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

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Young, Matt, 1941-

Edis, Taner, 1967-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intelligent design (Teleology).

Creationism.

Evolution.

Physical Description:

xiii, 238 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Why intelligent design fails : a scientific critique of the new creationism

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Is Darwinian evolution established fact, or a dogma ready to be overtaken by "intelligent design"? This is the debate raging in courtrooms and classrooms across the country. 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 a mistake whose details highlight 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 : exposing Behe's mousetrap and Dembski's arrow / Matt Young

Common descent : it's all or nothing / Gert Korthof

Darwin's transparent box : the biochemical evidence for evolution / David Ussery

Evolutionary paths to irreducible systems : the avian flight apparatus / 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 : Dembski's complex specified information / Jeffrey Shallit and Wesley Elsberry

Chance and necessity : and intelligent design? / Taner Edis

There is a free lunch after all : William Dembski's wrong answers to irrelevant questions / Mark Perakh

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

Is intelligent design science? / Matt Perakh and Matt Young

Appendix : Organizations and web sites.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-8135-6032-2

1-280-54006-0

9786610540068

0-8135-3748-7

OCLC:

59717533