NEW YORK (BP)–Intelligent design is hitting the front pages of Sunday newspapers.
At least of The New York Times on April 8 and The Los Angeles Times on March 25.
Among those quoted in both articles about the emerging alternative to Darwinism: William Dembski, the Baylor University professor who has faced off against pro-evolution faculty members at the Baptist-related Texas school.
Dembski along with Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe are “regarded as the intellectual fathers” of the intelligent design movement, according to The New York Times article.
Dembski, whose credits include a doctorate in math from the University of Chicago, is the author and coauthor of numerous books, including the 1999 InterVarsity release, “Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology.”
Johnson, a professor emeritus of law at the University of California at Berkely, is the author of “Darwin on Trial,” described by The New York Times as the “manifesto” of the intelligent design movement.
Behe, author of “Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution,” is a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
The Los Angeles Times story noted that the intelligent design movement is led by “a new breed of mostly Christian scholars” who, as the newspaper put it, are redefining “the old evolution-versus-creationism debate … with more intellectual firepower, mainstream appeal and academic respectability.”
The New York Times story quoted a leading critic of intelligent design, Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, as acknowledging, “The most striking thing about the intelligent design folks is their potential to really make anti-evolutionism intellectually respectable.”
Both articles can be seen at the respective papers’ Internet sites, nytimes.com and latimes.com, by entering a search for intelligent design.
A key source of ongoing information about the intelligent design movement, meanwhile, is the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, on the Internet at www.discovery.org.
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