Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism

Rating:
Summary: polemic directed primarily at P.Johnson and ID
Review: _tower of babel, the evidence against the new creationism_
by robert pennock

It's a good book, well worth the time to read and study it. What makes it a significant contribution to the creation-evolution-design(CED) debate is first, its polemical character and second, its very well done organization. It is a polemic, philosophic critic of Intelligent Design(ID) with Young Earth Creationism(YEC) always in the background as a secondary target. It is very philosophic, not particularly scientific except as examples, the author is a philosopher of science and a professor. This teaching background shows in the examples and in the quality of the structure. He is writing to be understood by the general audience, he is desirous of convincing people by the strength and coherence of his arguments. He is a subscriber to the KISS principle, that is keep it simple stupid, as simple as necessary to get the point across but not simpler. He also is a textbook example of good transition between chapters and major ideas, with the idea of: tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them----evident and greatly adds to the discussion and the memorability of the ideas. One quality that i did not appreciate which will detract from the ability to recommend this book to its natural audience---college students from fundamentalist church backgrounds where the 7 day YEC principle is taught as an element of the gospel--is a mild almost nastiness underneath part of the book. I believe it is debate fatigue, from several university examples(adam's rib) he displays the problem that a teacher must have after hearing the same old not-correct rebuttalled arguments coming from each new introductory class. But to allow it to show is bad teaching technique and only will turn off his audience.

It is not the first book i would recommend to a person with a desire to enter into the CED debate. It is not a general introduction, it is specific to a straightforward analysis of why ID is not science. As far as i can see he hits all the big issues that i am aware of, and he introduced me to several i was not aware of, and added new spin to several i had thought about. The are several very interesting analogies that he follows throughout the text that are worth mentioning. The first is a little jab at the YEC, in fact it comes from a cartoon, that is the image of the tower of creationism. First with the battles within its walls, and second with the evolution of the principles taught by those on the ramparts of it. The second is the use of the tower of babel as a window into the YEC mindset and hermeneutic, this being a less talked about piece of theology than either Genesis 1-2 (creation) or even the Noachic flood. This culminates in chapter 3, but is rather disappointing in some ways, i think if he was a linguist or even a philosopher of language he could have taken the example to a much more important and persuasive point. For instance, show how pidgin into creole demonstrates a universal grammar, and at the same time this example is counter to the structure of evolutionary thinking in terms of nested hierarchies. I'm surprised he didn't push the example of the tower of babel more in either the theological, philosophic, or scientific directions. (for amazon review readers see the review below entitled "quite a mix" by a linguist for more detail on why the linguistic model was lacking substance)

From the top most level the book is a scientists defense of several very important elements in the philosophy of science that the author deems absolutely essential for modern science, and proposes that YEC and its descendent ID directly attack these principles.
The first and biggest fight is over theistic science and its epistemological attack on methodological naturalism. He goes back to this issue time and again throughout the book, it is his take home message. In this way the structure of the book is much like a suburban street, straight with just driveways off of it, you can always see where you are going, the side discussions are short and he gets back to the point quickly. This is a good thing in such a complex discussion where the general not specialized audience is in mind.
The second big point is that YEC and ID are not really about science, they are about morality. Specificially about the slippery slope to unbelief and societal problems. A related issue is the polarization and dichomotomization of the discussion into us and them, YEC and atheistic materialist evolutionary science. He discusses pieces at a time of these problems, done i think in a sympathic way with an eye towards convincing people not alienating them further from science and its underlying philosophy.

It is a good contribution to the literature, it achieves it's goals and demonstrates a teacher's heart, desiring that people think about the issues and maybe even by persuaded to believe as he does. I would read P. Johnson's _wedge of truth_ before this however, as the book really is a direct discussion with Johnson over his particular views on ID. You might loose some of the finer points if you are not acquainted with ID at all. Even if you are an old hand in the CED debate, you can find value in the book, not just for the organization but several of the extended examples (Raelians, SETI) are very thoughtfully done and bring up several angles on old issues that i have not seen elsewhere. So i hope this review encourages you to pick up the book, if you just want to skim the book, i would start with chapter 4 "of naturalism and negativity", where he is his best at philosophic discussions, and chapter 6 "deus ex machina" where his criticism of theistic science and defense of methodological naturalism reach a peak.

