Rating: 
Summary: "Mere Creation" Merely Fantastic
Review: ...A number of specialists laboring in different fields beganto come to the conclusion that the universe they perceived couldhardly have arisen by chance, but seemed at every turn to be guided by intelligent design. William A. Dembski, who managed to obtain advanced degrees in both mathematics and philosophy, brought together a number of these persecuted souls for a conference on the singularly unhip topic of creationism. The ensuing essays in "Mere Creation" are guaranteed to change the way you view the world. To glean some highlights from the numerous arguments favoring intelligent design of the universe: The Universe began with the Big Bang, the instant of time when all matter and energy came into existence in an enormous explosion. Despite the Universe's seeming complexity, it is governed by only a tiny handful of physical laws. Should any of these governing principles be altered in the slightest (a bit less gravity, for example), life could not exist. The odds of life arising naturally are infinitesimally small. Genetic mutation, the means for transferring traits so crucial to the theory of evolution, always results in the loss of information, making beneficial mutation much less likely. There is no evidence of interspecies evolution extant. If you have the slightest interest in how our Universe came about, or pondered the existence of God, or even simply distrust the dogma constantly shoveled around by tweed-jacketed academics who haven't had a new idea since Che Guevara's book came out, you'll thoroughly enjoy "Mere Creation."
Rating: 
Summary: Galileo would weep
Review: 19 people who are threatened in their faith attempt to attack science. Go re-see Inherit the Wind instead of these monkeyshines. Consider the wit and wisdom of the editors of the dustjacket: "For over a century, the scientific establishment has ignored challenges to the theory of evolution. " This just ain't true as anyone who's visited the talk.origins website would know. Evolutionary theory has *evolved* over the past century, with issues such as punctuated equilibrium, evolution in hot water springs, etc. coming to the fore. Despite the lingering ignorance of people who line the pockets of folks like the Institute for Creation Research, creation science is dead. Despite the political agenda of Dembski, Behe et al., their "intelligent design" "theory" is not scientific. One example of a problem: we know that all our earlier definitions of "intelligence" presumes some ethnic or cultural vantage point, and also includes a vantage point of species (although dolphins have been graceful enough to us to entertain us). This suggests that "intelligence" is a term that can give rise to privilged/marginalized dualities, and indeed, there must be some good deconstructions of intelligence tests. Make no mistake about it: we can tell certain things from a watch, we can tell whether or not a child can spell "apple." We can tell when someone is an outlier with respect to the norms of performance of certain skills requiring intelligence. There *has* been correlation between these skills and specific parts of the brain. But all these tests are inherently anthropocentric. Moreover, all these tests are performed in an ad hoc rather than post facto situation. Thus, there will always be the ambiguity of meaning in a search for origins based on "intelligent design." IOW, Behe and Dembski were buried by Derrida when they were suckling at their mothers breast.
Rating: 
Summary: A significant contribution to the ID movement.
Review: Despite it's lingering popularity evolutionary naturalism is a dead horse. The origins wars of the 21st century will be primarily fought between the Intelligent Design (ID) movement and the Biblical Creationist movement. The battle lines between the two have not yet been clearly drawn, and many within the ID movement today are biblical creationists. Christians and other traditional theists will find this volume worthy reading, but should be forewarned that not all the authors are interested in developing a Bible-based or biblically consistent theory of origins. The book is largely derived from the 1996 Mere Creation conference.
Rating:
Summary: Replaces A Small Mystery With An Even Bigger One
Review: Despite protests to the contrary, the authors are transparently trying to promote and "legitimize" a theological agenda under the guise of science. The theses of the contributors have already been debunked by several authors, most notably, physicist professor Victor J. Stenger. I strongly urge that his critiques of ID and those of other skeptics be consulted before spending money on and facilitating an intellectually dangerous and underhanded attempt to blow new wind into creationist sails.
Rating: 
Summary: A few comments
Review: I find it odd that Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents think that humans are so special and "highly evolved," when they're really not. I mean, they are, in the sense that we're at the top of the animal kingdom, but that's not saying much. Humans are still very imperfect and poorly designed in many ways, exactly would one would expect from evolution, not a supreme deity. In some ways a cockroach, which can live without food and water for almost a year and is almost impossible to kill compared to a human, is far more impressive.
For example, consider one of Behe's prime examples. Behe started much of the current debate with his book, Darwin's Black Box, so I'll use one of his major examples, and in fact it was the main lynchpin of his entire argument in the book about the case for intelligent design.
