Authors:
Percival Davis
Dean H. Kenyon

Of Pandas and People
The Central Question of Biological Origins

A supplement to the high school biology textbooks presenting the scientific rationale for intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinism. Lambasted and launded in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Scientific American, Time and Science, it has improved the way origins is taught in thousands of public school science classrooms.

Excerpts from Pandas (2nd ed., 1993)

From the Foreword:

“This book has a single goal: to present data from six areas of science that bear on the central question of biological origins. We don't propose to give final answers, nor to unveil The Truth. Our purpose, rather, is to help readers understand origins better, and to see why the data may be viewed in more than one way.” (pg. viii)

From the Body:

“If science is based upon experience, then science tells us the message encoded in DNA must have originated from an intelligent cause. But what kind of intelligent agent was it? On its own, science cannot answer this question; it must leave it to religion and philosophy. But that should not prevent science from acknowledging evidences for an intelligent cause origin wherever they may exist. This is no different, really, than if we discovered life did result from natural causes. We still would not know, from science, if the natural cause was all that was involved, or if the ultimate explanation was beyond nature, and using the natural cause.” (pg. 7)

“Today we recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be considered in science, as illustrated by current NASA search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes. We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science.” (pg. 126-127)

“Since both written language and DNA have that telltale property of information carried along by specific sequence of ‘words’ and since intelligence is known to produce written language, is it not reasonable to identify the cause of the DNA’s information as an intelligence too?” (pg. 57)

"The experimental work on the origin of life and the molecular biology of living cells is consistent with the hypothesis of intelligent design. What makes this interpretation so compelling is the amazing correlation between the structure of informational molecules (DNA, protein) and our universal experience that such sequences are the result of intelligent causes. This strong analogy leads to the conclusion that life itself owes its origin to a master intellect. One can talk about adding innumerable random mutations, but proponents of intelligent design still wonder: How were such impressive gains in functional information consolidated? It is a fair and crucial question." (pg. 85)