Rating:
Summary: Lame
Review: I checked the reviews of this book, and more than 1/3 gave this book less than two stars. Those who did praise the book gave every indication that they would praise ANY pro-evolution book, and many didn't even seem to have read it. That's sad, because this book is cited about as often as Miller's "Finding Darwin's God" as THE definitive rebuke of intelligent design. All Pennock does is try to discredit ID by saying they're the same as young-earth creationists and that they want to teach the Bible in schools (yeah, those Buddhist-leaning neuroscientists at the International Society of Complexity and Design want to teach Noah's Ark to school kids...right. I guess the revolutionary therapies for obsessive-compulsive disorder, strokes, depression, etc. are all really part of a plot by Ken Hamm. But then, Pennock is such a klutz he doesn't even seem aware of the ID-friendly developments in neuroscience; he isn't even aware of the full scope of anti-materialist activity in the various sciences, because he's fixated on the Scopes trial and evolution). Pennock gives little indication that he's even read ID material. His supposed proof that evolution is true, that language "evolves," is just dumb. This is a bad, bad book by a sloppy thinker.

Rating:
Summary: Quite a mix
Review: Two promises on the cover drew me to this book: how linguistic evolution illumines biological evolution, and evidence against the "new creationism." I found both of these promises overstated.

Positively, Pennock has done us a service in distinguishing "young earth creationists" from "old earth creationists", as well as the newer "intelligent design creationists" (like Johnson and Behe). Pennock does a marvelous job in documenting that not all lumped under the label "creationist" have monolithic views. Interestingly, when disagreement over details occurs in "our" camp (whether evolutionist or creationist), we call this healthy debate, but when it occurs in the opposition camp, we jump on this as a basic weakness in the opposition! Pennock usually resists this temptation, and generally keeps his writing at a pretty civil level, unlike some other reviewers of this book.

As a linguist, I've thought about similarities and differences between linguistic evolution (how languages change through time) and biological evolution. Pennock in Chapter 3 examines the less emotionally charged linguistic evolution, thinking "it might help people see the weaknesses of creationist arguments if they could examine them in a context in which they did not already have a preference for the creationist conclusions." Fine. But Pennock makes some questionable claims about linguistic evolution. First, that Darwinian descent with modification "applies in virtually the same manner to the origin of languages," and that the mechanisms of both are "much the same" Second, that the kinds of evidence that support both are also much the same.

Pennock, discussing inheritance, asks us to abstract away from "the concrete instantiation of biological inheritance. Forget about cell division and DNA molecules." But surely this obliterates critical distinctions! DNA molecules are composed of a limited set of discrete units, and under normal circumstances of transmission they are copied exactly. Language, in being passed from one generation to the next, is NEVER copied exactly. Also, people have conscious control of language in a way that organisms don't have over genes. For example, Tore Janson, in his very readable book "Speak: a short history of languages" (Oxford University Press) writes of Afrikaans, a descendant of Dutch, being deliberately established as a political act. Chinese immigrants to the USA can choose to raise their children speaking Chinese, English, or both. People can be multilingual; an organism never belongs simultaneously to two or more species. Language transmission differs from genetic transmission in major ways.

Also, the evidence is more direct for linguistic evolution than for biological evolution. We have written texts of over a thousand years of English, and more than that of Greek, to take just two examples. These speakers lived in the same location as their ancestors, passing on the language to their descendants. The connection between Old English, Middle English, and Modern English is clear. But can we find an evolutionist who says with certainty that any one fossil form was the direct ancestor of another?

Responding to creationists who say we've never seen evolution in action (i.e. a new species appear), Pennock says that if we have "not observed the natural origin of a completely new language," how can we expect to see a new organism develop? But Pennock is simply wrong here. In the last decades we've seen the birth of Nicaraguan Sign Language. I have already mentioned Afrikaans. Many others could be cited.

