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The Lilliputian Imagination

Life in the Undergrowthby David AtttenboroughPrinceton University Press, 288 pages, $29.95 There’s an ancient human dream to be tiny: to make a hammock from a leaf and sup on nectar, to soar on a falcon’s back. This longing turns up in the folklore of fairies and the wee people, and its guises . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

Natural Law and Metaphysics I was puzzled by many aspects of Phillip E. Johnson’s exposition of the Grisez-Finnis natural law theory in his review of my book In Defense of Natural Law (November 1999). One mistake, however, is so fundamental and important that it cannot be passed over in silence. . . . . Continue Reading »

Untangling Evolution

There’s no denying that historically evolution has been harmful to religious faith. It has contributed to undermining confidence in Scripture and to promoting a naturalistic view of man. In our own age, such atheists as Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and Carl Sagan have . . . . Continue Reading »

Christ and Creation's Longing

In 1971, I published In Defense of People, the first book-length critique of “the ecology movement” that was then in ascendancy and that pretty much shaped the arguments that continue to swirl around the varieties of environmentalism today. There are significant differences between then and . . . . Continue Reading »

Creator or Blind Watchmaker?

As a notorious critic of Darwinism, I enjoy reading a newsletter called Basis, which is published by an organization calling itself the San Francisco Bay Area Skeptics. These self-styled skeptics take a very dim view of anyone who suggests that the Darwinian theory of evolution might be an . . . . Continue Reading »

Naming Good and Evil

Eighty-one years ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote a book entitled What’s Wrong with the World. His answer to that question was that, while there is general agreement as to what is wrong with the world, the real problem is that we cannot agree on what would be right. This absence of public . . . . Continue Reading »

Complex Phenomena

The rules of chaos are simple: A mountain is never a perfect cone. A lake is never really a circle. A drop of dew is not a microcosm. No. Flowers wither. Dust collects. There is the relentless return of what we do not want. Everything inclines to disorder. But then how . . . . Continue Reading »

Instaurations: The New Science of Sunsets

It is harder to see what one seesthan anyone knowsbecause it is easier, far far easierthan on can suppose. That still point of the turning world—look! this light through the petal—where there are no shadowsand where it is never a problem never to have shadows,neither haunted by undaunted . . . . Continue Reading »

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