Why intelligent design fails : a scientific critique of the new creationism / edited by Matt Young, Taner Edis.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Young, Matt, 1941-

Edis, Taner, 1967-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Creationism.

Evolution.

Physical Description:

xiii, 238 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, [2004]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Grand themes, narrow constituency / Taner Edis

Grand designs and facile analogies / Matt Young

Common descent / Gert Korthof

Darwin's transparent box / David Ussery

Evolutionary paths to irreducible systems / Alan D. Gishlick

Evolution of the bacterial flagellum / Ian Musgrave

Self-organization and the origin of complexity / Niall Shanks and Istvan Karsai

The explanatory filter, archaeology, and forensics / Gary S. Hurd

Playing games with probability / Jeffrey Shallit and Wesley Elsberry

Chance and necessity

and intelligent design? / Taner Edis

There is a free lunch after all / Mark Perakh

Is the universe fine-tuned for us? / Victor J. Stenger

Is intelligent design science? / Matt Perakh and Matt Youn.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-222) and index.

ISBN:

081353433X

OCLC:

53038740