Of Pandas and People
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| Author |
Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon (1st & 2nd Ed) William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells (3rd Ed, under the title The Design of Life) |
|---|---|
| Published | 1989 (Foundation for Thought and Ethics) |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 170 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 27973099 |
| 576.8 21 | |
| LC Class | QH367.3 .D38 1993 |
Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins is a controversial 1989 (2nd edition 1993) school-level textbook written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon and published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). Its authors espouse the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design—namely that life shows evidence of being designed by an intelligent agent which is not named specifically in the book, although proponents understand that it refers to the Christian God. They present various polemical arguments against the scientific theory of evolution.
A third edition of the book was published in 2007 under the title The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems.
The book argues that the origin of new organisms is "in an immaterial cause: in a blueprint, a plan, a pattern, devised by an intelligent agent". The text remains non-committal on the age of the Earth, commenting that some "take the view that the earth's history can be compressed into a framework of thousands of years, while others adhere to the standard old earth chronology". The book raises a number of objections to the theory of evolution, such as the alleged lack of transitional fossils, gaps in the fossil record and the apparent sudden appearance ex nihilo of "already intact fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc". The book makes no explicit reference to the identity of the intelligent designer implied in the "blueprint" metaphor.
Kevin Padian, a biologist at University of California, Berkeley reviewed the book and called it "a wholesale distortion of modern biology".Michael Ruse, a professor of philosophy and biology, reviewed it, calling the book "worthless and dishonest". Gerald Skoog, Professor of Education at Texas Tech University, wrote in his 1989 review that the book reflected a creationist strategy to focus their "attack on evolution", interpreting the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling as though it legitimised "teaching a variety of scientific theories", but the book did not contain a scientific theory or model to "balance" against evolution, and was "being used as a vehicle to advance sectarian tenets and not to improve science education".
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