, they pick the Bible twenty to one over the On the Origins of Species. Today, Biblical literalism is tempered by the intelligent Design movement, which finds eveidence of God's presence in nature's patterns. The once dominant "young earth" school has been replaced by a creationism that invokes mathematics and biochemistry, conscripting the language of science to advance the creationist cause. Evolutionary scientists meanwhile, though perpetually striving for innovation, hesitate to point out gaps in their theories for fear that such self scrutiny will serve as fodder for anti evolution propaganda. In an age marked both by a rising religious tide and daily scientific breakthroughs that increasingly define our lifes, Larry Witham has given us the standard account of this lasting conflict.
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The Appalachian Mountains run an arching course from Maine to Alabama like a parenthesis on the American East. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The Appalachian Mountains run an arching course from Maine to Alabama like a parenthesis on the American East. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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6 reviews
18 of 22 people found the following review helpful
A worthy successor to Numbers
24 Feb 2003
Format:Hardcover
Witham's historical and sociological report on the current status of creationism in the United States mostly takes up where Ronald Numbers' THE CREATIONISTS leaves off. Readers will find much information about the new creationist movement that took off in the 1990s, but will also be exposed to the great diversity of thought within the ranks of the creationists and within those of religious scientists (most of whom are also evolutionists) more generally. There is precious little critical analysis in this book, so those who want answers in the creationism vs. evolution controversy will need to look elsewhere (for instance, to Robert T. Pennock's TOWER OF BABEL and Kenneth R. Miller's FINDING DARWIN'S GOD), but anyone interested in getting a broad overview of the modern interaction (or lack thereof) between evolutionary biology and religion will appreciate Witham's work very much.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A Narration of the Political--Not the Scientific--Debate Over Evolution
10 Nov 2009
Format:Paperback
I was not originally going to review this book. It seemed at first too pro-intelligent design to warrant my consideration. It is pro-intelligent design to be sure, but it is also a serious book and requires serious discussion. Larry A. Witham, a "Washington Times" journalist, does what journalists do best, conduct interviews, in this case more than 200 of them, with scientists, theologians, a few politicians, a lot of pundits, some think tankers, and far too many cranks to chart the course of the public discussions concerning the politics of life's origin and change over time. But I was wrong, this works makes an important contribution, even if I do not agree with its premise.
The book is framed as a debate, although in reality there is no debate worth reporting. There is the evolutionary theory first advanced by Charles Darwin and modified and added to over the years by thousands of scientists. It is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community; there is no serious alternative to this theory that has even been advanced, let alone one that has gained any credence whatsoever among scientists. What exists is a rock solid consensus with evidence from virtually every scientific discipline, and a few crackpots here and there motivated more by their religious conceptions than their analysis of the data.
At the same time there is a debate, as Witham documents in detail, not over the science but in the political sphere as machinations to advance or condemn intelligent design takes place nationwide. At risk is the process of education, as intelligent design's supporters insist on its teaching along with evolution in science classes everywhere. That political debate is very much unsettled, and it is one of the key issues that will define the future. While all of my studies of this subject led me to support the theory of evolution, this is a useful and quite well done statement of this political situation. I applaud the author for presenting it.
The book is framed as a debate, although in reality there is no debate worth reporting. There is the evolutionary theory first advanced by Charles Darwin and modified and added to over the years by thousands of scientists. It is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community; there is no serious alternative to this theory that has even been advanced, let alone one that has gained any credence whatsoever among scientists. What exists is a rock solid consensus with evidence from virtually every scientific discipline, and a few crackpots here and there motivated more by their religious conceptions than their analysis of the data.
At the same time there is a debate, as Witham documents in detail, not over the science but in the political sphere as machinations to advance or condemn intelligent design takes place nationwide. At risk is the process of education, as intelligent design's supporters insist on its teaching along with evolution in science classes everywhere. That political debate is very much unsettled, and it is one of the key issues that will define the future. While all of my studies of this subject led me to support the theory of evolution, this is a useful and quite well done statement of this political situation. I applaud the author for presenting it.
19 of 29 people found the following review helpful
A breakthrough Book
25 Dec 2002
Format:Hardcover
All indications are that the creation-evolution controversy will continue to heat up as time goes on. Now that Ohio science standards encourage science teachers to include information critical of neoDarwinism when covering evolution, a need exits for more information about the controversy. This book could not have come at a better time. It is also an area I have much interest in. My field is evolutionary biology, and I have become more and more aware of new research that has raised major questions about the orthodox interpretation of neoDarwinism. For this reason the creation-evolution issue is of much interest to me and many others. Actually, I have been researching this topic for over 30 years now and, in my judgment, this book is without question one of the most important works about the creation-evolution ever published (even better than Ron Number's book). Most books and articles on this topic show clear emotional hostility toward one side or the other, and repeat the same incorrect misconceptions almost without end. This book is an honest attempt to look at the whole issue from the eyes of each side and it succeeded very well. The author has done his homework (the 200 interviews and 40 pages of notes, for example, show this). I detected not one major error and only a few very minor errors (unusual in a book on this topic). Witham does a great job covering the different competing schools of Darwinism and briefly summarizing their differences. Witham also clearly shows that, in spite of the almost universal pernicious labeling, the views on this controversy do not form a dichotomy, but exist on a continuum. I predict that his book will become the standard text in this area and will be referred to as a breakthrough work in the future.
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