Customer Reviews

Intelligent Design or Evolution? Why the Origin of Life and the Evolution of Molecular Knowledge Imply Design

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This book is exactly what I was looking for. It is a book that looks at the chemistry that would be involved to initiate life, and what the probabilities of evolution might be, based on statistics. The arguments are very conservative, yet still show that the chance of life forming is very small indeed. This book is one of a number of books that provide support to Intelligent Design, but the book focuses entirely on the science, which is what I wanted. As a chemist, myself, I can say the chemistry presented is correct as far as it conservatively goes. My only critism is that the figures in the book could be made more attractive.

I cannot in a paragraph do justice to this excellent book. I will thus cover one simple point it discusses. This book shows why the science community must accept ID as a viable hypothesis. This book is not an`argument from ignorance'; but from evidence. This work also is a positive argument for design because it shows that ID is testable. I find it interesting that critics first claim that ID is not falsifiable, then try to argue that it has been falsified! Which is it? It is clearly falsifiable because, if Neo-Darwinism is proven true by research (molecules to man by purely natural means) ID would be shown false. ID has identified many`irreducible (specified) complexity' biological pathways and structures. This is one of many predictions of ID theory, and if one system is shown not to be irreducible, this prediction of ID has been falsified. Thus ID is science as per Popper. ID proponents define a structure as `Irreducibly complex' when it requires a certain minimum number of components in order to function. If you take one component away below this number, the system will fail to work (see page 200 to 201 in Pullen for an interesting discussion of this idea). As Pullen shows, the view that such systems could not have been formed through natural mechanisms (mutation and natural selection) clearly can be falsified. These are the types of predictions and testable experimentations that would falsify ID. ID does not claim that all biological systems are irreducible complex, only that many are (I believe that most all are). To falsify ID one would have to prove that no biological structures are irreducible complex, not that a few or certain ones are not. Pullen comes to an interesting conclusion, namely that ID is falsifiable but neo-Darwinism is not! Thus ID is science but Darwinism is not! Of course, one can falsify many ideas related to Darwinism ideas, such as the development of antibiotic resistance, but this will not falsify Neo-Darwinism, only the question if bacteria can develop resistance to an antibiotic under certain conditions, a very limited question. Proving that antibiotics can develop resistance does not prove that time, mutations, natural selection and natural law can, or did, evolve molecules into humans. Actually antibiotic resistance is fairly well understood now, and neither creationists nor ID advocates have any concerns about this reality (and many actually use it to prove their view).

When Darwin proposed the theory of evolution, he envisioned that the process was continuous. He believed that the complexity and diversity of life could be explained by numerous slight modifications to existing species. His whole theory hinges on the idea that nature will preserve beneficial variations or natural selection and thereby guide evolution creating new and more complex animals and plants. Over a century later science has yet to show that complex organs can be formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications.

One of the first experiments concerning the origins of life was conducted in 1953 by Stanley Miller. Miller created several amino acids, the building blocks that life uses to make proteins in an electrostatic discharge chamber. The experiment conducted since Miller, have demonstrated how difficult it is to create the biological precursors required for life. While several amino acids can be created under plausible conditions, proteins cannot be. Furthermore, DNA is much more problematic because its building blocks are difficult to create. Many of these building blocks are unstable and decay rapidly. Science has yet to offer a plausible explanation for how these hard to make and easy to destroy chemicals accumulated in the primordial soup. Surprisingly, all difficulties are often overlooked; as a result, many biologists mistakenly believe that it is quite easy to synthesize all of the required biological molecules. For example to synthesize adenine [chemical found in DNA and RNA], chemists start with a concentration solution of hydrogen cyanide and ammonia. Concentrating ammonia is not easy task since it is a gas that boils at sub-freezing temperatures, and it decays rapidly in the presence of sunlight. Furthermore concentrating hydrogen cyanide in the presence of water is impossible because it reacts with water quite readily and yielding formic acid. Scientists tend to focus on the fact that the conditions required for its synthesis did not exist in primitive earth.

Investigators have also overlooked a third critical function required for life, the need to tap an energy source to drive replication. Without this function, self replicating molecules become a special type of perpetual motion machine. A perpetual machine is a machine runs forever with no energy input. Perpetual machines do not exist. They may run for a short time, but without a continuous input of energy, they eventually stop.

This book is an interesting read strongly refuting the possibility of evolution.

This book clearly communicates the theory of ID. The author presents a rational / logical argument for the theory in a way that can be easily understood by individuals of any level of intellectual training. The mathematical arguments and models form the backbone of his more-than-compelling case against evolution as a theory for the origins of life, and, by the end of the book, one wonders why I.D. isn't the reigning scientific paradigm. A companion piece, which specifically debunks Darwinism as a holistic theory for the beginning of life and humanity, would be Darwin on Trial.

This book is a very good introduction as to how information theory relates to the origins of life [chemical evolution] and the genetic code in particular. It debunks the idea that life could have sprung up by mere chance acting through the limited laws of physics & chemistry.

