Rating: 
Summary: Am I missing something about the debate?
Review: Things we know to be true - The earth is approx. 4.5 billion years old. There is evidence of life on earth as far back as 3.5 billion years ago. The fossil record shows a progressive and growing complexity of life forms, most of which are now extinct. DNA is the basis for all life on earth and is subject to mutation (copying errors, duplications, omissions) in its reproduction The change in the genetic code of the DNA results in progeny being different than its parent commensurate with that change Those changes in the DNA can change the morphology of an organism. We have witnessed these so called "micro-evolutionary" phenomena happen in our lifetimes and is the explanation for why
we witness ring species of birds very near to each other that have slight differences. It's also why we have different breeds of dogs. It logically follows that if particular "breeds" of a species were to become isolated over a long period of time
the respective DNA changes in the population would continue to accumulate independent of one another
such that they will grow more and more dissimilar. In enough time, they could be considered different species. After all, it's just DNA. Changes in an species DNA that prove deleterious will be weeded out through natural selection, due to its rendering of the organism less fit to survive or reproduce.
Changes in a species DNA that aid in survival or reproduction will have a natural tendency to increase in frequency in the population.
This is logically inevitable, since a beneficial DNA change will enable more of those organisms with that DNA change to survive predation and reproduce more copies of itself. The fossil record indicates several primate species over the past 5 million years that indicate, with the passage of time, larger and larger brain
sizes and a closer and closer resemblance to modern humans. Either these things are true or they are not.
If they aren't, then we can't trust reality and observation, period.
If they are, then evolution as a theory has a good chance of being true.
Note, I don't say it proves evolution; but lends strong support to it as a theory.
Unless God created every species out of thin air. Am I missing something here?
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting read
Review: I had seen this book before, but had thought that the implication was that darwin was a criminal and was thus on trial.
I didn't realize that the author was a lawyer and was using
the term "on trial" more in terms of a legalistic style approach
of arguing rather than really accusing darwin of being a
criminal which had previously given me the impression that the book was written by a fundamentalist. I was unaware that evolution may be missing as much empirical data as this book leads me to believe. I have allways felt that
many people build a philosophy based on evolution and as such
evolution often comes off as a basis for a philosophy with many people. These philosophies tend to lean twards liberalism or libertarianism from my experience. For me evolution seems to portray the world as a cruel sort of struggle where every organism is sort of at war with every other organism.
many nature programs seem to find that showing snakes eating frogs, lions killing deer and so on is interesting to watch and portrays the natural world accurately. In other parts of the world or at different times the natural world is a bit more harmonious or actually boring and going for a hike in the desert or mountains to be with nature can at times be peacefull rather than horrorfying. I guess for me I have enough conflict at work or other places that I don't feel a need to be encouraged to think that conflict is just the natural order and should be accepted as such. Obviously it does exist at times and in places,
and many philosophical/religious/mystical questions may still remain difficult to answer fully or fully rationalize in this regard. However, the aim of this book is not to provide those answers but to bring attention to philosophical
underpinning of the scientific/intellectual world
which in itself alone is kind of fascinating. If evolution
(macro evolution) is not as compelling as the intelectuals would
have us believe then what cultural, professional,
egotistical, political, philosophical, or anti religious
forces have been at work to bring these views that they have
about ? I feel incouraged to read other books of this sort, though I do feel that there will allways be the possibility of people being intimidated by those who are experts or well informed who know more details about science who thus claim that other folk don't know what they are talking about due to lack of detailed knowledge or jargon.
Rating:
Summary: Life Changing
Review: It's hard to describe the sinking feeling you have when something you have taken as fact for so long is dismantled before your eyes. It is actually a bit scary. But eventually I learned it was O.K. to just let go of this faulty theory. This book started me on my way to the truth. You sheep in the Church of Evolution read at your own risk.
Rating:
Summary: If this is what you're looking for
Review: I sincerely recommend a glossy Jehovah's Witness book (called something like "Creation") over this one. You will receive the same logic from the fundamentalist writing, but you'll also get pretty pictures. Cheaper too, but you'll have to contend with repeated visits! This book was recommended to us by our professor, Dr. Will Provine, a friendly adversary of Johnson's. I was much more interested in getting the "other side;" a fuller picture of evolutionary theory than I had received from my own Christian upbringing, but picked up "Trial" for some light reading. Unfortunately, the style of logic is plodding. Coupled with scorn for sincere biologists is a dull-machete type of trudging through theories and possibilities. I guess I'm mostly disappointed. Had Johnson himself been less personally vested in refuting facets of the evolutionary body I might have been more interested; in fact, his credibility would have been so much greater. But his freely-admitted Christian slant, as well as the publishing of his book by an evangelical group, put me off right away. Ostensibly, Johnson is not so intent on foisting God upon his readers as he is in demonstrating evolution's "holes." However, the slogging attack upon the evidence would be much more convincing, or at least more interesting, if written by a person of science. His demands that natural selection be proved empirically are laughable, given that he is a proponent of creationism as well as an attorney. Seriously, flag down one of those walking ministers and ask them for that "big blue book." You'll enjoy it more, and you'll get what you paid for.