Behe specifically claimed that the flagellar motor couldn't work if even one protein was missing, and that therefore it couldn't have evolved by chance, since dozens of seemingly specific and complex proteins comprise the motor. Unfortunately, he had no basis on which to make that claim. When it was looked at, it was found that up to 1/3 of the proteins could be missing--not exactly the kind of precise and closely engineered mechanism that implies intelligent design.
It's the same with the blood clotting mechanism too. Behe claimed the very complex clotting process similarly couldn't have evolved because of it's complexity. Actually, the blood clotting mechanism has many poorly designed features and is really overly complex for what it actually does, which could be done much more simply had it actually been created by design. This is because it evolved piecemeal over time by means of evolution.
For example, the blood clotting mechanism has a serious defect in that it varies between males and females in exactly the opposite of what one would expect. In men, the coronary arteries are susceptible to atherosclerotic plaque build-up as a result of increased platelet instability and adhesion, which doesn't happen in females. Hence, men seem specfically designed to have heart attacks as a result of a flawed mechanism in the blood-clotting process involving the platelets, which when ruptured, release the nerve-transmitter serotonin which causes spasming and contraction of the blood vessels to limit hemorrhaging. Certainly males, who are more likely to be involved in physical pursuits and such things as warfare need efficient blood-clotting--but they don't need heart attacks, either.
The human brain is an area I know something about, that being my speciality, and the brain is another good example of poor design. The human brain is certainly very impressive in many ways, but it's far from perfect, and suffers from some serious design flaws. For example, tiny malfunctions such as strokes can cause huge or even fatal deficits in brain functioning. A good example is Broca's area on the lateral sulcus of the brain, which controls the motor movements of the face required for speech. It is a unilateral center and not even bilateral, and hence one stroke can knock it out completely and cause total aphasia and loss of speech. Small strokes in the occipital cortex can cause dyslexia, and very small strokes in the hippocampus, an area of the limbic system involved in memories, can cause devastating memory deficits. Again, not a very impressive picture for something that was supposedly "created by design" by a supreme deity.
The human skeletal system also has many serious design flaws. For example, many knee problems would be eliminated if human and mammalian knees bent the other way (as in birds). The reason this is the case is that a bird's knee is actually it's ankle joint, but the same thing could have been done for mammals. The joints of mammals are also too small for the stresses placed upon them, and increasing their size by only 20 percent would provide enormous relief from many syndromes such as arthritis and normal age-related wear and tear.
The heart is another organ that has a tremendously flawed design. Unlike the human brain, which at least has a few parallel backup circuits built-in, the heart has only two major conduction systems, the sino-atrial node and atrio-ventricular node, and a malfunction in the later can cause instant death and in the former can cause serious heart problems, although it's not fatal.
All of these imperfections and flaws in design are exactly what one would expect of biological systems, which aren't very efficient or well-designed, but are actually rather messy with either too many redundant features, as in the flagellar motor, or insufficient with poor redundancy and backup features, as in the human brain and the heart, or under-designed and under-engineered and so inadequate for their task, such as the joints.
Another way to think about this is, even if it were true that the molecular complexity of cellular mechanisms is so precise and specific that it couldn't have evolved by chance, that also implies that one very small flaw can bring down the entire system--which is often the case, too. So, is that an argument for intelligent design--or for evolution? It depends on whether you're concentrating on the things that were gotten right vs. the things that were gotten wrong. So at the very least, there is in fact no way to decide the issue in that sense. However, considering the designer was supposed to be God, who is supposed to be omniscient, the many flaws and single points of failure argue against that. (Even beginning engineering students understand not to design critical systems with single points of failure).
So, to sum up, why the intelligent design types think such a poorly designed organism is grounds for positing an intelligent agent behind the design is beyond me. If there is, then perhaps God is just a beginning grad student in a God university somewhere in hyperspace and we're his first major research project, because he really doesn't know quite what he's doing yet. :-)
But despite all these problems, I give the book 3 stars for trying.
Rating:
Summary: Good Overview: Bad Presentation
Review: I read this book last year but failed to write a reveiw back then. However, it is worth mentioning that this book is a facinating collection of scientific and philisophical papers on the creation of the universe and man. The only drawback is that you need to have a PhD in each field to understand what many are saying in their respective papers. I think a book like this aught to be rewritten in order to allow a greater reading audience to appreciate and enjoy its wonderful proposals.
