Nancy Pearcey on the Politics of Darwinism, Then and Now

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Science, Philosophy, Astronomy, Society & Culture, Life Sciences

4 • 993 Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

On this ID the Future from the vault, Nancy Pearcey, professor and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University, tells some of the political history of Darwinism, and explains how the same troubling issues persist today. Darwin was one of the first to say, if it isn’t purely naturalistic, it isn’t science. Others, then and now, have suggested that we can keep Darwinian evolution and just trust that God is at work behind the scenes. Pearcey, co-author of The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, says that the problem with this tactic of wedding Darwinism and theism is that ultimately it turns one’s understanding of God into something that is largely private and subjective.

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0:00.0	Welcome to ID the Future, a podcast about intelligent design and evolution. Hello everyone, thanks for tuning in today.
0:16.0	I'm Andrew McDermott.
0:17.0	On this episode, my guest is Nancy Percy,
0:20.0	professor and scholar and residence at Houston Baptist University and a fellow of the Discovery Institute.
0:26.0	She is author of books such as Total Truth, Saving Leonardo, and Love Thy Body Body.
0:31.0	Over a series of four episodes, I'm speaking with Nancy about a chapter she wrote for a book
0:36.5	called Mere Creation, Science, Faith, and Intelligence Design that was recently highlighted
0:41.3	in four parts on a blog called More Than Cake.
0:44.7	The piece is called You Guys Lost, is design a closed issue.
0:48.7	Although many hold that Darwin conquered the design argument over 150 years ago, Nancy shows that there's good reasons to take
0:55.5	another look at that and see if it really was one fair and square.
0:59.5	Well, welcome back to the program, Nancy.
1:01.6	Thanks for having me. A quick review again for listeners who haven't heard the first three
1:06.1	episodes yet. In part one you showed us why Darwin became the focal point of debate in the 19th century.
1:14.9	In part two you told us who Darwin's chief supporters were in the early days of his theory and then in the third section you
1:19.2	showed us how Darwin and his allies attempted to sideline the design argument in order to
1:24.2	discredit it. Well today you'll tell us a bit about the political savvy behind the
1:28.6	success of Darwin and his cohorts showing the battle is not just about ideas, but about institutions and power.
1:35.0	Well, let's start out with how did the new naturalistic epistemology, the background, the explanation of the origin of life and the development of life, promoted by Darwin and his supporters, differ from the traditional dominant view of nature and life.
1:50.0	Right, that's a good question. Up until now, since the start of the scientific revolution, it was very common for scientists to be theist, to be Christians, and they thought structure and that in covering the laws of nature we were thinking God's thoughts after him as Kepwe put it and so
2:19.7	Darwin was off offering something truly new when he said, no, science can no longer involve a creator or a mind or an intelligence or design.
2:29.0	It must be purely naturalistic or it's not really science. That's the epistemology. He was saying it doesn't
	...

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