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Books

The Return of the Design Argument

Taner Edis reviews two books about evolution and design.

The intuition that complex objects must be the result of intelligent design remains a major motivation for thinking that our world was created by a divine intelligence. In scientific circles, however, design has become another unnecessary supernatural hypothesis. Philosophers and theologians have never lost interest in design arguments, but workaday science has ignored their debates as irrelevant to the real task of explaining the world.

Even the emergence of a sophisticated anti-evolutionary movement under the ‘intelligent design’ (ID) banner has not changed many scientists’ attitudes. Intelligent Design has had a negligible effect on mainstream science; it only attracts attention due to the unending creationist attempts to interfere with science education.

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