(By CSC Staff) Some 700 people from 18 nations gathered in Prague (Czech Republic) for the Darwin and Design conference Saturday, October 22. "This is an extremely encouraging sign of ID's growing international appeal," said Jonathan Wells, biologist and conference speaker.
The conference was organized by Carole Thaxton and her husband, Charles Thaxton, chemist and co-author of the seminal origin-of-life monograph The Mystery of Life's Origin (1984). The Thaxtons lived in Prague for several years while Charles taught at Charles University.
Held in the capital's Congress Centrum, a grand hall built in the Communist era, the Darwin and Design conference featured speakers from five countries, including Stephen C. Meyer (USA), Jonathan Wells (USA), Charles Thaxton (USA), David Berlinski (France), John C. Lennox (UK), Cees Dekker (The Netherlands), and Dalibor Krupka (Slovakia). The proceedings were chaired by Peter Verner, a Czech chemist.
Addresses in English were simultaneously translated into Czech, and the five main speakers (Meyer, Wells, Thaxton, Berlinski, and Lennox) provided written summaries in advance that were available in both English and Czech. Several of the speakers are fellows of the Center for Science and Culture, headquartered at Discovery Institute in Seattle.
Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer led off with an overview of the controversy and the issues involved, such as what intelligent design is, and is not. Wells, author of Icons of Evolution, described several of the most famous textbook claims for Darwin's theory and concluded that the evidence for Darwinism has been highly exaggerated and design has not been ruled out.
Charles Thaxton presented a brief history of origin-of-life research, an eight-point critique of materialistic explanations of the origin of life, and the positive case for intelligent design. Mathematician David Berlinski, author of the recent mathematics history Infinite Ascent and the forthcoming The Deniable Darwin, gave an eloquent critique of the RNA world hypothesis and showed why RNA cannot explain the origin of DNA and protein.
In his second talk, Meyer argued that an intelligent cause was the best explanation for the Cambrian period's information-rich explosion of novel phyla.
Cees Dekker, molecular physicist at Delft University, gave a well-illustrated presentation on molecular machines. Dalibor Krupka, a distinguished physicist and member of the Presidium of the Slovakian Academy of Science was the main regional speaker. John Lennox, noted Oxford mathematician, concluded the day-long conference with an address on the mathematical intelligibility of the universe and the explanatory power of the design hypothesis.
The large audience was polite and attentive throughout. Most of the participants were scientists and lay people from the Czech Republic and neighboring countries such as Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Germany and Poland. Some came from much farther away, among them people interested in setting up organizations to promote ID in their homelands.
