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It follows that "there never was a God, no pilot who made the world by imposing order." But this is no cause for despair, for existential angst: "Nietzsche now also is dead," Smolin writes. Instead of brooding, he wants us to celebrate the evolutionary "logic" at the heart of the cosmos: "the logic of life is continual change, continual motion, continual evolution."

Still, Smolin is not as naïvely utopian as Silver. Here are the last sentences of Smolin's book:

All we have of natural law is a world that has made itself. All we may expect of human law is what we can negotiate among ourselves, and what we take as our responsibility. All we may gain of knowledge must be drawn from what we can see with our own eyes and what others tell us they have seen with their own eyes. All we may expect of justice is compassion. All we may look up to as judges are each other. All that is possible of utopia is what we make with our own hands. Pray let it be enough.

Pray? And to whom shall those prayers be directed?

John Wilson is editor of Books & Culture.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Times Fifty | A Work of Fiction by Brenda W. Clough. (Oct. 2, 2001)

The Genome Doctor | An Interview with Francis Collins. (Oct. 1, 2001)

A Matter of Life and Death | Why shouldn't we use our embryos and genes to make our lives better? The world awaits a Christian answer. (Sept. 28, 2001)

Wanna Buy a Bioethicist? (Editorial) | Some corporations have discovered that bioethics makes good public relations. (Sept. 28, 2001)

Lee Smolin's The Life of the Cosmos and George Williams's Adaptation and Natural Selection are available at Amazon.com. Lee Silver's Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in Brave New World is out of print but available used at Amazon.

John Wilson writes Books & Culture Corner every Monday for ChristianityToday.com. Recent Books & Culture Corners include:

Myths of the Taliban | Misinformation and disinformation abounds. What do we know?(Sept. 24, 2001)

The Imagination of Disaster | "We thought we were invulnerable." Really? (Sept. 17, 2001)

More Sex, Fewer Children | Mixed messages on condoms, contraception, and fertility. (Sept. 10, 2001)

The Strange Case of Napoleon Beazley | The latest poster boy for death row chic. (Aug. 27, 2001)

Apocalyptic City | The dream and the nightmare of megalopolis (Aug. 20, 2001)

Megalopolis Forty Years On | The ambiguous face of the city. (Aug. 13, 2001)

The Future Is Now | You want the news? Read science fiction. (Aug. 6, 2001)

Previous Christianity Today coverage of bioethics includes:

Two Cheers | President Bush's stem-cell decision is better than the fatal cure many sought. (August 10, 2001)

House Backs Human Cloning Ban | Scientists say they'll go ahead anyway. (August 27, 2001)

Embryos Split Prolifers | Bush decision pleases some, keeps door open for disputed research. (August 27, 2001)

House of Lords Legalizes Human Embryo Cloning | Religious leaders' protests go unheeded by lawmakers. (Feb. 2, 2001)

Britain Debates Cloning of Human Embryos | Scientists want steady stream of stem cells for "therapeutic" purposes. (Nov. 22, 2000)

Tissue of Lies? | Latest stem-cell research shows no urgent need to destroy human embryos for the cause of science. (Sept. 28, 2000)

Beyond the Impasse to What? | Stem-cell research may not need human embryos after all. But why are we researching in the first place? (Aug. 18, 2000)

Thus Spoke Superman | Troubling language frames the stem-cell debate. (June 13, 2000)

New Stem-Cell Research Guidelines Criticized | NIH guidelines skirt ethical issues about embryo destruction, charge bioethicists. (Feb. 7, 2000)

Human Embryo Research Resisted (August 9, 1999)

Editorial: The Biotech Temptation (July 12, 1999)

Embryo Research Contested (May 24, 1999)

Stop Cloning Around (April 27, 1997)

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October 1 2001, Vol. 45, No. 12