Intelligent Design in Wired

The latest copy of Wired magazine has a fairly good discussion of Intelligent Design, which Wired (on the cover of its paper version, at least) calls "Creationism 2.0." Cute.

If you can get past the sensational cover art ("THE PLOT TO KILL EVOLUTION" in blood-red letters, complete with telescopic crosshairs aimed at the head of an evolving man) the actual discussion of the political aspect of intelligent design was quite good. I wish the author had beefed up the scientific part of the discussion, but still, not bad at all. There's even a sidebar by George Gilder that explains why he subscribes to intelligent design.

It's a good read. The intelligent design argument, if you are not familiar with it, basically says there are certain vital aspects of life that are "irreducably complex," meaning that they are complicated and cannot be made simpler, which means they could not have started simpler and become more complex by evolution. There needs to have been some designer at work.

For more on the topic, I'd recommend Darwin's Black Box by Lehigh University's Michael Behe; Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, Darwin on Trial, by Phillip Johnson and Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by Michael Denton. For a more specifically Christian view, The Fingerprint of God, by Hugh Ross, is excellent. And of course, it's always fun to go back and read Darwin's Origin of Species to see the other side of the argument. Here's a review I wrote of it.

UPDATE: My friend Chris also recommends God the Evidence : The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World by Patrick Glynn.