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

~ Matt Young (Editor), Taner Edis (Editor) "IN THE BEGINNING, there was young-earth creationism..." (more)
Key Phrases: eubacterial flagellum, metacarpi ulnaris, gnome theory, Michael Behe, William Dembski, Statistical Science (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A terrific book that explores, fairly and openly, whether proponents of ID have any scientifically valid gadgets in their toolbox at all ... accessibly written throughout and an invaluable aid to teachers and scientists."

Product Description

Is Darwinian evolution established fact, or a dogma ready to be overtaken by the next scientific revolution? The intelligent design movement argues the latter.

Why Intelligent Design Fails assembles a team of physicists, biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and archaeologists to examine intelligent design from a scientific perspective. They consistently find grandiose claims without merit.

Contributors take intelligent design’s two most famous claims––irreducible complexity and information-based arguments––and show that neither challenges Darwinian evolution. They also discuss thermodynamics and self-organization; the ways human design is actually identified in fields such as forensic archaeology; how research in machine intelligence indicates that intelligence itself is the product of chance and necessity; and cosmological fine-tuning arguments.

Intelligent design turns out to be a scientific mistake, but also a useful contrast highlighting the amazing power of Darwinian thinking and the wonders of a complex world without design.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (June 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081353433X
• ISBN-13: 978-0813534336
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #543,335 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent addition to the anti-ID literature, August 7, 2004

By	Alexander Eterman (Israel) - See all my reviews

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.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not groundbreaking, but a good resource , February 2, 2006

By	Joseph Kaiser Canner (North Africa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

136 of 170 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Critics are missing the point, and critique by duckbite, June 30, 2005

By	Jon A. Pastor (Wynnewood, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.