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.
I GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 1. The Design Argument 2. The Meaning of Design 3. The Design Inference: Old Wine in New Wineskins 4. God by Design 5. The Argument to God from Fine-tuning Reassessed 6. Perceiving Design II PHYSICAL COSMOLOGY 7. The Apperance of Design in Physics and Cosmology 8. Design and the Anthropic Fine-tuning of the Universe 9. Evidence for Fine-Tuning 10. Probabilities and the Fine-tuning Argument: A Skeptical View III MULTIPLE UNIVERSES 11. Other Universes: A Scientific Perspective 12. Too Many Universes 13. Fine-tuning and Multiple Universes 14. The Chance of the Gaps IV. BIOLOGY 15. The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis: Breaking Rules 16. Answering the Biochemical Argument from Design 17. Modern Biologists and the Argument from Design 18. Paradoxes of Evolution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe? 19. The Compatibility of Darwinism and Design
