The debate between Darwinism and Creationism usually generates more heat than light because it has evolved into a war between two orthodoxies. Polls regularly find that a large majority of Americans either don’t accept evolution at all or believe in “intelligent design” managed by God. On the other side, Darwinists are concerned that creationists import such immaterial (spiritual or vitalist) influences to explain the evolutionary process—factors which in their view are not only unnecessary but refuted by modern science. According to Richard Dawkins, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” But are both sides able to see only what they expect to see?
While creationism is not easy to square with what science has learned about the physical world, there is also a problem with contemporary neo-Darwinism: it...