This is an important issue. Most of today's leading Darwinists in the universities are dumb as posts when it comes to understanding information theory. Much of this ignornace is willful, as information theory is just more more scientific nail in the coffin of materalism.

After reading Pullen's book, if one wants more details and depth, see a book like Hubert Yockey's "Information Theory, Evolution and the Origins of Life."

First of all let me say that this book is a fairly significant departure from the latest ID books (The Design Revolution as well as the other books written by Dembski). As such, it has really in my opinion set the precedent for Intelligent Design's movement from just recognized authors and scientists to allowing contributions from knowledgable common folk/laymen as well. My hope is that books like this help foster a grassroots movement for ID research and publishing.

The book is moderately difficult to get through thus you will have to read through twice or so to start getting key concepts. The author does an excellent job explaining how proteins are created from genetic information, as well explain amino acid properties and how amino acids are created.

He goes even further to explain the delicate properties and why producing proteins, getting all 20 essential amino acids, and other components of biological systems in existence then working together towards an eating and self-reproducing system is so damn hard and quite frankly requires a designer.

All of this together with a few other facts (the presence of formic acid, other corrosive chemicals, the propensity of UV light to seriously damage organic compounds, the high rate of decay of organic compounds, etc), make it so you come away with the undeniable fact that Intelligent Design is by far a much better explanation regarding the origin of life than blind natural forces.

A particular point I rely liked was that the author made it clear that having an abundant amount of energy was pointless if their wasn't a biomechanical system in place to properly harnass it for synthesizing biological components, moving and altering those components, and for reproduction. If you are looking for an analogy think of pouring gasoline on top of a car and lighting a match to it, or putting a stick of dynamite in a sand castle. Energy unless properly used will only bring increased disorder to a system.

However, there are still some aspects that the author needs to explain better like. Entropy (and it's relevance) in particular, could use a little longer of an explanation. Moreover, the author in my opinion overuses graphics of proteins and various theoretical mathematics. All of this wasted valuable paper space that could have been better used explaining key concepts.

Overall this book is a great contribution to the ID movement and to a personal library so I give it a 4/5.

I enjoyed reading this book. The book reads like an academic book geared for the classroom. For those who are interested being introduced to the more technical side of intelligent design or those of you that are interested in understanding the details behind how information theory is formatted, I recommend this book.

Dan

Intelligent Design or Evolution? suggests that naturalistic laws do not explain the origin of life. The implication being that life was created.

The logic behind this conclusion is as follows: 1) With the exception of amino acids, most of the complex biomolecules necessary for life have yet to be synthesized in the lab under plausible prebiotic conditions. 2) Even if these complex biomolecules existed, they would not contain the useful information (molecular knowledge) required for self replication. 3) Self replicating systems (such as life) must be able to couple their replication to a plentiful energy source and be able to synthesize any chemicals needed for replication. These requirements establish the minimum complexity necessary for life, and mandate that the first living thing was not a simple self replicating molecule, but rather a completely formed cell similar to life today. These three observations taken separately imply design, and taken together strongly suggest that life was created.

This book is more technical than most intelligent design literature. Furthermore, rather than basing the design inference on the evolution of life, the author chose to draw this inference based on the problems with chemical evolution and the origin of life. The book is written for scientists and students who one day will become scientists. Because the book contains ample introductory material, readers do not need a biochemistry degree to enjoy it. Nevertheless, some knowledge of high school algebra, chemistry and biology will prove most helpful.

I encountered Stu years ago on a discussion board, where he was busily hawking his new anti-evolution website. The website had a discussion board of its own, and Stu invited commentary on his claims. They were so filled with error and naivete, that the board was soon filled with criticisms that Stu could not address. So, like a good creationist, he shut the board down, but did not change a thing on his website.

Now I see he has written a book. I read the excerpts he offers on his website, and I see he is still using the same naive arguments he did years ago. He cannot understand how something might have happened? Why, it was Designed! Evolutionists cannot explain something to him to his satisfaction? Why, it was Designed! And when such incredulity fails, make up your own concepts and definitions! Brilliant! The whole concept of 'molecular knowledge' is a case in point. It is meaningless drivel.

Pullen says in the preface that molecular knowledge "...is more difficult to calculate because it does not have a mathematical definition."

Yet 2 pages later, he shows a graph in which a quantitative difference between mathematical information and mathematical knowledge is shown!

Incredible!

In that introductory section, there are several more logical and scientific errors. For example, Pullen writes:

"...natural selection cannot preserve or optimize a gene that offers no selective advantage..."

Baloney. Natural selection need not work on all genes all the time, and, apparently, Pullen has not heard of genetic drift.

In another chapter, he writes:

"Punctuated equilibrium is a theory of hopeful monsters. That is massive change due to numerous mutations in a few offspring give riseto new genes and proteins. The change is very quick (one generation)."

Nowhere does Punctuated Equilibrium indicate a one generation change.

And it goes downhill from there.

If you start on erroneous premises, the verbiage that follows will likely be erroneous as well. There are books worth buying on this subject that present an anti-Darwinian perspective.

This is not one of them.