Pennock departs a lot from linguistics in the "linguistics" chapter, including the very surprising statement that gaps in fossil record are "what we expect to see."

When I read Philip Johnson and Michael Behe's first works, I am struck by their limited goals. Young-earth creationists have an ambitious agenda - to offer a complete alternative explanation of origins. But Johnson's "Darwin on Trial" has the more modest aim of showing that evolutionists have not proved their case, and their lines of reasoning are inadequate for the sweeping claims they make. Period. He does not propose any alternative to evolution, just exposes flaws. One of Pennock's major criticisms of Johnson is his lack of a proposed theory, but this is to criticize Johnson for not reaching a goal that Johnson did not set for himself. Is it legitimate to condemn a theory without proposing an alternate in its place? I think so. (Another book which raises many of the same issues and is extremely critical of natural selection is "The Great Evolution Mystery" by evolutionist Gordon Rattray Taylor (Harper & Rowe), a greatly undervalued book which Pennock unfortunately does not cite in his volume. Taylor also does not supply an alternative theory.)

Behe, the real father of the intelligent design movement, is mentioned often, and Pennock spends a good deal of time refuting one of Behe's analogies with a revised analogy (in the linguistics chapter, of all places), but the most telling argument Behe makes for intelligent design is more casually discussed.

Unfortunately, Pennock continues to propagate what I call the "extrapolation fallacy." Extrapolation is often valid: if a brick weighs 1.32 kilograms, we extrapolate that 100 bricks will weigh close to 132 kilograms. However, when we measure a football field as completely flat, we are not justified in extrapolating that the whole earth is completely flat. Extrapolating from small to extremely large in physics also gives you the wrong answer. In evolution, some evolutionists see variations in peppered moths and finch beaks and extrapolate from that to the assertion that one species changed to a different species. Is this a legitimate case of extrapolation? Many assume so, but this is an assumption and cannot be legitimately used as proof of evolution.

Pennock is a philosopher of science, which is both strength and weakness. It's a strength when it lets him make useful distinctions and give a broader perspective, a weakness when he goes into more detail on philosophy than the average reader would want to know. This is a book worth reading, if you read Johnson's "Darwin on Trial" and Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" as well.

Rating:
Summary: A tower of misinformation exposed
Review: The gap between science and religion grows wider when certain self-styled experts insist on finding evidence for their pre-conceived notions. As Pennock reports, the creationist view (including the re-clothed "intelligent design" form) is only a part of a vast Judeo-Christian base (even discounting other faiths- Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, etc. in the debate) and it is ultimately dependent on a literal interpretation of scripture. It is thus not necessarily the "bedrock" Christian belief that its proponents would like us to think. Many ardent Christians of the past (among them St. Augustine) were also supporters of whatever scientific truth emerged. Some even warned of making Biblical inerrancy a church dogma. The results of such dogmatic views (as well as the political climate of the times) led to Galileo's persecution and the embarrassment of the church of that period when it became obvious that he had been correct in his support of Copernicus.

It is unfortunate when one extreme part of a religious faith becomes so vocal that it seems to dominate and speak for the whole community. The literal interpretation of Holy Texts can easily slip into bibliolatry, or worship of the book (a form of idolatry.) We recently saw the most unfortunate results of such radical theocracy in revolutionary Iran and in the terrorist actions on September 11, 2001 (both based on Islamic fundamentalism), but they also include the very "Christian" Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials of the past. Pennock has done us all a great favor in exposing the tendency of a few to try to take over and speak for the many.

This is a well-reasoned and excellent book with only a few errors that I could discover. It should be read by many, but unfortunately people who are of a similar mind will probably mostly read it.

Rating:
Summary: Evolutionists "in action" means great fun!
Review: This book is yet another attempt to refute creationism, both old and new. However, it suffers from some of the same basic flaws present in Pennocks' edition on New Creationism from MIT, a collection of articles put together in a controversial way. Im refering to those articles that also attempt to refute creation.

