Paul Nelson (creationist)

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Paul A. Nelson, (born 1958) is an American young earth creationist and intelligent design advocate.

[edit] Biography

Nelson is the grandson of the creationist author Byron Christopher Nelson (1894-1972) and edited a book of his grandfather's writings.^[1] He is married to Suzanne Nelson, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University and they have two daughters.

In 1998, Nelson gained a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago. The Discovery Institute's Wedge Document,^[2] amongst other sources, claimed that Nelson was publishing a work derived from his thesis, "Common Descent, Generative Entrenchment, and the Epistemology in Evolutionary Inference", criticizing the principle of common descent, as part of the Evolutionary Monographs series. The Evolutionary Monographs series is edited by evolutionary biologist Leigh van Valen. Biologist John M. Lynch however notes that it is a "second-tier publication" unsuited to such work, and that the work has been "forthcoming" for quite some time.^[3]

Nelson was co-author, with John Mark Reynolds, of the section of the book Three Views on Creation and Evolution (1999) that advocated young earth creationism. In that chapter they wrote, "Natural science at the moment seems to overwhelmingly point to an old cosmos. Though creationist scientists have suggested some evidence for a recent cosmos, none are widely accepted as true. It is safe to say that most recent creationists are motivated by religious concerns" (p. 49).

Nelson is a fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture and of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design. He is frequently cited by opponents of intelligent design as an example of ID's "big tent" strategy in action. He has written about "Life in the Big Tent" in the Christian Research Journal.^[4]

Nelson said in an interview in Touchstone Magazine that there is no scientific theory of intelligent design, which directly contradicts the Discovery Institute stance.^[5]