Ramesh Ponnuru offers a penetrating review of Princeton molecular biologist Lee Silver's Challenging Nature: The Clash of Science and Spirituality at the New Frontiers of Life. Silver, a self-described "extremely skeptical agnostic deist," is a biotechnology enthusiast in some ways even more extreme than Peter Singer. Silver, not unexpectedly, dislikes Roman Catholic and Evangelical positions on bioethics and biotechnology. He accuses them of masking their religious orientation in secular-sounding arguments. Ponnuru doesn't rate Silver's philosophical powers very highly. He concludes his review this way:
It was once popular to speak of "the two cultures." In the one were the scientists, who knew little of the humanities; and in the other were the humanists, who knew little of the sciences. Lee Silver belongs to the first camp. He is an accomplished scientist, and his book is not without some interesting trivia... Silver is at his best when he is teaching biology. The results are far less edifying when he commits philosophy, especially when he seems unaware that he is doing so.