Biography
Nelson is the grandson of the creationist author and Lutheran minister Byron Christopher Nelson (1894–1972) and edited a book of his grandfather's writings. He is married to Suzanne Nelson, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University.
In 1998, Nelson gained a PhD in philosophy of biology and evolutionary theory from the University of Chicago. The Discovery Institute's Wedge Document, and other sources have said 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.
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. In an interview for Touchstone Magazine Nelson said that the main challenge facing the ID community was to "develop a full-fledged theory of biological design", and that the lack of such a theory was a "real problem".
Read more about this topic: Paul Nelson (creationist)
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