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Summary: a layperson who could use some help...
Review: I'm beginning to read from both sides of the debate, but am a lay-person just beginning to take up and expose myself to the issues. In particular, I am now reading Dembski's *Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology* and Kenneth Miller's *Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution* (among others such as Behe's and the essays of others in *Mere Creation*, Lee Spetner's *Not By Chance!: Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution* and Richard Lewontin's most recent *The Triple Helix: gene, organism, and environment*) I don't consider myself strongly affiliated with any religious tradition in particular, though, in Dembski's broad definition of the term, I do consider myself a creationist, rather than an evolutionist (if considered in the terms of one who espouses "a purely naturalistic, purposeless process," rather than someone who is leaving open the issue of the extent to which organisms have changed over time). But, as a layperson, just beginning to gather information, I'm not able to address the kind of refutation to intelligent agency such as Kenneth Miller placed on the table. He spent a full chapter in his book refuting Behe's "irreducible complexity" assertions. And I see in my reading of this current Dembski book that Dembski has great confidence in Behe's ideas on this subject. Kenneth Miller's book came out at about the same time this current one of Dembski's did, so it's a refutation of a kind not specifically addressed in Dembski's book, or at least, I don't see Dembski addressing it at this point in my reading--I'm still in the midst of it (though I'm guessing since Miller's refutation has come out later, it likely has not been addressed). Or even if I find that Dembski does take the issue up, can folks further discuss it? Could someone familiar with Dembski's and Behe's work and Miller's refutation help me out here? Is Miller's refutation, specifically refuting the soundness of Behe's "irrudicible complexity" as a challenge to naturalistic evolution, adequate? If not, how is it not? Interesting issues... Thank you... Linda
Rating:
Summary: One thing for sure...
Review: It can no longer be argued that the only detractors to evolution are fundamentalists practicing pseudo-science. The range of subjects offered by numerous professional scientists, doctorates in various fields shows on just how many levels evidence can be seen against Evolution. Now if we can evaluate this hypothesis on it's own merits rather than as the current best guess (and therefore only acceptable solution)...
Rating:
Summary: A good crack at separating design theory from religion
Review: Mere Creation is an excellent collection of current thoughts on the weaknesses of evolutionary theory. This book has been put together with the specific objective of addressing just one question, "Is nature a result of design or not?" What a breath of fresh air to not have to wade through all the theological assumptions of an author to get to the meat of their argument. The fact that a group of scientists and thinkers like those in this book, coming from divergent philosophical and religious traditions can still look at the data and logically reason to the conclusion that design was involved in the origin of life is remarkable. That they could do it without invoking their theology is amazing. No, this book will not make the most conservative creationists happy and the most extreme evolutionists will smart at the conclusions. The people who will be made happy reading a book like this are those who appreciate logic, value data and want to understand the thinking on both sides of the creation evolution debate.
Rating:
Summary: A Smashing Uppercut to the Evolutionist
Review: This book is a blasting cannon in the face of the evolutionist. The scholars who contribute are very respectable and qualified to write on such matters. The contributors in the book include: William Dembski, William Lane Craig, Michael Behe, Hugh Ross, Phillip Johnson, J.P. Moreland, Henry F. Schaefer III, Robert Kaita, Jeffery Schloss, etc. The book is organized into five parts, each part covering a specific area of study. Part one deals with Naturalism, part two deals with Design Theory, part three deals with Biological Design, part four deals with Philosophy & Design, and part five deals with Design in the Universe. Many of the articles are very advanced and sometimes difficult to follow. Therefore, at times a background in the information at hand is needed. This book systematically tears down the misconceptions about Creationism and simply ruins any hope for an evolutionary position. Some of the stronger chapters were Dembski's titled "Redesigning Science," Bradley's titled "Nature: Design or Designoid," Meyer's titled "The Explanatory Power of Design," Schloss's titled "Evolutionary Accounts of Altruism & the Problem of Goodness by Design," and Moreland's titled, "The Explanatory Relevance of Libertarian Agency as a Model of Theistic Design." It is nice to see works like this available and it is even better to see the results that works like this have made in the scientific community (since this single volume received a great deal of response in the scientific community). If you want a solid text that deals with the falsities of evolution and does so in a very scholarly fashion then this is the best book available.
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