Customer Reviews

Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

So as not to rehash the better reviews by others, let me list a couple of things I liked about this book:

1. As a person who is skeptical of outlandish claims on both sides of this debate, I was pleasantly surprised at the restrained nature of this book. The opening chapter, written by one of the editors, sets the stage by going to great pains to admit that ID is not intriniscally forbidden from the scientific forum (p. 17), and that it is at least theoretically possible that future research could validate some form of ID (p. 18). This in constrast to many scientists would bar ID from the table forever. Of course, this point is only theoretical at present, since the book is all about how ID fails as science (and mathematics).

2. Unlike many anthologies, this book, especially in the first half, is quite self-conscious about not being repetitive; the chapter authors frequently refer the reader to other chapters that look at other aspects of their assigned topic.

3. While most of the chapters are informative and useful, two are particularly so, perhaps because they are not as focused on refuting Behe and Dembski. Chapter 3 is an excellent discussion of why common descent cannot be limited to the certain classification levels. This chapter addresses ID proponents who allow for a great deal of common descent and those who allow for very little. While the former are getting more press these days, the latter are still active in large numbers.

4. Chapter 7 is a fascinating look at how nature can, and demonstrably does, produce complexity and apparent design. This is probably the most approachable chapter in the book.

5. Chapters 9-11, although a bit repetitive and overly technical, provide a good introduction to some important statistical issues, including a nice discussion of random chance versus natural selection.

Overall, this is a good resource for various arguments to counter Behe and Dembski, as well as more general arguments. Some chapters, however, are not as approachable to the lay reader and may not be as useful in that regard.

First, I will observe that many of the critical (i.e., negative) reviews of this book are surprisingly similar in style, diction, format, and content. While this is not sufficient to justify the conclusion that they are all the product of one author under various pseudonyms, it is sufficient to raise the suspicion. Now, if I were a proponent of ID, I would say that this situation could not have arisen by chance, and would suspect that an intelligent -- if unscrupulous, and not particularly articulate -- designer was behind this apparent coincidence.

Now to the point, which the critics seem to miss.

The burden of proof is not on Darwinian evolution, but on alternative theories: Darwinian evolution has been, and continues to be, predominant, and if ID wants to be considered as a serious contender it needs to show that (a) it has at least equivalent explanatory power and (b) satisfies all of the usual criteria for scientific theories. Foremost among the latter is *disprovability* -- it must be possible to disprove the theory, or at least to challenge it such that its proponents must provide a (disprovable) alternative theory that has the same explanatory power.

ID is not disprovable, by definition: no "theory" that has a magic escape clause ("and then a miracle happens") is disprovable, because a miracle (extra-scientific event) can always be (and always is) invoked.


If (for example) human remains were found in strata corresonding to the Cretaceous -- not just once, but in many locations -- this would be a blow to the prevailing theory. This has not, to my knowledge, happened -- nor has any other piece of concrete evidence arisen to challenge evolution. All of the arguments advanced by ID proponents are "gap" arguments, or -- in the case of Behe and Dembski -- arguments based on misapplications or misrepresentations of scientific principles (such as the second law of theormodynamics).

The second half of my title -- "critique by duckbite" -- refers to the tendency for the (negative) critics to fixate on one small aspect of one of the 13 chapters in WIDF. Another way to put this is that they are missing the forest by focusing on one twig on one particular branch of one particular tree. For example, to claim that an author is a sloppy scholar on the basis of one slightly incorrect citation (of a web site, no less) is simply fatuous, and smacks of ad hominem argument. If you critics are so desperate to find flaws in this book that you are fixated on trivia like this, your very desperation speaks volumes about the actual (high) quality of the book.

You can't dissect this book: you have to take all of the arguments collectively, as a whole. And as a whole, it's hard for me to understand how anyone can fail to find it convincing.

BTW, unlike many -- I said "many", not "most" or "all", so don't get your knickers in a twist if you happen to have read it -- of the negative critics, I actually read and understood the entire book, and am also sufficiently conversant with all of the disciplines involved that I understand all of the issues and arguments. I know the molecular biology, I know the physics, I know the biochemistry, and I am a professional AI researcher with over 20 years of practice, so I understand the philosophical and computational issues as well.

The bottom line is that the only thing that distinguishes ID from creationism of any other stripe are the fact that its proponents are disingenuous about their religious bias, and its claim to scientific legitimacy: absent the legitimate scientific underpinnings, it's just another attempt to push religion into the science curriculum. And WIDF demolishes all of the supposed scientific underpinnings of ID. Demolishes.

The burden of proof is on you, (negative) critics, and on Behe and Dembski and their ilk: you have not demonstrated that ID is science in even the remotest sense of the term, and until that day you have no business claiming that it's a plausible alternative to Darwinian evolution.

