ABSTRACT

Recent discoveries in physics, cosmology, and biochemistry have captured the public imagination and made the Design Argument - the theory that God created the world according to a specific plan - the object of renewed scientific and philosophical interest. This accessible but serious introduction to the design problem brings together new perspectives from prominent scientists and philosophers including Paul Davies, Richard Swinburne, Sir Martin Rees, Michael Behe, Elliot Sober and Peter van Inwagen.
It probes the relationship between modern science and religious belief, considering their points of conflict and their many points of similarity. Is the real God of creationism the 'master clockmaker' who sets the world's mechanism on a perfectly enduring course, or a miraculous presence who continually intervenes in and alters the world we know? Are science and faith, or evolution and creation, really in conflict at all? Expanding the parameters of a lively and urgent debate, God and Design considers how perennial questions of origin continue to fascinate and disturb us.

chapter |23 pages

Introduction

part 1|122 pages

General Considerations

chapter 1|29 pages

The Design Argument

chapter 2|11 pages

The Meaning of Design

chapter 3|23 pages

The Design Inference

Old Wine in New Wineskins

chapter 4|18 pages

God by Design?

chapter 6|21 pages

Perceiving Design

part 2|63 pages

Physical Cosmology

part 3|66 pages

Multiple Universes

chapter 12|8 pages

Too Many Universes 1

chapter 13|22 pages

Fine-Tuning and Multiple Universes

chapter 14|24 pages

The Chance of the Gaps

part 4|88 pages

Biology

chapter 15|15 pages

The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis

Breaking Rules 1

chapter 18|19 pages

The Paradoxes of Evolution

Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe?