A friend writes to note, “Evolution and its rivals” – a special issue of the philosophy journal Synthese focused on the creationism/evolution controversy – was just published.
Fortuitously, as part of a special promotion on the part of the journal’s publisher, access to Synthese is free until 31 December 2010. When you get there, you will find the following bias-free introduction to the intelligent design controversy:
Coedited by Glenn Branch and James H. Fetzer, “Evolution and its rivals” [Synthese 178(2)] contains Glenn Branch’s introduction; Robert T. Pennock’s “Can’t philosophers tell the difference between science and religion?: Demarcation revisited”; John S. Wilkins’s “Are creationists rational?”; Kelly C. Smith’s “Foiling the Black Knight”; Wesley Elsberry and Jeffrey Shallit’s “Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s ‘complex specified information'”; Bruce H. Weber’s “Design and its discontents”; Sahotra Sarkar’s “The science question in intelligent design”; Niall Shanks and Keith Green’s “Intelligent design in theological perspective”; Barbara Forrest’s “The non-epistemology of intelligent design: Its implications for public policy”; and James H. Fetzer’s “Evolution and atheism: Has Griffin reconciled science and religion?”
Some of these people seem to actually make a living out of opposing design in nature. I sometimes wonder who they think they’re kidding – but come to think of it, if you can make a living out of that, it doesn’t matter, does it?