Rating:
Summary: Begining step in the balanced study of Evolution
Review: For Christian and non-Christian alike, anyone who wants a good 'starter' book to begin a search for the truth of man and the world's origins should start here.
Johnson writes very clearly with a structured thought devlopment and argument. The notes and bibliography offer a wealth of resources to further your study.
It's pretty obvious that most evolution proponent's books are one sided, and Johnson makes no hidden agenda that his he is against blind evolution or that he is a Christian. However, this book does touch upon some of the questions that have yet to be answered in order to prove the validity of evolutions. Questions that everyone should consider and weigh for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: The book stands up (natural selection in action?)
Review: The best support a book can receive is negative reviews by individuals who completely misunderstand the book's content. Darwin On Trial is almost in a class by itself on this score. Contrary to what many have said, Darwin on Trial is not an "Anti-evolution" book. On the contrary, it openly acknowledges that evolution may be the creative mechanism of "the designer." What the book really argues can be summarized as follows: 1. Evolutionary biology is largely theory without real facts to support it. The sweeping vistas of life's evolution from prebiotic soup to man spring from the imagination of creative writers, not empirical observation. 2. Darwin's theory of natural selection is largely vacuous because it doesn't explain the development of life. (Merely stating that the survivors survived doesn't tell us much about how these survivors first came to exist.) 3. Life is too complex to have arisen by chance. There really is little here that is controversial. While Johnson is a lawyer and this book is aimed at popular audiences, it was reviewed by scientific consultants for accuracy and is published by IVP, a respected publisher, not the Institute for Creation Research or some other crackpot organization. The reviewers who attempt to smear this book as creationist clap-trap typically misunderstand it. Here are the common misperceptions: 1. Johnson says evolution didn't take place. Wrong. His argument is with blind evolution via natural selection. 2. Johnson is evil. God sucks. Kill all the Christians. No rebuttal needed. (And incidentally, these reviews come pretty close to proving Johnson's remarks about Darwinist religion.) Darwin on Trial is a good book to start reading on the design controversy. Those with a more scientific bent can graduate to books by Behe, Debeski, Denton, Plantinga, and others. Make no mistake. THERE IS NO GENUINE INTELLECTUAL REBUTTAL TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN. I have been searching literature for nearly two years, and there isn't any criticism of intelligent design that stands up to scrutiny. Some have offered the "Evolution" of human languages as an example of how evolution occurs, but this notion is plainly idiotic (languages evolve through human interaction, not natural selection). But most simply attack ID as evil, act insanely confident in Darwinism without bothering to offer evidence for their position, and lump ID in with young earth creationism. Unfortunately, Darwinians have read their Kuhn, too, and are determined to defeat the paradigm shift through Nazi-esque political manuevers. But in the end, it won't work.
Rating:
Summary: A dose of common sense that can't be refuted
Review: Darwin on Trial was one of the pivotal books that launched the "Intelligent Design" movement. In truth, the book isn't brilliant - it doesn't need to be. Darwinism is fundamentally flawed, and simple logic (with a healthy dose of facts) shows how weak the theory really is. Johnson's major contribution is demonstrating how Darwinism isn't a scientific theory, but a clever rhetorical trick that dresses up religious notions as science. If you think about it, Darwinism is essentially meaningless. Darwin says, "The species that survive are the species that are best fitted to survive." That statement is objectively meaningless. But philosophers have dressed up this statement in fancy verbage to make it sound like a meaningful proposition when it reality it tells us nothing about how life developed or why. Johnson is not a Creationist (i.e., he doesn't believe that the world is 6,000 years or that dinosaurs roamed the decks of Noah's ark). The fact that establishment scientists feel the need to portray him as a Creationist shows how strong Johnson's argument really is. This is an excellent starting point for deeper explorations into ID.
Rating:
Summary: Due process, fair trial, guilty verdict
Review: This book is an important part of the process of "bringing to justice" (in a purely figurative sense, of course), the kind of "scientific" methodology that starts with debatable naturalistic assumptions so as to reach naturalistic conclusions, messing up the complex problems of empirical evidence and proof that arise in between. For neodarwinists like Richard Dawkins, human beings are just a bunch of selfish genes, the contingent by-product of matter, blind chance, and natural selection, without any claim to transcendent dignity. In spite of the fact that all appearance and all probabilities point to the contrary, there is really no sign of intelligence and purpose in the universe. There is no transcendent realm of meaning. If it is true that many darwinists still care about morality, in the end why should they?
Scientific arguments, from cosmology and biology, that point to a design inference, in the words of William Dembski, even when they have the strongest pedigree from the standpoint of complexity theory, design theory and probabilities theory, are easily dismissed and explained away as prima facie incompatible with the metaphysical naturalistic assumptions that lurk behind neo-Darwinism and evolutionary theory in general. This is so, even if the design inference, besides being scientifically testable, seems to be the only way to make sense of life, death, morality, law, politics, human rights, and so on.
