Guest Author - Diana Pederson

Does your local school’s biology program teach just Darwin’s theory of evolution or has it risked public controversy by also teaching “Intelligent Design”, a theory that Bible believing people suspect may be more accurate than evolution? If your schools do teach other theories, then you will be very interested in Thomas Woodward’s book, Doubts about Darwin.

Woodward begins his book with a discussion of the August 11, 1999 Kansas Board of Education’s decision to deemphasize macroevolution (another term for evolution) that emphasizes major changes over a short period of time. He traces all the public debate that surrounded this decision including the stands the various political candidates for public office took on the issue.

Next, he takes us back to the 1959 centennial celebration of the 100th anniversary of Darwin’s infamous book, The Origin of Species. It is amazing to think that by 1966 serious doubts were arising in the scientific community about the accuracy of the existing theory of evolution.

By 1965 Murray Eden, a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, along with the French mathematician Marcel Schutzenberger and others had begun to model natural section of random mutations using probability theory. After numerous attempts to model the Darwinian mechanism, Eden’s group was struck with their consistently negative results. Staying in close communication, the experimented with new algorithms and grew increasingly skeptical of the mutation-selection mechanism. Finally, their skepticism became known to evolutionary biologists and within a matter of months a meeting was organized that attracted several well-known Darwinian scientists to discuss the problem with Eden’s group. [Page 37]

It appears that this meeting was the first time scientists began discussing their doubts about how Darwinian evolution worked and whether it was grounded in true science. The remainder of this book discusses additional meetings, and the findings of scientists who doubted evolution’s truth.

Recommendation

Evolution has been controversial among God-fearing people since it first emerged as the explanation for how the various plants and animals came into existence. This book will educate you about the movement that eventually became known as “Intelligent Design”.

Biology teachers should read this book and THINK about what it is saying. There are still questions about Darwin’s theory that cause thinking people to somehow doubt its truth. One of the biggest problems in the academic debate of evolution versus creationism is that the evolutionists believe only the creationists are prejudiced due to their religious faith. They refuse to admit that they have their own prejudices too. No doubt, this debate will continue until Christ returns and every person in this world, believer or not, has to bow their knee and confess that Jesus is Lord.

When I get to heaven, I hope God blesses us by showing us how he did indeed create the world and all that inhabits it. However, I suspect we won’t really care once we see heaven itself!

Thomas Woodward. Doubts about Darwin, BakerBooks, 2003.