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Michael Ruse The Evolution-Creation Struggle, Harvard University Press, hardback 2005, paperback 2006.
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Michael Ruse (2005) The Evolution-Creation Struggle.
a review by Gert Korthof 3 Jul 2005
"Why do so many people continue to find evolutionary thinking offensive and threatening?
Why is it that we have today two violently opposing camps?"
How can a theory that seems to one group of people so well confirmed be so unacceptable to another group of people?
This is not history just for history's sake. It has a purpose: to show where we are today and why."
"In fact, so strong is my conviction that the evolutionists are right and the creationists are wrong about the origins
of life's diversity that I am going to take that as given in this discussion."
However, "at the most basic level, the clash between evolutionists and creationists is a clash between two rival metaphysical
world pictures."
Ruse makes an important distinction between evolution and evolutionism.
Evolution is a scientific theory for professional scientists. Evolutionism is a 'secular religion' aimed at the public.
Ruse defines 'religion' as a world picture, providing origins, a place for humans, a guide to action, and a meaning to life (p.122).
Evolutionism offered its own world picture, its own story of origins and a special place for humans in the scheme of things (p.122).
In that sense creationism and evolutionism are competitors for the best worldview. The worldpicture is metaphysical because it defines what is real
and unreal. In Evolutionism only nature is real and the supernatural is unreal; in Creationism the supernatural is real.
Ruse: "I do not see creationism vanishing any time soon".
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Reviews
See this page for the latest books of Michael Ruse.
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