Evolution, Creationism: A Critical Inquiry

"I offer no comfort to religious fundamentalists or evolutionists," writes Vine Deloria in his introduction to Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths. "Both are passé and represent only a quarrel within the western belief system, not an accurate rendering of Earth history." With this salvo, Deloria, named by Time magazine as one of the eleven greatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century, launches a witty and erudite assault on the current state of evolutionary theory, science, and religion.

When Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859, a philosophical upheaval on par with the Copernican revolution of the sixteenth century occurred. Darwin was roundly criticized for promulgating ideas inconsistent with the Bible, and many hailed the death of God and religion. For more than a century, the schism between scientists, espousing progressive theories about evolution and the Earth’s beginnings, and religious fundamentalists, focusing on the inconsistencies between these theories and western religious dogma, has grown.

Using the tension between evolutionists and creationists in Kansas in the late 1990s as a focal point, Deloria takes Western science and religion to task, providing a critical assessment of the flaws and anomalies in each side’s arguments. Incorporating non-Western and Native American ideas, as well as the concept of "Intelligent Design," Deloria provides us with a framework to better understand our beginnings.