This is one of the best books about the newest attack on science by adherents of intelligent design (mostly affiliated with the Discovery Institute of Seattle). It is a very fine addition to the books by Niall Shanks, Mark Perakh, and Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross, which all have appeared recently and have already caused a lot of discussion. Unlike the three other books, this is not a creation of a single author (or two co-authors) but an anthology with 13 contributors. This format allowed for presenting a rainbow of views from different vantage points. All chapters, however, are united in the overall thesis according to which the new form of creationism, dubbed intelligent design, differs from the earlier versions of creationism in its seemingly larger sophistication, but essentially is as fallacious as its more primitive predecessors. While some of the arguments advanced in this book were heard before, in this or that form, the book contains plenty of fresh material as well, and when a previously known argument is reproduced it is usually done in a somehow novel fashion. A reader will find in this book many interesting points specifically addressing various fallacious assertions by intelligent design proponents. I was dismayed reading the numerous dismissive reviews of this book which blatantly distort the contents of this book and reflect the visceral rejection of its arguments by reviewers who more often than not do not at all talk about what the book actually says, indulging instead in unsubstantiated assaults.

A timely and persuasive contribution to an important controversy

While this book is rather expensive, I found that the money was well spent. As I started reading chapter after chapter, I was fascinated by the force and clarity of the argumentation by its thirteen authors, who took time from their scientific work to perform their duty as scientists and citizens concerned over the well financed and persistent campaign by the new crop of creationists against genuine science. The thirteen authors dissected the intelligent design pseudo-science from the standpoints of biology, physics, mathematics, archaeology, and philosophy. Each aspect was dealt with by an expert in the particular field. As the collection of negative reviews on this site shows, even the most convincing arguments will not change the minds of those who, by virtue of having preconceived views, rejecti in advance any arguments which are contrary to their beliefs. However, for those who still keep open minds or are uncertain which side the truth is on, this book is a must read. The negative reviews on this site seriously misrepresent the contents of this book. Some of the reviewers who wrote negative reviews obviously have not read the book, as their antics do not refer to any specific points discussed in it. While a positive review may legitimately be of a general type without delving into a book's specifics, a negative review carries no weight unless it critically addresses specific notions in the discussed publication. That is what the negative reviews on this site fail to do. Overall it is a clear case, and five stars may be assigned with confidence.

This book leaves the ID proponents few places to hide

This collection of papers by 13 writers (who all are highly competent scientists) leaves the Intelligent Design proponents (including Dembski, Behe, Wells, Johnson, and others) no place to hide. Each paper in this collection concentrates on a specific point, each corresponding to the author's expertise. Despite the high level of discussion, overall the papers are reasonably accessible to non-experts. Even such special topics as the No Free Lunch theorems of optimization theory are explained with a great clarity and could be comprehended by any reader with a minimal educational background. While I was reading Dembski's book, titled No Free Lunch, I could not comprehend what the role of the NFL theorem could be in ID. I understand now that the reason for my confusion was that Dembski's explanation of the NFL theorem was faulty. Having read the chapter by Perakh in this collection, I understood for the first time what the NFL theorems are about and why Dembski's treatment of them was off the mark. It is amusing and amazing to see the elementary errors which the authors of this collection reveal in the literary production of such ID luminaries as Dembski or Behe. They indeed show that the king is naked.

An excellent addition to the anti-ID literature

An encouraging development: during a relatively short period of time four new books have appeared, devoted to debunking the fallacy labeled Intelligent Design. The first three of these books (Unintelligent Design by Mark Perakh, Creationism's Trojan Horse by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross and God, The Devil and Darwin by Niall Shanks) have been rather extensively reviewed on this site. Now these three books have been complemented by one more high-quality treatise - a collection of articles by 13 scientists, edited by Young and Edis. Each of the 13 authors is prominent in his field and possesses impressive experience and erudition, enabling each of them to expertly dissect the errors which abound in the opuses of the IDists. Given the uninterrupted stream of publications by the IDists, all four books (and the new collection in particular) are very timely tools which will provide excellent ammunition to science teachers concerned by the attempts of religiously motivated crowds to subvert teaching our kids real science. It will also help those who are searching for a reasonable world look but are confused by the din of the anti-science propaganda. A very impressive book.

Although I believe that life is designed by intelligence, or something greater, I am a long time critic of Intelligent Design (ID) in its charade of being an alternative to biological evolution. I have read many articles by nearly all of the contributing authors, so I hesitated buying this book. Nevertheless, I decided to evaluate it as a resource for those who are relatively new to the debate.

