News Media
The Berlinski Interview in Dallas Morning News
On Sunday, September 4, 2005, the print edition of the Dallas Morning News featured a prominent interview with the inimitable Dr. David Berlinski (who has a brand new book out by the way), noted science writer and CSC Senior Fellow. (For some odd reason, the interview was not posted to the online edition of the newspaper.)
In the interview, Berlinski said that while he is is not a supporter of intelligent design theory, his “inclinations toward members of the design movement are nonetheless what the French call chaleureux. I wish them well. They are clearly on to something. I agree with their criticism of Darwin’s theories.”
In answer to a question about why “many scientists strongly oppose intelligent design,” Berlinski wittily responded:
For scientists forever banging their crutches against the trough of public funding, any form of criticism represents an alarming turn of events, the more so when it affects their traditional claims to speak with authority on matters of culture, faith and morals. They are right to be alarmed. A great many people have come to regard Darwinism as tedious, illiterate, uninformed and tendentious. Darwin’s theories seem destined to disappear by negative selection, an interesting but rare example of a Darwinian process reaching a sound conclusion.
Finally, asked to consider “if intelligent design is true, who do you, an irreligious man, suspect is the designer,” Berlinski replied:
I have no idea and no suspicions. God alone knows where God is. As a Jew, I have no interest in the identity of the designer, and as a skeptic, I have not been persuaded of his existence. What is interesting is the fact that biological structures and human artifacts share a number of remarkable properties and that these are properties never seen in the physical world. The modern cell is a system in which two immensely complicated sequences (the nucleotides in DNA and the amino acids in proteins) are brought into alignment by a code. There is nothing like this anywhere in the physical universe. Surely, thoughtful people are entitled to comment on this and to wonder.
[Source: “Point of Contact” column, Dallas Morning News, September 4, 2005]