ID the Future Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast
Episodes
Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Nature’s Prophet Author Michael Flannery Reviews the Reviewers

Episode
1281
Guest
Michael Flannery
Duration
00:16:11
Download
Audio File (11.1 mb)
Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

On this episode of ID the Future, Michael Flannery speaks again with host Mike Keas about his book Nature’s Prophet: Alfred Russel Wallace, and His Evolution from Natural Selection to Natural Theology. Wallace was the co-discoverer of the theory of evolution by natural selection along with Charles Darwin, but in 1869 he broke with Darwin, disagreeing with him on the origin of special human attributes like art, music, and abstract thought.

Seeing how distinctive humans are from other animals, and after determining that the mechanism of random variation and natural selection was inadequate to explain the origin of those distinctive qualities, Wallace concluded that the origin of our species required a special ruling intelligence to explain our appearance. He dissented from his day’s version of reductionist scientism, and in his 1910 book The World of Life, he put forth a natural theology compatible with Christianity, though he himself was not a Christian. Flannery also discusses two reviews of Nature’s Prophet, one from a Harvard scientist who, according to Flannery, misunderstands Wallace, Christian theology, and the point of the book.

Michael Flannery

Fellow, Center for Science and Culture
Michael A. Flannery is professor emeritus of UAB Libraries, University of Alabama at Birmingham. He holds degrees in library science from the University of Kentucky and history from California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has written and taught extensively on the history of medicine and science. His most recent research interest has been on the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). He has edited Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution: How Wallace’s World of Life Challenged Darwinism (Erasmus Press, 2008) and authored Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life (Discovery Institute Press, 2011). His research and work on Wallace continues.
Tags
Alfred Russell Wallace
August Comte
Christianity
Don Magens Mello
natural history
Natural Selection
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
reductionism
Scientism
Summa Theologica
teleology
Thomas Aquinas