Ideas: Intelligent Defense

[ Sun. May. 28. 2006 ]

The intelligent-design movement suffered a political setback last December when a federal judge ordered a Pennsylvania school district to stop talking about it in high school, but it lives on as an idea, to the bemusement and occasional frustration of most serious scientists. Sixteen of them, including Dennett, contributed essays in defense of evolution to a small anthology called "Intelligent Thought," published last week. It was compiled by John Brockman, better known as the editor of the Web site edge.org, the thinking man's Drudge Report. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins deconstructs the claim by ID proponents that the "designer" could be an intelligent alien rather than God, and psychologist Steven Pinker shows how moral sensibility can arise by way of natural selection. "Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists," Dennett concludes, "but Intelligent Design hasn't yet tried to explain anything at all."

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