Rating: 
Summary: Up to the task on all levels
Review: It is hard to say which part of Perakh's book is more important!That dealing with the upper stratum of Intelligent Design (represented, for example, by Michael Behe and William Dembski) or that debunking the writing of the lesser proponents of the neo-creationism (such as Ross, and Heeren). Perakh is up to the task on both counts! When discussing the mathematic-looking notions by Dembski or the Irreducible Complexity thesis by Behe, this author demonstrates his ability to discern logical loopholes in the complex and seemingly more sophisticated theories of these generals of the ID movement; he is equally apt at showing the sometimes amazingly crude elementary errors committed by some holders of PhD degrees who stick to a discourse addressed to a less sophisticated readership. I have no doubt! This book will cause serious discomfort to some members of the anti-evolution crowd (although Perakh talks very little about evolution as such) including those who boast long lists of degrees and publications but use as their main arguments ad-hominem remarks and innuendos. Perhaps Perakh will now become a new target of their assaults, but this only will serve as a badge of honor.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to digest; arguments too hard-pressed
Review: One person's pseudoscience is another's insight into genuine reality. One researcher's probability is another's filtered-out assumption.
Explanatory Filtering is an easily misunderstood concept that can be oversimplified, as this book does. Actually, Probability is an interdependent category which may be estimated as a discrete but integral part of the possible causation of events. Probability is never stand-alone or calculated in a vacuum. That is a given whether ID or non-ID. Some authors and reviewers don't seem to grant this.
Evolutionary biology is a naturalistic form of science that postulates its own causal narrative for Origins as a substitute or alternative to Creationary biology, the supernaturalistic approach with just as much historical evidence for support. Both sides look at the same data. Just using different spectacles with various shadings and polarized lensing to arrive at their vision of things.
ID looks not only at the appearance of the present state of structures, but the present appearance of their past state (fossil record) and finds Abrupt Appearance, not gradual evolution, nor transitional forms (half-dog/half-cat, i.e. cog or dat).
Paley's watchmaker argument retains inherent validity that remains to be categorically disproved, logically or observationally. No one has ever had timepieces in their possession in evolutionary stages of mutation or natural selection by necessity or chance. Watches have always been watches, not half-watch/half-compass or second handed but not minute or hour-handed, or having a dial/watchface but no springs or inner mechanism, or vice-versa. Human ID made the concept of 'watch' and there have of course been micro-adjustments by the IntelSelection Process of designers. But no spontaneous macro-mutation of 'watchmaking'. Partial watches of course anywhere along the continuum would be no watches at all and in no one's pocket let alone in any jeweler's inventory.
Often the argument is made by naturalistic, atheistic,anti-ID camp that their side uses logic and genuine science while their opponents are masters of illogic and quasi-science. This makes it sound as if anti-ID is unbiased, using strictly rational arguments not based on assumptions, assertions or presuppositions. Of course, this is patently facetious and falsifiable as well as ironically illogical.
Finally, this book self-implodes just from the title and premises: UNintelligent Design. It acknowledges appearance tantamount to Design, equivalent to Design, intelligible as Design and labeled Design, but of course not the dictionary definition of Design. It's all a metaphor. A more accurate term for the theory would be Spontaneous Generation in Vacuo.
At least ID not only recognizes Design, but the obvious Intelligence behind it, non-metaphorically since we don't live in Metaphoria, but the Real Experienced Observable Historically Documented Universe.
All that can be asked of anti-IDers is to be more consistent and dispense with the metaphoring. If UNintelligence is what you want, time to jettison any notion or allusion or reference to Design. If apparent Design is not in fact Design, what is the proper term for it? If the watch was not designed, what was it? If one can believe a watch evolved UNintelligently, designlessly, then you can take by the same leap of faith UNintelligent nondesign of Artificial Intelligence of its own accord without Higher Agency of Causality.
UNintelligent Design is the ultimate Oxymoron of the 21st Century. What hath nonGod wrought?
Rating:
Summary: Intelligently debunking intelligent design
Review: Perakh has really done it! For years, I have been studying creationist exegeses designed to "prove" harmony between science and the Book of Genesis, and I have been studying intelligent-design pseudoscience. I thought there was nothing new under the sun. I was delighted, therefore, to find any number of original observations in this book. This book should become a handbook for anyone who wants to counter Ross and Schroeder, on the one hand, and Dembski and Behe, on the other.
Rating:
Summary: Badly needed
Review: Perakh is repetitive and verbose in places, succinct and to-the-roint in others. He's unnecessarily generous toward Behe (INHO) yet bitingly critical of Johnson (who fancies himself another Einstein, only smarter!). Despite the uneven prose and tone, Perakh provides a thorough analysis of ID arguments in their own terms, unlike other writers who too-quickly, perhaps, turn to more scientific language. This fills a gap that truly needed filling.
Rating: 
Summary: Highlights and lowlights
Review: Perakh isn't a dumb guy, and he does a great job with some of the intellectual issues, especially in regard to probability theory. What drags this book down, and what drags most books down that take a similar approach, is that Perakh spends far too much time mixing in ideology with science. Unfortunately, for the open-minded skeptics like myself, this does little to relieve the suspicion that there is an extreme amount of dogma on both sides of the issue. An exemplary of "how to do it right" is Stuart Kauffman, and I would encourage both sides of the intelligent design debate to take his lead and run with it. For those of us with open minds - humility and charity are preferred to pompous ridicule.
