Michael J. Behe

Back in the 1970s, when my wife Celeste was in the seventh grade at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the Bronx, her teacher, a Holy Cross Brother, tried to start one science class with a bang. Brandishing a textbook picture of nearly identical-looking embryos of different kinds of vertebrates—fish, . . . . Continue Reading »

Who Rules in Science? is a marvelous book that ranges from the most basic questions to the most contentious: the author considers not only how we should use reason to estimate truth but also how we should apply reason to public policy. His unhelpful handling of the second topic does not at all . . . . Continue Reading »

One should hesitate to review a book that threatens pulling a muscle just by lifting it. Apart from the danger to one’s health, it likely will turn out to have been written by: 1) the unabomber or some other crank; 2) a fellow who unwisely declined the services of an editor; or 3) a genius who . . . . Continue Reading »

One sign of the intellectual confusion among conservatives these days is that they cannot decide what to think about Charles Darwin. Some conservatives (such as Charles Murray and James Q. Wilson) appeal to Darwinian biology as showing how moral order is rooted in human nature. But others (such as . . . . Continue Reading »

The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life.By Paul Davies.Simon & Schuster.  400 pp. $25.Paul Davies should need little introduction to readers of First Things. A theoretical physicist and prolific author, he won the 1995 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. As the . . . . Continue Reading »