For the 90th Anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial, Discovery Institute Documents the Intense Scientific Debate over "Darwin's Doubt"

News provided by

Jul 20, 2015, 01:21 ET

SEATTLE, July 20, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- July 21 marks the 90^th anniversary of the famed Scopes "Monkey" Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, a historical landmark that continues to confuse the controversy about evolution. Defenders of Darwinian theory present the conflict between unguided evolution and intelligent design as if it had not advanced one bit since Clarence Darrow jousted with William Jennings Bryan over Biblical literalism before a courthouse crowd in 1925.

The truth is very different. To commemorate the Scopes trial, Discovery Institute Press will publish Debating Darwin's Doubt: The Scientific Controversy That Can No Longer Be Denied, a sequel to Stephen Meyer's 2013 New York Times bestseller, Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design.

The new book documents the intense controversy sparked by Dr. Meyer's book, which argues for intelligent design (ID) from evidence of the great Cambrian explosion, an eruption of biological information in Earth's ancient seas, 530 million years ago. In Debating Darwin's Doubt, top ID scholars respond to Meyer's most challenging critics, from sources ranging from The New Yorker and National Review up to America's most prestigious journal of scientific research, Science.

"The hip new buzzword is 'denial,'" says the book's editor, Discovery Institute senior fellow David Klinghoffer. "Darwin skeptics, intelligent design advocates, proponents of academic freedom for science teachers and researchers -- all these are lumped together as 'science deniers.' The real 'deniers' are Darwinists who insist there is no real scientific debate about life's origins. You could call them 'debate deniers.'"

Among the book's 44 chapters are 10 by Stephen Meyer, who received his PhD in philosophy of science at Cambridge University. Other authors, led by William Dembski, Douglas Axe, Ann Gauger, David Berlinski, Paul Nelson, and Casey Luskin, also take on the critics. Their writing greatly expands the case Meyer argues for in Darwin's Doubt, ranging across subjects like orphan genes, cladistics, the famous "small shelly fossils," protein evolution, the length of the Cambrian explosion, the God-of-the-Gaps objection to ID, and more.

Klinghoffer noted, "We are making progress -- in changing minds, yes, but also in deepening the argument for ID. Debating Darwin's Doubt proves that, unequivocally. As the saying goes, 'The dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on.' Darwinist defenders may not realize it, but we are leaving them behind."

For more information visit: http://www.discoveryinstitutepress.com/book/debating-darwins-doubt/

SOURCE Discovery Institute