First of all, any refutation of creationism will only have a claim to viability if it comes up with a convincing account of how matter "evolved" from non-matter, and how life evolved from non-life. All attempts so far have proven useless. It is always a motive of great fun and enjoyment for a creationist to observe evolutionists "in action" in those fields. If one wants a good laugh thats the place to go. It is even better then watching Eurosport's WATTS ZAP, with all those pictures of funny sports moments.

It is true that Pennock attempts to give "evidence" of evolution, specially in chapters 2 and 3, and tries to criticize creationists arguments. He has a problem, however. Before he refutes intelligent design, something he calls new creationism, it would be good if he could refute old creationism. Old creationism has been "refuted" many times, but it has never been refuted once and for all.

It is regretable that Pennock never gives one single example of an "information generating mutation", nor is he able to explain how natural selection, which inherently removes unnecessary traits, is able to generate more information rich DNA. Well, maybe we should not expect him to boldly go where no man has gone before.

We still don't know where are the all the transitional forms we should expect in today's fauna, in the fossil record and in molecular biology. Besides, Pennocks criticism of new and biblical creationism is incredibly poor and naive, since most of his arguments show an amazing lack of knowledge of creationists positions such as those of Kem Ham or Jonathan Safarti. In this respect, this book is clearly like the MIT collective opus, where much of the criticism that is directed against biblical creationists rests on "straw man" versions of it and ignores convincing answers that have been available for some time now in many earlier books by creationits such as John and Henry Morris, Duane Gish, Ken Ham, Jonathan Safarti and many others.

It is time that darwinists take some time to read the authentic creationists' arguments, instead of criticizing versions of creationism that are not found in the most prominent creationist authors and that are probably the creation of darwinists themselves.

Rating:
Summary: A Glaring Error
Review: Robert Pennock is either a complete fool or such a devout Darwinian fundamentalist that his willingness to pen such twaddle is simply unimaginable. While there are many errors in the book that can be argued, there is such a egregious one in chapter two that I personally cannot believe the author made it unknowingly. If he did, then he needs to go back to philosophy 101; and if he didn't, then the implication is that the truth is fungible as long philosophical naturalism wins out.

The key issue is that in chapter two Mr. Pennock defines evolution as a "purely random process" or "being limited to natural selection". In other words Mr. Pennock has given casual power to chance. Chance having casual power has been refuted philosophically, scientifically and mathematically so many times that it is no longer even debated anymore. Top evolutionary biologists like Stephen Jay Gould have even stated that chance is NOT the operative force in evolution. A tacit admission that chance is bad science, everybody seems to finally be getting the picture expect Mr. Pennock, but alas here is the greatest conundrum, maybe Mr. Pennock did get the picture and has followed the logic through. If chance is not a casual power than what is?????????

But first let's explore just why chance is antithetical to science and philosophy. If chance is allowed to reign then it reduces scientific investigation not only to chaos but to sheer absurdity. Half of the scientific methods is left impaled on the horns of chance. The classical scientific method consists of the marriage of induction and deduction, of the empirical and the rational. Attributing instrumental causal power to chance vitiates deduction and the rational behind it. Chance is manifest irrationality, which is not only bad philosophy but horrible science as well.
Perhaps the attributing of instrumental power to chance is the most serious error made in science and cosmology. If it isn't than it is certainly the most glaring one. It is serious because it is patently false assumption that, if left unchallenged and uncorrected, will lead science into nonsense.

The outrageously egregious error Mr. Pennock made is that he has given the tacit assertion that we can have effects without causes. Science, Mathematics and Philosophy do not allow uncaused effects because uncaused effects represent a contradiction in terms. The idea of an "uncaused effect" is analytically false. It is a nonsense statement, akin to speaking of square circles and married bachelors. An "effect" is by definition something produced by an antecedent cause. If it has NO CAUSE, it is not an effect. If it is an EFFECT, then it has a cause.

