Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue (Paperback)

by Robert B. Stewart (Editor)
Key Phrases: grand story, antiteleological naturalism, presupposes naturalism, Supreme Court, Richard Dawkins, Discovery Institute (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The subject of intelligent design has been much in the news in recent months but is often treated in a piecemeal fashion or one-sidedly. This volume highlights points of agreement and disagreement between two leading intellectuals on the subject: William A. Dembski, senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and Michael Ruse, an internationally known philosopher of science. Each of the contributors presents his or her position in light of the other's, providing readers with a fair and balanced case for both sides and allowing readers to decide for themselves. The following noted scientists, philosophers and theologians then explore the many facets of this debate.

About the Author
Robert B. Stewart is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he holds the Greer-Heard Chair of Faith and Culture and directs the annual Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum. He is the editor of The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T. Wright in Dialogue (2006, 978-0-8006-3785-9).

Product Details

• Paperback: 257 pages
• Publisher: Fortress Press (October 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0800662180
• ISBN-13: 978-0800662189
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #169,304 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All of the diverse essays are respectful in tone and pay meticulous attention to detail. , February 4, 2008

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Editor Robert B. Stewart gathers the insights of leading intellectuals William A. Dembski, Michael Ruse, and others in Intelligent Design, an examination of the hotly contested debate between proponents and deniers of the Intelligent Design theory. Intelligent Design strives to be as objective as humanly possible; essays address the tasks of finding a precise definition for ID, ID's history as an idea and body of thought, the most common objections to and defenses of ID, and much more. All of the diverse essays are respectful in tone and pay meticulous attention to detail. A bibliography and index round out this measured assessment of the standoff between evolution, creationism, and perspectives in between.

28 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book was banned in Dover, November 13, 2007

By	Darwin Researcher (London) - See all my reviews

"Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue" contains a goldmine of information about the Intelligent Design movement. Included are chapters by Francis Beckwith of Baylor University, Wesley Elsberry, John Lennox of Oxford University, Nicholas Matzke, Alister McGrath of Oxford University, Berkeley PhD Nancy Murphy, Hal Ostrander, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Martinez Hewlett, Sir John Polkinghorne of Cambridge University, Michael Ruse and others. All of the chapters are very useful in understanding this now hotter than ever controversy and most of the authors are well known scholars in their field. Most ironic is the extensive discussion of the Dover case and the fact that this book would not be allowed as a supplemental text in Dover, PA. One way around the judge's decision would be to cut the book up and allow students to read only the chapters opposed to Intelligent Design (ID) and remove those in favor of ID. I would be very interested if some brave soul used this book in a public school in USA and was challenged by the ACLU to see if it would pass constitutional muster in the United States. According to Judge Jones's ruling, as discussed in detail in this book, it would not. If the court ruled that this book would have to be cut up, I wonder what chapters would escape the knife. Many chapters discuss religion, including those against ID, and to be consistent they should also be cut. Fortunately, the public can read this "banned book" and decide for themselves, something the students in Dover are not allowed to do as students.

0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One of theology's silly ideas, September 15, 2008

By	Charles Gidley Wheeler (Kempsford, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This is a book written by theologians and the evangelists disguised as scientists. Its central thesis is exactly the same as that of Bishop Paley, who argued that if you had never seen a pocket watch before and found one lying on the ground, you would, through a process of fifth grade logic, come to the conclusion that it must have had a maker. In fact, Paley's idea was not at all original. He pinched it from Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,and Hume borrowed it from Cicero's De Natura Deorum. Dembski continues this nonsense, albeit in a more sophisticated form in his introduction:

"The bacterial flagellum is a little, bidirectional, motor-driven propeller on the back of certain bacteria that can spin at up to 100,000 revolutions per minute and change direction in a quarter turn. When you examine it with electron microscopy and other techniques, the first thing you notice is a long whiplike tail. But there is also a hook, which serves as the universal joint. There are o-rings, a driveshaft, discs that mount this apparatus to the cell membrane, and an acid-powered drive. And that doesn't describe the transduction circuitry that tells this mechanism when and how to operate.

So you have this machine of tremendous complexity and efficiency. [...] How does something like this originate? Are they good evolutionary explanations for it? Does evolution, conceived as a blind material process, one in which intelligence is not playing any substantive role, have an explanation of this molecular machine? I would put it to you that the scientific community does not have a good explanation of how this or other such systems arose."

The rest of the book consists in variations on this one theme, attacks on evolution and a pretty facile (and hostile) examination of what the author calls "fundamentalist atheism".

The last refuge of theologians in which to shelter from the overwhelming evidence for evolution is to claim that Nature is the product of `intelligent design', a concept that slips easily through the fingers when we try to catch it by the tail. It is one of theology's silly ideas, a metaphysical speculation that when examined at the most superficial level is revealed as nonsense. Superficially it supports polytheism as well as monotheism: if I look at the ocean, why do I have to infer that it was designed by the same god as the god who created trees, or the god who created bumble bees? After all, one man does not manufacture a watch, or a house - or for that matter a weapon of mass destruction.

For there to be a design, there has to be a designer, and a design on its own, without an artisan or manufacturer, produces nothing. The claim that Nature is the product of intelligent design prompts two unanswerable questions: first, `Of what was intelligent design the product?' And second, `By what agent was the universe manufactured in accordance with intelligent design?' To give an answer to the first question we should have to suppose a creator of the design; to answer the second, we should have to suppose a manufacturer who used the design to put the universe together. We therefore end up with three mystical persons or agencies: the creator of intelligent design, the intelligent design itself, and the supernatural artisan who refers to the design to put the universe together and oversee its evolutionary development.

The essayists in this book repeatedly demand an explanation for evolution, but they seem to take it for granted that no explanation for the existence of some mystical supernatural designer is necessary. In order to believe in such a supernatural agency, a leap of faith is required. But that faith is not in God: it is in the theological quackery of people like Dembski and Lennox.

Even if you believe in an infinitely powerful and wise creator who stands apart from the universe, you are presented with an impossible choice. Either you believe in a theistic God who intervenes in human affairs, or you believe in a deistic `intelligent design' God who, having formed the universe out of nothing and issued immutable laws for it to follow, withdraws and leaves it to run on without further intervention. You can't consistently believe in a God who intervenes in human affairs and yet does not intervene. But here's the problem. Theism reduces God to a less than omnipotent creator who works miracles to keep his creation running in accordance with his will, while deism reduces God to a less than omniscient architect or designer whose supposedly infinitely intelligent blue print has resulted in endless generations of human misery.
The contradiction implicit in believing either in an intelligent design God who we feel should intervene but doesn't, or a creator god who shouldn't have to intervene but does, is particularly fatal for the Christian religion, as belief in intelligent design rules out the need for the miracles of divine incarnation and bodily resurrection that are essential to the Gospel story, while belief in a creator who is careless enough to build into creation original sin, eternal punishment and the need for intervention by a God-made-man rules out the possibility of belief that the original design was the product of an omnipotent and omniscient intelligence in the first place.
The proposition can be expressed as a logical inference that might be expressed as `If Intelligent Design, then no Divine Intervention; and if Divine Intervention then no Intelligent Design'. In logical terms: (ID -> ~ DI) & (DI -> ~ ID)


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