Author Neil Thomas on Taking Leave of Darwin
On today’s ID the Future from the archive, meet Taking Leave of Darwin author Neil Thomas, not at all the sort of person one might expect to find waging a campaign against modern evolutionary theory. An erudite and settled Darwinist living comfortably in a thoroughly secular English academic culture, Thomas nevertheless came to reject Darwinian materialism and, as he insists, did so on purely rationalist grounds.
“Waking up in a sort of panic, I felt that something must have caused life to emerge and to develop on earth independently of this kind of magical automatism postulated by Darwinism,” says Thomas. He was unconvinced by the arguments from Charles Darwin and his modern contemporaries, including Stephen Hawking, Peter Atkins, Christian de Duve, and Lawrence Krauss. Undertaking his own investigation as a thoughtful and honest broker, Thomas sought to properly evaluate Darwin’s claims and ultimately found them lacking. Listen in to learn about his journey and about his book.
This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Look for Part 2 next Friday.
Dig Deeper
- Get a copy of Thomas’s book, published by Discovery Institute Press: Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design.