Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism
by Matt Young, Taner Edis
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Book Summary Information
Author: Matt Young, Taner EdisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-02-02
ISBN: 0813538726
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Book Reviews of Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism
Book Review: Among the Best Refutations to Intelligent Design Creationist Arguments Ever Published
Summary: 5 Stars
It should not be construed as irony that I am posting this review on Darwin's 200th birthday, nor should it be seen as a deed worthy of celebration, and yet, I admit that I am doing so in homage to his memory. One of Darwin's most important early sources of inspiration which led inexorably to his celebrated voyage as the naturalist aboard HMS Beagle was William Paley's "Natural Theology", the earliest - and in many respects, still the most successful exposition - of what could be described as Intelligent Design creationism. However, for the rest of his life, Darwin discovered compelling evidence that "Intelligent Design" could not be responsible for explaining the origin and current complexity of Earth's biodiversity; indeed his hastily-written "summary", "On the Origin of Species", is often regarded as Darwin's elegant refutation of Paley's arguments; a clever observation ignored completely by such latter-day delusional Intelligent Design advocates like philosopher and mathematician William Dembski and biochemist Michael Behe. Their inane, quite absurd, notions of inferring design as the product of an Intelligent Designer - one never specified in their "scientific" literature, but, in reality, the Christian GOD, which, they have admitted to in their religious writings - is rebuked consistently and concisely in "Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism". Edited by physicists Matt Young and Taner Edis, this slender volume still remains, almost five years after its original publication date, one of the very best refutations of Intelligent Design creationism I've read, and one which is still worthy of a wide readership, especially by educators and others who remain skeptical of the claims for "fairness" and teaching the "strengths and weaknesses of evolution" demanded emphatically by Intelligent Design advocates for the science classrooms of North America, and, increasingly, throughout the world.
Every major principle of Intelligent Design is subjected to intense, rigorous scrutiny by an international team of authors, representing disciplines ranging from mathematics to astrophysics, and from forensic anthropology to vertebrate paleobiology. Matt Young succinctly demolishes both Behe's mousetrap model of irreducible complexity and Dembski's probabilistic "arrow" model of specified complexity (Chapter Two). Biologist Gert Korthoff weighs in with a most compelling affirmation of common descent, successfully refuting Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Paul Nelson's inane objections (Chapter Three). Biochemist Matt Ussery, among Behe's most effective critics, shreds apart Behe's inane assertion of "Darwin's Black Box" (Chapter Four), demonstrating how "irreducibly complex" structures like the bacterial flagellum are not so irreducibly complex at all (An important point which molecular pharmacologist Ian Musgrave elaborates at length in a succeeding chapter (Chapter Six).). Last, but not least, vertebrate paleobiologist Alan Gishlick explains how the evolution of avian flight was the product of natural selection, and not the consequence of some irreducibly complex process (Chapter Five).
Four chapters are devoted exclusively to gross probabilistic and statistical abuse "designed" by the likes of Dembski and Behe. Forensic anthropologist and archaeologist Gary S. Hurd offers a brilliant refutation of Dembski's bizarre contention that his explanatory filter is used successfully now in forensic anthropology (Chapter Eight). Mathematician Jeffrey Shallit and marine biologist Wesley Elsberry demonstrate how and why Dembski's Complex Specified Information fails as an inane example of probabilistic reasoning (Chapter Nine). Taner Edis follows with a most insightful exploration (Chapter Ten) into the importance of chance and necessity in creating complexity, arguing persuasively that "Darwinian" processes - indeed, natural selection - are solely responsible for that complexity, not Dembski's ill-informed, mathematically flawed notion of a "design inference". Finally physicist Mark Perakh tackles Dembski's probabilistic abuse of the "No Free Lunch" theorems (Chapter Eleven), contending convincingly that there is indeed "free lunch" after all. Although the mathematical arguments may, at times, seem a bit obtuse in each of these chapters, these are nonetheless well stated, through clear, concise logic and prose.
This book concludes with two relatively short chapters devoted to the possibility of an anthropic principle in the formation and history of the universe and whether or not Intelligent Design creationism could be construed as science. Cosmologist Victor Stenger gives a thorough, quite persuasive, examination of several anthropic principles that contend that the universe was "fine-tuned" to permit the existence of life, especially sapient life like Earth's humanity. Not surprisingly, he concludes with a most resounding "No" (Chapter Twelve). The same harsh verdict for Intelligent Design creationism is stated succinctly, by Young and Edis, as a most lucid summary, discussing how one ought to define science (Chapter Thirteen). Collectively, the essays truly demonstrate that Intelligent Design creationism should be regarded not only as unscientific, but, especially, in light of the gross errors and distortions stated repeatedly by Dembski, Behe and their sympathetic colleagues and supporters, as a sterling example of mendacious intellectual pornography.
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