While there are other books that discuss the evolution and tactics of the ID strategy, WIDF targets the "scientific" arguments made by William Dembski, Michael Behe, and others, particularly the ones that invoke irreducible and/or specified complexity as criteria for inferring design. Paul Nelson's "Dynamic Creation Model" is singled out as a typical ID position, although other IDers, such as Behe, have radically different models in mind. In fact, ID's "official" position is that it takes no position beyond "evidence of design," and that it invalidates evolution. The authors address different ID claims, and take different approaches, so that even if one does not agree with everything each author says, the overall case against the ID strategy remains overwhelming.

Although the authors could have better emphasized the false dichotomy of "it's either `naturalistic' evolution or `something else' by design," at least one author (Edis) did note that, even if there were some substance to the IDers' design claims, the biological process would still be evolution. Those new to the debate need to fully appreciate how ID misrepresents science, and despite its "common ancestry" with creationism (see Robert Pennock's "Tower of Babel"), is in fact a virtual admission that all of the mutually contradictory (see Kenneth Miller's "Finding Darwin's God") creationist origins models are scientific failures. So I recommend WIDF, but not as the only critique of ID that one should read.

Like the other two books I mentioned, WIDF often reads like a criticism of design in the general sense. While that may be a personal desire of some of the authors, it is certainly not the overall intent of the book, or of the other two books, which are written by authors who believe not only that a designer exists, but that He is indeed God. Of course, that will never be enough to please the negative reviewers who insist that any critique of ID or creationism is necessarily an attack on God.

Because of my minor complaints above, I considered rating WIDF 4 stars, but the book's impressive list of references, including web sites, and with a good balance of pro- and anti-ID, makes it a valuable resource, so 5 stars it is. A nitpick of the title, though: Because of its limited scope, WIDF does not address the main reasons that ID has failed to impress mainstream science or mainstream religion, i.e. the tactics (define terms to suit one's argument, quote out of context, etc.) that make it pure pseudoscience. Alas, like many pseudosciences, ID is a success with the general public because it tells people what they want to hear - in ways the classic creationisms cannot.

An excellent and helpful slim volume

The anthology edited by Young and Edis contains 13 chapters, each written by an accomplished scientist. All of the authors have respectable records of scientific publications. All of them also have obvious writing talents, which enabled them to explain many complicated points with clarity and which makes the book accessible to laymen with a limited educational background without oversimplifying the discourse to the level of platitude. The introduction by the collection's editors, Young and Taner, provides a brief overview of the following chapters, thus enabling readers to choose for perusal only those chapters which fit their interests. I'd recommend, though, not omitting a single chapter in that wonderful collection - each is a gem in its own right. Several chapters deal with problems of biology in their relation to the attempts by advocates of Intelligent Design to destroy the theory of evolution. Dutch biologist Korthof (chapter 3) provides a transparent and convincing argument supporting the Darwinian concept of common descent, Danish biologist Ussery (chapter 4) offers a clear explanation of the overwhelming biochemical evidence for evolution, American organismal biologist Gishlick (chapter 5) illustrates the process of evolution with an example of the avian flight apparatus, Australian biologist Musgrave (chapter 6) describes the plausible evolutionary history of the bacterial flagellum (thus destroying the argument of ID advocates who insist that the flagellum, which is allegedly an irreducibly complex system, could not evolve but had to be created as a whole). In chapter 7, philosophers/biologists Shanks and Karzai discuss self-organization as a natural mechanism of emergence of complexity, illustrating their thesis with such impressive examples as the Benard cell and the Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction. Chapter 8 has been contributed by a paleontologist, Hurd, who shows the abject futility of Dembski's explanatory filter in archaeological work. Then there are several chapters by expert physicists and mathematicians. In chapter 2 Young, the collection's co-editor and a physicist, offers a well substantiated critique of certain concepts promoted by the most prominent ID advocates, Behe and Dembski (such as Behe's mousetrap and Dembski's arrow). Chapter 9, written by mathematician/computer scientist Shallit and biologist Elsberry, shows the utter inconsistency of Dembski's concept of Specified Complexity and reveals many other serious defects in what they call Dembski's pseudo-mathematics. In chapter 11, veteran physicist Perakh sheds light on Dembski's misinterpretation and misuse of Wolpert and Macready's No Free Lunch theorems in a way accessible to readers with only a rudimentary mathematical background. Then there are chapters by Edis, the collection's co-editor and a physicist, who offers a discussion of certain general notions relevant to the book's main thesis (chapter 1) and of the juxtaposition of the concepts of chance plus necessity on the one hand and intelligent design on the other (chapter 10). Physicist Stenger's contribution (chapter 12) concerns the anthropic coincidences, which, as Stenger shows, can be given a simple naturalistic explanation. The book concludes with a chapter by Perakh and Young, who show that intelligent design hardly can be viewed as science.
This slim volume is a sheer delight. The numerous negative reviews of this book on this site seem to reflect the prejudice of the reviewers, whose beliefs are seriously jeopardized by the convincing arguments of the 13 authors in this collection. Reading these negative reviews creates the distinct impression that they have not even read the book they attack. Of course this says much more about the critics' characters than about the book.

