I found this book to be the most concise, intelligent and straightforward treatment of the historicity of Christ & the Bible and what that means to us. The approach spelled out in the abstract at the beginning. Basically, it shows historically that Jesus claimed to be God. Then it examines the Trilemma -- if he wasn't God, he was either a liar or a lunatic -- and it examines these possibilities. It was a very well-structured and intellectually honest book.

_Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?_

This is a collection of 25 essays in 13 questions with a thesis-rebuttal type of structure. The symposium that gave rise to the book had as a theme:

Darwinism and neo-darwinism as generally held and taught in our society carry with them an a priori commitment to metaphysical naturalism, which is essential to make a convincing case on their behalf."
quoted on pg 177

I classify the book as Intelligent Design (ID) despite the fact that about 1/2 the essays are rebuttals to the position, not it's support. The book is better than average in the quality of the writing and the authors presented. It is however specific enough that it is not a general work on the creation-evolution-design (CED) debate but rather an interesting contribution to a small facet of the field. That being said i sought out the book because it's topic sentence is my current interest in a self-directed study of the CED field. I was glad to have found 2 lines of thought in the book, those i would like to concentrate on now.

The first is the essay, "Radical Intersubjectivity: Why Naturalism is an assumption necessary for doing Science" by Frederick Grinnell, section *. It is simply a very concise introduction to the public nature of science and "Only naturalistic explanations can become part of science because of the way in which scientific discoveries become credible." pg 100. And "Individual scientists make discoveries; scientific communities make discoveries credible. That is, credibility is embedded in the social structure of science." I have struggled in vain for several weeks trying to reach this idea and i am indebted for the simple and persuasive way the he makes it. To be persuaded, to be convinced, to yield author to, these are all ideas the circulate within an ideology, any social organization. Some like governments, military or perhaps in families yield simply "i told you so, therefore do it!". Others especially voluntary organizations which rely on the consent of the members are much more subtile in their demands so not to estrange potential converts. But science is as an institution, extraordinarily multi-cultural and multi-national. As such the recruitment and education of potential members is extremely important, just look at the complex of universities, research institutions both governmental and private which encircle our globe. An institution and an ideology like science based in large part on a radical skeptism and provisionalness that disturbs many people has developed an extraordinary way of accepting and confirming individual discoveries. In particular, the community makes new ideas credible not just by reproducing and disseminating these new discoveries but by incorporating them into the structure of the communities thinking. The object is to modify and incorporate long standing ideas with the new in a systematic way that will minimize errors getting by the process to become conventional scientific wisdom. Certainly the bar is very high, and stops good, true ideas sometimes, we only have to look at the currents ideas about ulcers and compare them to a medical textbook of 10 years ago to see this point.

The second set of essays i found particularly valuable was chapter 11 "X Does not Entail Y: the Rhetorical Uses of Conflating levels of logic" by Arthur M Shapiro. "Here is argument in a nutshell: biological evolution (darwinism, neo-Darwinism) entails no particular position on the ultimate orgins of either life or the universe. Evolution is a subject studied by the methods of science. To conduct scientific investigation per se entails no claim to intellectual hegemony or ontological priority over other potential 'ways of knowing.' The contrary claims, implicit or explicit in the arguments of both theists and atheists, flow from a conflation of evolution with evolutionism or of science with scientism(or postiivism, or materialism, or some other ism). The conflation may be pertinent to discussions of human affairs and society but at the same time is obfuscatory and logically invalid, as conflation by definition is." pg 159
This is the major point of ID that science is wrongfully dismissing a Designer from the start of its investigations. Shapiro argues convincingly that this is not the case, but rather simply part of doing science. He rightfully blames the current debate on a confusion of levels of discourse, confusing science with philosophy of science, or science as tool with scientism as epistemology.

It's a nice readable book, aimed at a small audience not the general public with an interest in the CED field. Generally well documented so it can become an entry point into further study on the particulars of the discussion. Worth a breeze through the table of contents if you are interested in the issues.