Michael Denton is a biologist (IIRC) who, back in 1985 published a highly-touted (by creationists) anti-evolutionay screed entitled
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Adler and Adler, MD). What the creationists refuse consistently to admit is that he wrote a completely 'nother book in 1998 which utterly refuted his own work:
Nature's Destiny (Free Press, NY). Here is my favorite quote from the introduction to
Destiny:
quote:
It is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies." (Nature's Destiny, page xvii-xviii).
In other words, Denton has gone from "anti-evolutionist" to "evolution based on fine-tuned universe".
Destiny is a rather interesting (albeit not all that well-written) expose of a sort of deist, fine-tuned-universe view of evolution. Basically, he's been corrupted by the evidence, and is now something of a very weak IDist - but not a Grand Designer of Biological Novelty like Behe IDist. Rather, the very weakest version of "designed the physical laws of the universe and got everything started" kind of IDist.
I always find it fascinating that creationists continue to cite Denton's earlier work, when the man himself has repudiated it. I guess whatever sells. So much for this particular "argument from authority".
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