Moral Darwinism - by Benjamin Wiker (Paperback)

About the Book

Ben Wiker traces the story that explains our present perplexing moral culture, showing how it was Darwinism that provided the ancient teaching of Epicurus with the seemingly modern and scientific basis that captured twentieth-century minds.

Book Synopsis

Ben Wiker traces the story that explains our present perplexing moral culture, showing how it was Darwinism that provided the ancient teaching of Epicurus with the seemingly modern and scientific basis that captured twentieth-century minds.

Review Quotes

"Ben Wiker's book is profound, practical and provocative. It reveals some of the most important and disturbing--yet neglected--truths about the ancient philosophical roots of what is usually presented as 'modern science.' Wiker shows how much of Darwinism is not only anti-religious but unscientific. This is a very important book."

"Benjamin Wiker masterfully traces the ancient roots of the conflictbetween belief in the intelligent design of the universe and atheistic materialism. This wonderfully written book is a must-read for understanding our modern culture wars."

"Darwinian evolution pretends to be modern empirical science, but it is merely the latest manifestation of an ancient materialistic philosophy. In this fascinating book, Benjamin Wiker exposes the true nature of Darwinism and its profoundly poisonous consequences for morality. If you thought that the present controversy over evolution and intelligent design was a localized dispute about science education, think again. At stake is nothing less than the future of our civilization."

"I have written several books about the foundations of evolution, but I learned much from this superb volume, particularly about the enduring importance of Epicurus and his philosophy."

"In this excellent book, Ben Wiker shows decisively that America's moral decline is a product of the Darwinian worldview which, in turn, is a revival of ancient materialist philosophy. The book traces key aspects of today's "culture war" back to the dawn of Western thought, giving a clear-sighted guide to how history shapes the present battle."

"It was once taken as a matter of course that ideas once argued and reargued in Greek philosophy kept recurring in different ways in subsequent philosophical systems and eras. Classical materialism was not as unrelated to modern materialism as one might suspect. Marx studied Epicurus. Benjamin Wiker here traces this history of scientific and moral materialism. What is unique about his book is that he sees this materialism in scientists who often did not see what their own terms implied. As Chesterton said, 'We must either not argue with a man at all, or argue with him on his terms.' This is what Wiker does with the not totally surprising result that science more and more tends itself to suggest that its own materialism is not as well founded as at first sight seemed to be the case. Even Christians are surprised by this turn of events or better facts. Intrinsic designs and a cosmos appearing suddenly from evidently nothing keep the materialist philosophers wondering. Wiker's subtitle, How We All Became Hedonists, hints at something Aristotle already knew?that hedonism explains neither itself nor the evolution of the world and what it means to understand it."

"Several authors have attempted to get at the roots of the current culture war. James Davison Hunter has traced its sociological roots. Robert Bork has traced its political roots. Phillip Johnson has traced its Darwinian roots. But none of them has traced the historical roots of the culture war back to its metaphysical foundation. Ben Wiker does that brilliantly in the present book. . . . If you really want to understand why our culture is in its current state, you must read this book."

"The core components of a worldview hang together in intricate and important ways. More particularly, the ethical vision of a worldview is usually grounded in the worldview's depiction of reality, especially of human persons and of how we got here. This is one reason why, given the current moral crisis, it is ill advised to attempt to combine a materialist anthropology and a Darwinist creation myth with a Christian worldview. Benjamin Wiker's timely book does a masterful job of providing a readable historical sketch of the interrelationships among these ideas and thereby provides a warning to those Christians who seek a facile compromise with a materialist view of human persons and a Darwinist understanding of origins."

About the Author

Benjamin Wiker (Ph.D., Vanderbilt), is a full-time writer and senior fellow of Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington. His work has appeared in such publications as First Things, National Catholic Register, Crisis, Catholic World Report and the New Oxford Review. Books he has written include Moral Darwinism and Architects of the Culture of Death.

William Dembski (Ph.D., mathematics, University of Chicago; Ph.D., philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago) is senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.He has previously taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University, and he has been a National Science Foundation doctoral and postdoctoral fellow. Dembski has written numerous scholarly articles and is the author of the critically acclaimed The Design Inference (Cambridge), Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press) and No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Rowman and Littlefield).