David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer is an author and essayist, and a proponent of intelligent design. He is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, the organization that is the driving force behind the intelligent design movement. He is also a frequent contributor to National Review and a former columnist for the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward, to which he still contributes occasional essays.

Intelligent design

Klinghoffer has published a series of articles, editorial columns, and letters to the editor in both Jewish and conservative publications seeking to promote opposition to Darwinian views of evolution, stating that science can include a support for an underlying intelligent design in the development of living things and the universe as a whole, and indeed that some scientists hold to such views.^[1][2][3][4] Larry Yudelson has responded, in a piece directed at Klinghoffer, that rabbinical Judaism has accepted evolutionary theory for more than a century, and that Judaism has never rejected science.^[5] Yudelson also charges that Klinghoffer is paid to promote his ideas by his employer, the Discovery Institute, which Yudelson identifies as a Christian think tank that is funded by organizations that seek to promote a "Christian-friendly world view."^[6]

Religion

Klinghoffer is an Orthodox Jew who has written a spiritual memoir about his religious background. He was raised in Reform Judaism by his adoptive parents and formally converted to Orthodox Judaism,^[7] becoming ba'al tshuva (Hebrew, a newly religious Orthodox Jew).^[8] In his book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus, Klinghoffer theorizes that Jewish rejection of Jesus allowed Christianity to separate from Judaism and become a multi-ethnic religion. Christianity was thus able to achieve a dominance in gentile Europe that would have been impossible for Judaism to attain. To Klinghoffer, this changed world history, because Christianity was able to serve as a bulwark against the spread of Islam into Europe.^[9]

In May 2010, the Discovery Institute released a free 105 page eBook titled Signature of Controversy: Responses to Critics of Signature in the Cell edited by Klinghoffer with chapters by Discovery Institute fellows David Berlinski, Casey Luskin, Stephen C. Meyer, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards and Richard Sternberg.^[10]

Books by David Klinghoffer

• Klinghoffer, David (1998). The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-4267-X. 
• Klinghoffer, David (2004). The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism. Random House. ISBN 978-0-385-49973-6. 
• Klinghoffer, David (2006). Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History. Three Leaves. ISBN 978-0-385-51021-9. 
• Klinghoffer, David (2007). Shattered Tablets: Why America Ignores the Ten Commandments at Its Peril. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51567-2. 
• Klinghoffer, David (2008). How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51542-9. 
• Klinghoffer, David (2010). Signature of Controversy: Responses to Critics of Signature in the Cell. Discovery Institute Press. ISBN 0-7432-4267-X. Online here

References