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Noted: The education of Antony Flew.

By RICK LEWIS [Philosophy Now] – [Antony] Flew sometimes wrote us book reviews, and later the same year, he sent a short review of a book he had been reading called Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, by Michael Behe, a biochemist and advocate of Intelligent Design who argued that some features of living organisms (eyes, for example) are so complex in a special way – ‘irreducibly complex’, he calls it – that they could not possibly have evolved in accordance with Darwinian theory. Behe’s implication was that therefore they must have had a designer. In a very positive review, Flew remarked that although he was not a biologist, he found Behe’s argument “inescapably compelling”. I was dimly aware that Flew calling an argument for Intelligent Design ‘inescapably compelling’ might be something of a scoop. However, rather than phoning the New York Times and the BBC, instead at Flew’s suggestion I emailed Richard Dawkins, suggesting that he might like to write a response to Behe in our following issue. Dawkins emailed back immediately, asking to be put in touch with Flew, to persuade him not to publish his review without hearing some opposing views of Behe’s ideas first. Flew, who greatly admired Dawkins, at once agreed to put the review on ice while he read some criticisms of Behe’s claims by evolutionary scientists. The review never made it into print.

Continued at Philosophy Now | More Chronicle & Notices.

This Fortnightly Review article is filed under the following rubrics: Chronicle & Notices.
Publication: Sunday, 27 June 2010, at 23:51.
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