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William A. Dembski

How to be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not) Paperback – October 28, 2008

by William A. Dembski (Author), Jonathan Wells (Author)

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“Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin,” writes Richard Dawkins, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” This little book shows that atheism must seek intellectual fulfillment elsewhere decisively demonstrating the need for intelligence in explaining life’s origin. This is the best overview of why traditional origin-of-life research has crashed and burned and why intelligent design is necessary to explain the high-tech engineering inside the cell. It is no longer possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist because life's origin requires an intelligent cause—this book shows why.

WHAT MAKES THE BOOK UNIQUE FROM OTHERS ON THE TOPIC?

Coverage, brevity, and accessibility: It accurately and comprehensively surveys contemporary origin of life research, shows that attempts to rule out intelligence fail conclusively, and does so in a way that the average reader can understand. It demonstrates that atheism has no scientific basis, but instead is an ideology based on a speculative faith in the power of matter to do all its own creating.

Print length

150 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Publication date

October 28, 2008
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.25 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

1933859849
ISBN-13

978-1933859842
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

William A. Dembski is a Senior Fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books, including the first book on intelligent design to be published by a major university press, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998). He has seven earned degrees, including two doctorates, one in philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the other in mathematics from University of Chicago. His work has been featured on the front page of the New York Times and he has appeared on numerous radio and television broadcasts, including ABC’s Nightline and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. Bill and his wife, Jana, live in Central Texas with their daughter and twin boys.

Jonathan Wells is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD. in Religious Studies from Yale University. He has worked as a postdoctoral research biologist at the University of California at Berkeley and the supervisor of a medical laboratory in Fairfield, California, and he has taught biology at California State University in Hayward. He is the author numerous articles and several books including Icons of Evolution,The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 2nd edition (October 28, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 150 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1933859849
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1933859842
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.25 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #6,080,620 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,011 in Creationism
- #2,537 in Atheism (Books)
- #7,104 in Science & Religion (Books)

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Clark Jackson

Wonderfully written with exceptional clarity

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2017

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Wonderfully written with exceptional clarity. If you haven't read on this topic before it is a great starting point and bound to disabuse you of a lot of intellectual prejudice.

One person found this helpful

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rom832

A lot of good points in a logical progression of thought

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2014

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I enjoyed reading this book. It was highly informative of the many problems encountered with the classical theories of natural evolution. I'm sure it won't change many minds set against ID and steadfast in natural evolution in light of serious questions that need answers. But it does a good job at raising issue in conventional thought.

I work at a government research facility and had the book on my shelve. A colleague saw it but didn't see the little (Or Not) in the title and was all giddy about it. When I told him what it was, he was disgusted. We talked about one thing this book has a chapter on that he was familiar with and said he'd read it. He came back and said it was trash and misinformed. "How's that?" I asked, and he proceeded to rant against the ID movement and why this book is trash. I asked again, and he just said it was trash and went on why there is no science to ID. The usual mantra. Never said what was wrong. I have also used a few things to stop someone cold in their tracks when expounding on the "science" of evolution. In each case they come back with the anti-evolutionist mantra. Never addressing the scientific questions for missing links there exists. That is glossed over in their quickness to start rhetoric.

This won't give all the answers, but it does open up a lot of gaps that need addressing in a well written format.

3 people found this helpful

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Pedro Lopez

An intellectual and scientific approach to support creation

Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2013

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It is not a theory or a personal point of view. It is a deep approach to think about not only the origin of life, but also of what Dembsky calls "intelligent design". Crearly makes a deep analysis showing that there is not scientific support for atheism or evolution, at least from the intellectual point of view. Allows us to be free of modern superstition ideas and to take a look on complexity of everything that surrounds us. Focuses mainly on the problems of life origins and the complexity of life. Not recomended for atheists, because can damage their beliefts.

4 people found this helpful

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Paul Vjecsner

Outstripping the opposition in brief form

Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2009

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The authors are exemplary in confuting accusations of "intelligent design" as unscientific and religiously biased, while they abstain from insults and unsupported statements typifying their attackers.

They concentrate on the origin of life, which they regard as the greatest obstacle to atheism (p.115). I do not quite agree, finding that the obstacles extend to all of many-faceted life. The authors define life as (e.g. p.5) "reproduction, growth, metabolism, homeostasis, well-defined internal organization, maintenance of boundaries, stimulus-response repertoire, and goal-directed interaction with the environment". That goal-directedness can, however, be seen to characterize all these functions. All of life is in fact well known to be directed toward the goal of self-preservation, by which life can accordingly be defined.

The authors thus occasionally allude to "the strangely purposeful activities" ("of these uncanny molecular machines"), yet they focus--as does "intelligent design" and its opponents in general--on the design of the "machines", e.g. "that despite all our accumulated knowledge in the natural and engineering sciences, the task of designing even the most basic components of the cell's molecular machinery, the proteins, is completely beyond our present capacity" (pp.2-3), the purport being that Darwinists are hard-pressed to explain such machinery as resulting from "unguided material processes" (p.i).

The focus on design of the machinery, and the confinement to life's origin and corresponding cell structure, weakens the arguments to (p.93): "if intelligence is responsible for the origin of life,...[a]t the very least, we can know that such an intelligence is highly skilled in nano-engineering". The narrow consideration, on both sides of the arguments, of the origin of only biological structure, prompts further the authors' vulnerable: "The design hypothesis for the origin of life [though of course all of life is concerned] may ultimately be shown wrong".

There is no such uncertainty if instead of the organism's structure is considered its behavior, as I have tried to elucidate in these places and chiefly in my book. Unlike in the quotation (p.114) of Dawkins, "The illusion of purpose is so powerful that biologists themselves use the assumption of good design as a working tool", purpose is neither an illusion nor a supposition based on useful form, but a reality observable in all organisms in their activities aimed at survival. Behind these activities an intelligence can then be inferred.

Notwithstanding the preceding, the book's authors surely did an outstanding job within the confines. (See more on the puzzle of page 108 at the bottom of my web page [...]

15 people found this helpful

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WSV1975

Clear, concise, easy to read description of the failure of science to explain the origin of life on Earth

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2014

Wells and Dembski are smart, clear, thinkers and their writing reflects their no nonsense style of providing the essential arguments that have been tried, and failed, by science to describe and replicate the emergence of life from non-life. Describing how life came to exist on the planet in the first place is one of the key issues of our existence. Did a couple of rocks bounce together during a volcanic eruption 4.9 billion years ago and create a complex cell complete with DNA and interacting molecules and a genetic code? That is one tough problem to determine how that could have happened. No experiment, no hypothesis, no accident comes close to explaining how intelligent information was created in a self replicating cell in the first place. Wells and Dembski give a quick, readable overview of all the failed hypothesis and then make a good case for intelligent design of life! This is and interesting, quick, and comprehensions explanation of the status and problems of the science, and a defense of intelligent design that is accessable to the layman.

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How to be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not) Paperback – October 28, 2008

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