Synopses & Reviews
Recent discoveries in physics, cosmology, and biochemistry have captured the public imagination and made the Design Argument - the theory that God created the world according to a specific plan - the object of renewed scientific and philosophical interest. This accessible but serious introduction to the design problem brings together new perspectives from prominent scientists and philosophers including Paul Davies, Richard Swinburne, Sir Martin Rees, Michael Behe, Elliot Sober and Peter van Inwagen.
It probes the relationship between modern science and religious belief, considering their points of conflict and their many points of similarity. Is the real God of creationism the 'master clockmaker' who sets the world's mechanism on a perfectly enduring course, or a miraculous presence who continually intervenes in and alters the world we know? Are science and faith, or evolution and creation, really in conflict at all? Expanding the parameters of a lively and urgent debate, God and Design considers how perennial questions of origin continue to fascinate and disturb us.
Table of Contents
The design argument / Elliott Sober -- The meaning of design / John Leslie -- The design inference : old wine in new wineskins / Robert O'Connor -- God by design? / Jan Narveson -- The argument to God from fine-tuning reassessed / Richard Swinburne -- Perceiving design / Del Ratzsch -- The appearance of design in physics and cosmology / Paul Davies -- Design and the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe / William Lane Craig -- Evidence for fine-tuning / Robin Collins -- Probabilities and the fine-tuning argument : a skeptical view / Timothy McGrew, Lydia McGrew, and Eric Vestrup -- Other universes : a scientific perspective / Martin Rees -- Too many universes / D.H. Mellor -- Fine-tuning and multiple universes / Roger White -- The chance of the gaps / William Dembski -- The modern intelligent design hypothesis : breaking rules / Michael Behe -- Answering the biochemical argument from design / Kenneth R. Miller -- Modern biologists and the argument from design / Michael Ruse -- The paradoxes of evolution : inevitable humans in a lonely universe? / Simon Conway Morris -- The compatibility of Darwinism and design / Peter van Inwagen.