Rating:
Summary: Buy it. Read it. Loan it out to friends.
Review: Perakh organized his text into three sections. The first two take up issues of creationism, first Intelligent Design (ID), and second the earlier but still influential Scientific Creationism. Significant authors from each of these pseudosciences are addressed in their own chapters. William Dembski, Michael Behe, and Phillip Johnson are the ID representatives. Perakh's thorough demolishment of Dembski's thesis in Chapter 1 (the longest single chapter) alone is worth the price of the book. Not only was Perakh thorough, but understandable using clear language and reasoning. His many years as a teacher are obvious in these pages. I had expected that this would be the only highlight of the book, but there is a considerable amount of good reading in the seven chapter second section addressing the Creation Science authors. What I particularly enjoyed was that Perakh did not merely stay with the well known ultra-biblical-literalists from the Christian Right, but also addressed Judaic creationists in four chapters. In fact, there were only 3 out of the first 317 pages that I had any quibble with, and these (290-292) are the reactions of a specialist toward a generalist. I shudder to imagine what Perakh could do to any attempt on my part to write about physics. A "reader from Riesel, TX" wrote an unfavorable review of Mark Perakh's new book last December. Bill Dembski was "outed" as the "reader from Riesel, TX" by the Amazon (Canada) software glitch a month or so ago. I would have suspected this anyway, as "reader from Riesel" nee "Waco" is typical of Dembski's other responses to critics -- attack obliquely, avoid their actual positions, claim that their criticisms have been addressed elsewhere, or that you will totally answer them in your next book. If you have too much time and too much money, I suggest that you follow Dembski's advice to "read the primary literature." Then you should read Perakh's _Unintelligent Design_ to learn how you have wasted your time and money. Otherwise, just read Perakh's excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful design
Review: Professor Perakh has made a powerful argument in his usually convincing manner. The book presents a strong case against the popular view of natural evolution and theory of intelligent design. Perakh is an excellent science writer whose passion for his beloved field is self evident. Some readers may appreciate his obvious exclusion of religious counterpoints; an argument, however, could be made that such otherwise inclusion of an diametrically opposing view would have shown academic well roundedness. The book is an intellectually entertaining work. If a reader is open to a paradigm shift, Perakh is likely the author to do the shifting.
Rating:
Summary: Who Are They Kidding?
Review: Prometheus Press is one of the most militantly atheistic and ideologically driven presses around. And yet it purports that the following description of the book represents an unbiased assessment of Perakh's work: "This thoughtful and incisive critique from a veteran scientist genuinely concerned about the integrity of the scientific enterprise wastes no diplomacy on those who would see its purpose twisted to ideological ends." If there are ideological ends on the intelligent design side, there are no less ideological ends on the anti-design side, for which Perakh has now become a champion. Perakh's analyses of Behe, Johnson, and Dembski are in each instance defective. If simply by reading Perakh, you think he has decisively demolished intelligent design, you need to read the primary literature. Especially recommended here are John Campbell and Steve Meyer's _Darwinism, Design, and Public Education_ as well as Dembski's _The Design Revolution_, which answers many of Perakh's concerns.
Rating: 
Summary: Dawkins is more popularly engaging, illustrative
Review: Rigorous science. Impeccable logic at the detail level, given the author's assumptions. But I still prefer Richard Dawkins (Blind Watchmaker is a perennial favourite!) writing style and use of narrative and analogies. I like stories more than raw data and number crunching and statistical proofing, although some of the author's personal accounts were quite fascinating and memorable and the best part of his book without doubt (when he harks back to Central Asia, I am there with him in spirit). Perhaps a collabouration between Perakh and Dawkins could be considered? Dawkins seems to be on the cutting edge of knowing how to handle the serious threat and scientific rivalry of intelligence design. Although many of Hugh Ross' points from astrophysics evidence are hard to dispute about God's hand in the Genesis of life and its fine-tuned Terrarium we call Earth. the often-cited philosophic "Argument of Incredulity" (I can't imagine evolution did all non-random designing by itself! vs. I can't conceive of a Jehovah-Jesus Deity by supernatural miraculization designing by Himself!) cuts both ways.
Rating:
Summary: Anti-IDers will enjoy objections IDers will respond to soon
Review: The only nerve this book tries to hit is the humerus (the one near the funny bone of the elbow). But humorous or not, this book is taken at face value as valiantly trying to prove the improvable, establish the disestablished, demonstrate the undemonstrative, conclude the inconclusive. The writing was well done and the arguments were quite lucid. But Dembski's premises and traditional Creation's evidence for Intelligent Design are on the ascendancy, despite some of the chinks in the armor exploited by this quite competent scientist. All this shows is that, since Darwinianism has had since @1859 to make and remake and re-remake its case, ID needs a bit more time and fair opportunity since Johnson's and Dembski's books came out to respond to some of Perakh's valid points. Books like this can only be of help to ID to firm up its scientific, philosophic, historic, evidentiary and epistemologic case in defense against anti-Creation control beliefs that filter anti-ID evaluation of the same evidence for apparent design.
Book recommended, but only as companion to Johnson's 'Darwin on Trial', and Dembski's 'Intelligent Design' and Behe's 'Darwin's Black Box' and other recent publications showing anti-IDers on the defensive trying to shore up Blind and Unintelligent forces at work to no purposeful end developing all that is thought to have purpose at this end of the spectrum of life.
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