While the debate of the origin of man will continue the belief that chance has causal power is dead and buried, just as this book or any book that triumphs that erroneous belief; should also be buried.

Rating:
Summary: You have to be kidding
Review: A book of hope in a world of reason.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for Christians
Review: As a Bible-based, Christ-centered, Spirit-filled believer, I find Tower to be blessing! As a scientist and educator, I agree with Pennock's logic, his objective presentations of creationism and his exposition of evolutionary science.

Pennock successfully deconstructs the various forms of creationism, yet always remains respectful toward religious faith. He explains the fallacies involved in creationist arguments that challenge evolution and exposes the socio-political agendas of the more radical fundamentalist creationists. He then demonstrates that recently developed "intelligent design" approaches are just another form in the evolution of creationist ideas. As a creationist theory, I have always liked the intelligent design approach, and after reading Tower, I understand it better. While I have yet to understand how the Genesis account is best interpreted, Pennock has contributed to my grasp of the current controversy.

Regarding evolution, Pennock explains what evolution is and is not, then demonstrates the critical importance to democracy of keeping science education free of supernatural explanations and keeping creationism out of the science classroom, where it absolutely does not belong.

Tower is essential reading for concerned Christians who are not comfortable with radical creationist scare-tactics yet lack the information needed to effectively refute their attacks against evolution. Also, Pennock is a peacemaker in that he shows that evolution itself is not contrary to faith, although many mistakenly justify their unbelief in terms of materialistic naturalism. Most importantly, Pennock shows that Christians need not fear evolution and for this I am eternally grateful, no pun intended.

Rating:
Summary: God did it!!!
Review: The title of this review refers to the deus ex machina of explanatory theses in pseudo-science. (also referred to by Pennock as the "poor person's explanations," being one-size-fits-all) This is undoubtedly the best book I have yet read concerning the ironic debate of Creationism vs. Evolution. Like "The Triumph of Evolution" (which you can also find my review of onsite) it is NOT a book written to undermine theism, religion, or Christianity. This is to refute the ideas that supernatural creation can be scientific or subject to science, or that it should be publicly taught parallel to evolution in schools as being equally meritorious, (as if creationist propaganda was anywhere close to being up to par with evolutionary biology), or that evolution undermines morality, and last but not least the evolution=atheism equation. Evolution is "godless" in the same way that plumbing is godless, as he shows it. Is the Bible in danger because of the fact that a plumber does not invoke a divine agent to explain clogged pipes? Neither are against god--they can't be because neither of the fields mention anything of god. It was the creationists who said it, not "us." Similarly, to teach Genesis in a biology class is inconsistent. Should a young physics student, upon observing light split into colors through a prism, be taught an "alternative" theory of God's covenant and creation of the rainbow?
It is noted how Creationism itself has evolved. Once restricted to "young-Earthers," now Christians like Michael Behe bring forth the slyly euphimistic "Intelligent-Design Theory." And you see this is really clever because they don't make any explicit reference to religion here but propose only that information, such as that in DNA, was teleological designed by some intelligent Other.
It is in the interest of anyone to not want Creationism in the schools. Regardless of your take on theism/religion these people are taking their faith, revelation, and interpretation of scripture into pedagogical indoctrination. Anyone who values religious freedom should oppose forcing a fallacious choice on students in a soteriological duel between the falsely mutually exclusive evolution and creation.

Pennock is thoroughly patient and philsophical..
Creationists! This one's for you!

Rating:
Summary: Great book about the nature of science
Review: This is an excellent book! For a good laugh, read the creationist (one star) critiques below. Dense, humorless and rambling. Shake your head in amazement as they mistake analogy for explanation! They're wonderful! These lunkheads do so much unintended good, forcing us to carefully examine what constitutes good science. Ah, when in doubt just say "God did it!" Problem solved, lets get something to eat. I can't wait until ID makes it into forensic investigation. "Sir, the crime scene is irreducibly complex, therefore we can safely say that God is responsible for this robbery".