John Cornwell

And God Created…

Dissent Over Descent: Intelligent Design’s Challenge to Darwinism

By

Icon Books 272pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

These are interesting times, yet again, for creationism versus evolution. Hard on the claim that Sarah Palin once espoused lessons on creationism in Alaska’s state schools came news that Britain’s august Royal Society also advocates the airing of creationism in our classrooms. The Reverend Michael Reiss, biologist and Royal Society director of education, said recently that it was self-defeating not to treat creationism as a world-view in science classes. His reason? That teachers could then explain why evolution is sound scientific theory and creationism is not. Put that way, the proposal doesn’t sound too bad, although it’s arguable that it gives fundamentalist pedagogues a green light to teach Bible stories as biology. And would the Society advocate wasting pupils’ time by teaching astrology alongside astronomy?

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long been agonised over. But what do we know about his victims?… ,
    • A piece of Literary Review history from way back in 1983: John Haffenden talks to the great Iris Murdoch. ,
    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    Follow Us