A timely addition to literature of reason

While the advocates of the pseudo-science labeled Intelligent Design work full-time on promoting their agenda and publishing scores of books and articles filled with casuistry designed to disguise the lack of scientific substance in their concepts, most genuine scientists are too busy with their hard work in labs to devote sufficient time and effort to debunking the crock ID advocates are feeding the unsuspecting public. Excellent recently published books by Mark Perakh ("Unintelligent Design," Prometheus Books 2004), Niall Shanks ("God, the Devil and Darwin," Oxford University Press 2004) and Barbara Forrest & Paul R. Gross ("Creationism's Trojan Horse," Oxford University Press 2004), which provided well- substantiated critique of various aspects of Intelligent Design and related concepts, have successfully met some the need for a sound analysis of the fallacies of ID. Now these three wonderful books are complemented by an anthology from Rutgers University Press ("Why Intelligent Design Fails," edited by physicists Matt Young and Taner Edis). Unlike the three books listed above, this one is the product of a combined effort by a number of authors who, unlike most of the ID advocates, all are experienced scientists with extensive records of peer-reviewed publications in their scientific fields. In each chapter of the anthology the author or authors utilize their scientific background to analyze this or that specific concept of the ID and invariably find it lacking validity from the standpoint of a particular branch of science. Each chapter of the collection is authored by an expert or experts in a particular field of science and that gives this collection the power of unassailable authority. Biological aspects of ID are discussed by highly qualified biologists, mathematical questions are addressed by accomplished mathematicians and physicists, paleontological points are the subjects of chapters written by experienced paleontologists, etc. The sum total of experience and qualifications of the authors is so formidable and multifaceted that there is no chance the ID advocates (who with few exceptions typically lack any record of a real scientific research) can offer in response anything even remotely close to it. Besides the strength of argumentation invariably found in all chapters of this collection, it also provides a very entertaining reading as most of the authors possess not only impressive scientific qualifications, but also talents for clearly explaining sometimes rather complicated concepts -- including such esoteric topics as the mathematical theorems of the optimization theory (the so called No Free Lunch theorems) -- in simple terms accessible to a lay audience with a minimal background in sciences. This is a really brilliant book, highly recommended to everybody who wants to form an educated opinion of the ongoing dispute between genuine science and its pseudo-scientific adversary, the Intelligent Design fallacy.

The concept of reading book reviews to get a picture of what the general reader thinks about a book apparently does not work well for this kind of book. Only the very exceptional reviewer would (while vigorously disagreeing with the conclusions of a book) still give it a high rating because it was interesting, well thought out, well written, etc. Most reviewers of this type book will (because of the subject matter) rate the book based on whether they agree or disagree with the author. That kind of judgement dosen't exist for novels, or is only a minor factor for non-fiction books such as histories or biographies, etc., where reviewers might recognize an interesting book and give it a high rating even though they disagree with the author's conclusions. Arguments about "intelligent designers" and evolution, however, touch people too close to their religious orientation. A fudamentalist Christian would be strongly inclined to give a book like this a low rating even if he recognized it as being well written and interesting. Some might even go out of their way to write a review just in order to give it a low rating, even if they had never read it. It does cut both ways, however, and those who accept evolution (as I do) might be inclined to give a book like this high marks even if it weren't as good as it is.

After confessing that, however, I can say that I think this book most certainly deserves a very high rating. Its purpose is to show that ID is not a viable scientific theory and it does that with incredible clarity. One negative reviewer has said it didn't convince him that life could have arisen without an intelligent designer. But this book is not intended to do that. The origin of life is only mentioned once and even then along with two other significant events in the same sentence. It is brought up as an example of Dembski's improper use of probability theory. That is the poimt that I beleieve most negative reviewers don't recognize. This book deals with what is wrong with the arguments for ID. Let's face it, evolution is the modern paradigm and ID is challenging it. The rcognized leader of the ID movement is Dembski, who makes claims based on probability arguments, and if it is shown that Denbski's arguments are mathematically invalid, the claims for ID go down the drain. The book deals principally with Dembski's arguments but also deals with other ID advocates, including Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe,and Paul Nelson. It would be ridiculous for anyone even pretending to be knowledgeable about ID and the arguments for or against it not to read this book.