I d the future a podcast about evolution and intelligent design

hello I'm Jonathan weight your host for this episode of ID the Future.

I'm happy to have back on the show, Neil Thomas, he is the author of an excellent new book from Discovery Institute press taking leave of Darwin

a long-time agnostic discovers the case for design.

Neil Thomas is a British academic he's retired he had a successful career he's coming from a liberal arts background and some people might see that as a weakness for a book about Darwinism but I see it as a strength because we've had plenty

of scientists writing about Darwinism and the weaknesses and challenges of Darwinian theory.

But Neil brings a perspective, some skills, intellectual skills,

sharpened by his studies, where we talked about those more

in the previous episodes, so we won't go into that too much there.

But if you're looking for a fresh take on evolutionary theory in the design debate

taking leave to Darwin is certainly that.

He does a fantastic job of weaving together scientific threads, scientific evidence that he grappled with, cultural influences

on Darwin, on the Darwinist of the 20th century.

It's just a very rich Smorgesbord, will cultural philosophical intellectual journey he as I mentioned in the previous podcast he's not the sort of

intellectual that's supposed to exist. He's a settled Darwinist, settled secularist there in England, and then he comes along and he has a crisis of faith in Darwinism, if you will. And maybe it wasn't a terrible crisis

because maybe you weren't especially fond of Darwinism.

I think the way you put it is you just kind of took it on faith

from the culture.

Well, it's the conventional wisdom that Darwin is right, okay, great.

I'm in literary studies and cultural studies, I'll take that and move on, but then when you

finally studied it, you found that it was kind of like the emperor and his new

clothes you're like okay now that I'm actually I've come to the parade I'm looking

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