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556 BOOK REVIEWS actions ag'ainst the subject as battery. A further problem with creating embryos for research is that so doing violates the rights of ·the person or person-to-be to its parents and family. Crea.ting these embryos treats them as means and as nothing more than scientifically interesting material , but with no rights against harmful assaults. University of Illinois Chanipaign-Urbana FR. ROBERT BARRY, O.P. Evolution ana Creation. Edited by ERNAN MoMULLIN. Notre Dame, Indiana : Notre Dame Press, 1986. Pp. 304. $24.96 (cloth). This book offers a stimulating array of perspectives on the one thing about evolutionary theory that directly concerns Christian thinkers: its reconciliation with the Judeo-Christian account of creation. The essays were originally papers delivered at a symposium held at the University of Notr.e Dame. Besides bringing them together in a single volume, the editor, Ernan McMullin, has himself contributed a lucid introductory essay for the sake of historical context. Still, at the book's end, I found myself left with the question that books on this topic always seems to leave me with: Where are the philosophical and theological problems posed by evolutionary theory? To be sure, the cultural and historical impact of Darwin's theory raised questions of reconciliation between biblical claims and scientific evidence, but the perceived philosophical and theological problems were more apparent than real. What gave them bite was the absence of a proper understanding of the difference between philosophical and scientific knowledge created by the collapse of the Aristotelian system in the sixteenth century. The insufficiencies of the Aristotelian science, rendered glaring by the steady emergence of the new science, not only led to the rejection of Aristotelianism vn toto but left an intellectual vacuum which the new science filled. Soon this science was enshrined as the standard of all knowledge. This state of affairs understandably conferred upon the scientific challenge to Christian doctrine an absoluteness that seemed to demand a scientific defense of the biblical account of creation. When, however, the distinction between philosophical and scientific knowledge is observed (I speak here of a philosophy that is a realism), the challenge of evolutionary theories to Christian doctrine evaporates. What "challenges" remain are pseudo-scientific in that they are assertions of philosophical theories of materialism decked out in the clothes of science. Cases in point are the contributions to Evolution and Crea- BOOK REVIEWS 557 tion by John Leslie, "Modern Cosmology and the Creation of Life," James l!,. Ross, "Christians Get the Best of Evolution," and Phillip R. Sloan, " The Question of Natural Purpose." Leslie attempts to cast the design argument in a form that creation scientists would accept. What inspires the project is his fear that the standard objections to design arguments jeopardize scientific development. His is a creative and at times brilliant approach ,to the defense of the design argument, which defense he unfortunately weakens, however, by failing to establish a clear line ,of demarcation between science and philosophy. He argues that the emergence of life forms bespeaks a fine-tuning and delicacy of balance of nature's laws which demand explanation. He cites as the only plausible alternatives that either the universe is a product of design or there are multiple universes. For if you reject design in favor of proba.bility as the explanation for delicately balanced laws on which life depends, you must argue that this universe of ours is an occurrence of such and such a degree of probability, while other universes represent different probable occurences with different laws, etc. For example, " a 1 percent increase or decrease in the power of the strong nuclear force ruins stellar synthesis of carbon " and "for chemistry to be possible the mass of the neutron must exceed that of the proton, but by no more than approximately a tenth of 1 percent. . ." But Leslie finds the plausibility of the many universes account weakened by the "serious horizon problems": 66 For as far out as our telescopes can reach, our universe consists of particles with the same relative strengths, and so on. Suppose that these masses and strengths and such were settled probabilistically at some early stage. How came they to be...

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