Taking leave of Darwin

I’ve been reading Neil Thomas’ book, ‘Taking leave of Darwin’. This may not be your cup of tea, but you may know others who are open to discussion but for whom Darwin and the so called and false science- religion divide is a problem. Thomas is a Professor at Durham University and one-time agnostic and member of the British Rationalist society. He undertook a lengthy study of all the literature relevant to Darwin’s theory and was amazed to discover that:

  1. Darwin had copied or was influenced by a small number but noisy philosophers going back to the Greeks, but

  2. There has been a huge number of academic arguments put by scholars of all kinds opposing the origin of life and between species side of Darwin’s speculations and that this opposition has grown exponentially over the last 50 years.

It’s not a long book and well written and very useful as a book to help those stumbling over the ideological sermons of the likes of Dawkins. In doing his research Thomas was forced to concede that the universe being designed makes much more sense in every way. I hope his book starts to make headway in the tertiary and secondary education areas. I’ve even suggested that Philip Adams should interview the man.