For evolutionary theory in general, conscience, awareness, mind, feeling, love, hate, good, evil, are all subject to naturalist reduction, even when that is accomplished through conceptual "terrorist" strategies like "just so stories", "fact-free science", "naturalism of the gaps", "wishful thinking" and a conveniently distorted understanding of Occam's razor, that comes down to: "while we can keep speculating about natural and blind causes for all that is, we will keep ignoring all the evidence of intelligent design, no matter how strong and compelling".
Some of these strategies have been denounced by evolutionary scientists themselves. I am only documenting them. Information and intelligent design, even if clearly detectable and measurable scientifically, are completely ignored, for the sake of blindness and chance. All the difficult problems, like the big bang, the origin of the prebiotic soup, of life, of the DNA code, of irreducible complexity of molecular machines, the transition from micro to macroevolution, are solved with a single "terrorist" "just son" formula, that comes down to: "matter does its best and time does the rest". This way, "metaphysical naturalism" is as scientific as marxist "scientific" socialism. In my vew, emotions, beliefs, intuitions and pre-understandings can be a part of the scientific process, as long as they are stated clearly and publicly. For instance, although I am not into "scientific creationism" (Gish; Morris, etc), I think it makes more sense and is much more transparent to state clearly that one is trying to prove the truth of the biblical Genesis, than to engage in "scientific naturalism" while at the same time trying to hide the fact that one is trying to prove the truth of pre-given naturalistic assumptions. Douane Gish and Henry Morris, among others, state their case clearly, controversial as their case maybe. On the contrary, Dawkins, Lewontin, Dennett, among others, just leak it out here and there, although Dawkins has recently become more vocal about his deliberate "atheist agenda-setting and reality-framing objectives". That's why he has recently been severely criticised by evolutionary scholar Michael Ruse, among others, on the grounds that he has been passing out the "trade secret" of evolutionary theory (that is, metaphysical naturalism), thus giving more weight to the arguments of creationists and intelligent design scholars, when they complain that most of current evolutionary theory is nothing more than metaphysical naturalism in disguise, taught in public schools with public moneys, on the basis of state granted epistemological and material privileges.
I think that here also a "call to war" is appropriate. Not a war of violence, intolerance, prejudice and dogmatism, of course, but an intellectual war that preserves the integrity of the scientific method, willing to boldly go where the evidence leads, and that remains epistemically open to other areas of human thought and experience, like theology, philosophy, law and ethics. In this war, intelligence and information (complex specified) play a crucial role. Built-in bias and assumptions may play an important part, and may even be illuminating, as long as they are publicly and fairly assumed and debated.
In my opinion, the Intelligent Design Movement is the best response to the "scientific terrorism" of metaphysical naturalism that, in spite of its scientific weaknesses, has held the modern man captive. Isn't it "scientific terrorism" to teach a naturalistic evolution as if it was the absolute truth, while using school books with fake and fraudulent drawings, as Jonathan Wells has demonstrated in his "Icons of Evolution"? Isn't it "scientific terrorism" not to open the scientific journals to Intelligent Design Movement scholars, and then argue that their work is not peer reviewed? Isn't it "scientific terrorism" to treat neo-darwinian ortodoxy as a kind of "you-can't touch me ideology" and then stigmatize all dissidents as "creationists", the darwinian equivalent of heretic, apostate, cismatic, infidel, etc. ?
We have to fight metaphysical naturalism and "smoke it out" of its academic holes and caves and "bring it to justice" (or take justice to it) as Dr. Phillip Johnson started doing with his brilliant "Darwin on Trial". The true Enlightment Project is certainly more about connecting with the intelligent design, the Logos, the Word, the Light that shines in the dark, which gives order, intelligibility, meaning and purpose to the universe and our lives, than with connecting with the spiritual forces of blindness, selfishness, chaos and irrationality.
Rating:
Summary: Neo-Darwinians Are Losing...
Review: ...thanks to Johnson who's given us one of the best criticisms on a scientific fantasy: evolution. Telling us that a world that came out of nothing or what seems to be designed came from non-design is like telling me no one wrote this review!
Rating: 
Summary: Should you bother reading this book if you accept evolution?
Review: Probably yes. The review is not aimed at those american fundamentalist christians whose entwined socio-political & religous beliefs force them to adopt creationism, but at the rest of the world who do accept that undirected evolution has occured.
I'm not going to discuss any of the numerous distortions and logical flaws in Johnson polemic (which earn it the minimum 1 star rating), you can read them for yourself. As the poster-child of today's re-branded creationist movement Johnson is worth reading as an example of the type of argument this group presents. Its a nice try, I must admit, although the treatment of the fossil record is rather weak and desperate IMHO.
If you're not widely read on evolution and the fossil record to start off with, I would't recommend starting with this book. As one of the earlier reviewers said, it presents a rather distorted view of evolution, the fossil record and the scientific method. I recommed you read Maynard-Smith, a few Gould and a few Dawkins books before reading the out-of-context quotes Johnson presents. Michael Benton's (Benton NOT Denton), Gregory S Paul and Richard Fortey all provide excellent descriptions of the fossil record I heartily recommend you read.
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