Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to ID the Future, a podcast about intelligent design and evolution.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome. I'm Robert Crowther at the center for Science and Culture, and on this program I'm interviewing CSC senior fellow molecular biologist and author, Dr. Jonathan Wells. Dr. Wells is probably best known for his unveiling of some of the most common and most unsupported so called proofs of Darwinian evolution in his book, Icons of evolution.
Now Dr. Wells has a brand new book that will be out on August 25, the politically incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, published by Regnery Publications. The series of politically incorrect guides has been wildly popular for Regnery with previous titles such as the Politically Incorrect Guide to Science by Tom Bethel and the Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Thomas E. Woods Jr. So it's no surprise that they wanted to continue that by tapping into one of the hottest, most controversial topics today, which is the battle between Darwinism and design.
And there's no one more qualified to tackle the subject than Dr. Wells, who has not one, but two PhDs, one in molecular and cell biology from the University of California at Berkeley and one in religious studies from Yale University.
And he's been published in such journals as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA Biosystems, the scientist, and the American biology teacher. Dr. Wells, thank you for being with us today.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Rob, I was excited to hear that you were doing this book following Icons of Evolution. And I kind of wondered, what was the motivation for this particular book, the Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design?
[00:02:03] Speaker C: Well, of course, I've been interested in the topic for many years. In fact, my Yale PhD dealt with the 19th century Darwinian controversies.
And then when I was at Berkeley, I studied evolutionary developmental biology or evo devo.
So I have a long standing interest in it. But the reason for this particular book is that I see a lot of confusion in the public mind about this topic. And one of my purposes in writing the book was to clear up some of that confusion.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Good. Can you tell me a little bit about that confusion and what. What's politically incorrect about it?
[00:02:42] Speaker C: Sure. The first thing that's confusing is the terminology that's used.
For example, evolution is not the problem. Evolution can mean lots of things, such as change over time.
Now, no sane person rejects change over time. A separate topic actually is Darwinism. That's why this book is called the Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design rather than Evolution and Intelligent Design. Darwinism is specifically the theory that all living things are modified descendants of A common ancestor, and that they have been modified by natural selection, acting on random mutations such that all appearances of design in living things are an illusion. That is Darwinism, and that is the source of the controversy here.
Another word that gets confused is creation. That can also have many meanings, Although in the present controversy, it usually means biblical creationism.
That is a literal interpretation of the chronology of genesis. That is not intelligent design.
Intelligent design is merely the theory that design living things may be real and that we can tell from the evidence whether certain features are designed or not. That is intelligent design.
But it flies in the face of darwinism. So we have a conflict, and your
[00:04:13] Speaker B: book addresses the conflict and some of the players in the conflict, Is that right?
[00:04:17] Speaker C: That's correct. I name names, as they say. And what's politically incorrect about it is this.
An idea is politically incorrect if we hold it not because it's true or because it's moral, but because of peer pressure.
That's what makes an idea politically correct.
Darwinism is definitely politically correct, as anyone who works in a university environment in north america can testify.
Senior italian geneticist and longtime critic of darwinism, Giuseppe cermanti, has called darwinism the politically correct of science.
Since my book exposes the weaknesses and the evidence for darwinism, it is definitely politically incorrect.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: You talk about the weaknesses in the theory, and I know you address that in the book, and I know you also address some of the politically correct and or incorrect statements, but by darwinists themselves about the theory. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the outrageous comments that you came across?
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Well, I think almost every chapter in my book has at least one.
A set of one category I call darwin speak.
And by that I mean a tendency among darwinists to redefine words that. That they themselves have used so that they make it seem as though those words came from creationists. One example is darwinism itself.
Harvard professor Edward wilson said last year that darwinism was a creation, a fabrication by creationists to make darwinists look bad.
But in fact, the word goes all the way back to darwin himself.
And I show that in the book. That's just one example.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot more examples in there. And I know that there's a lot of things that you probably enjoyed about writing the book. What was your favorite part about writing this particular book?
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Well, my favorite part was the humor. The fact is that although this is a serious controversy in the sense that people are losing their jobs over it if they dare to criticize darwinism, there's a lot of humor in it, too.
For example, when the Smithsonian Institution was going to show a film about cosmological design, noted atheist James Randi offered to bribe them with $20,000 to stop them from showing the film. And Discovery Institute fellow now living in Paris, David Berlinski, sort of tongue in cheek, wrote to Randy and said, well, hey, for $20,000, I won't show it in Paris either.
But there's a lot of things like that, humorous moments in the controversy, and I try to deal with those in each chapter.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Good. It sounds like it's going to be a really good book, and I know that the series has been popular and your last book was popular, so I'm expecting that people will really enjoy the Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. I want to thank Dr. Wells for being with us today. I know that people will love the fact that you've taken some of the complex issues and made them easy to understand in the book and relevant to today's debate. And if they want to find out more about that, about the book specifically, and even some additional information that's not in the book, they can do so at the Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design website that we're going to be putting up, which is www.darwinismandid.com. that's darwinismandid.com.
i'm Robert Crowther for IDTF at the CSC in Seattle. Thanks for listening.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Music on ID the Future comes courtesy of composer Yuri Mamchor. Visit www.yuriproductions.com and check out his latest CD, in the Harbor. This program was recorded by Discovery Institute's Cent Science and Culture. Discovered president is Bruce Chapman. ID the Future managing editor is Robert Crowther and the producer is Keith Bennett. ID the Future and ID Science in the News is Copyright Discovery Institute 2006. For more information, visit www.discovery.org or www.idthefuture.com.
