Copyright (c) 1999 First Things 96 (October 1999): 25-31. For two hundred years materialist philosophers have argued that man is some sort of machine. The claim began with French materialists of the Enlightenment such as Pierre Cabanis, Julien La Mettrie, and Baron d’Holbach (La Mettrie even wrote . . . . Continue Reading »
In a retrospective essay on Carl Sagan in the January 9, 1997 New York Review of Books, Harvard Genetics Professor Richard Lewontin tells how he first met Sagan at a public debate in Arkansas in 1964. The two young scientists had been coaxed by senior colleagues to go to Little Rock to debate the . . . . Continue Reading »
As a notorious critic of Darwinism, I enjoy reading a newsletter called Basis, which is published by an organization calling itself the San Francisco Bay Area Skeptics. These self-styled skeptics take a very dim view of anyone who suggests that the Darwinian theory of evolution might be an . . . . Continue Reading »