Darwinism Under the Microscope

by James Gills and Tom Woodward,
Charisma House Publishing, ISBN 0-88419-925-8,
2002, 236 pages, $13.99 paperback

When you first look at this book without reading it, you immediately become suspicious about its credibility and usefulness. The authors are an ophthalmologist and a communications major who teach at Trinity College in Florida. The opening endorsement is by D. James Kennedy who is associated with extreme fundamentalism and has promoted some rather bad books in the past. Once you actually start reading the book, however, you find it has some very good material by some very good authors, because it turns out that Gills and Woodward have collected some very good essays by Charles Thaxton, Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe and William Dembinski--all of whom have had books that we have reviewed in this journal in the past.

This is a book that is anti-Darwinism, but it fools you in its approach. The first chapter is a hypothetical argument between a pro-Darwinist and an anti-Darwinist in a coffee shop. The material is mostly from Jonathan Well's book Icons of Evolution that we have reviewed in this journal. It debunks evolutionary claims about the pepper moths and the like, and shows that fraud has been involved in some claims. Challenges of evolutionists are answered and the approach is shallow but generally well handled.

After that beginning, the book contains a series of interesting essays by people with strong academic backgrounds, all attacking evolution. Mart Hartwig, a psychologist and leader in ARN (a creationist think tank) does a general review of evolution and the Intelligent Design movement. Gills does a chapter on the design of the cell as an argument against Darwinism. Thaxton presents a discussion of DNA and the origin of life. Phillip Johnson does a chapter on the philosophy of naturalism, similar to his book Darwinism on Trial, which we have reviewed. Woodward does an exposš of fossil claims by evolutionists.

The second section of the book presents the Intelligent Design argument, with chapters by Behe and Dembinski with discussions by the authors. There are also excellent discussions of the design of the eye and of the yeast genome to back up the design argument. This is a college level book that contains a wealth of material. It is well written and very different from most of the materials you see written opposing Darwinism. We recommend it to any high school or college student and to those interested in the evolution/creation question.

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