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Rating: 
Summary: Depth, Breadth and Clarity
Review: "Uncommon Dissent" is a great read. The contributors to the volume provide critiques of the neo-Darwinian synthesis from a variety of angles. Accordingly, the best way to read the book is to look at the table of contents, flip to the back to read about the contributors, and then choose the chapter that seems the most compelling. This is the way I've read it and have found it entertaining and rewarding. Besides the great look, feel, and organization of this volume from ISI, readers will get a bracing charge from the sheer controversy inside. Challenges to Darwin have long been stock material in religious bookstores, but since the publication of "Darwin on Trial" well over a decade ago, the critiques have become increasingly sophisticated. "Uncommon Dissent" captures much of the best critical material. Although many of the chapters are worth special mention, the best is the last, which is a reprint of a famous Commentary essay by David Berlinski. His arguments are rhetorically devasting and come from a non-religious point of view. As much fun as his piece is to read, the letters written in response to it and his responses to them constitute a spectacular battle of the brainiacs with Berlinski returning fire magnificently. If you are interested in the "evolving" controversy over biological origins, "Uncommon Dissent" is an indispensable addition to your collection.
Rating:
Summary: Uncommonly Excellent . . .
Review: "Uncommon Dissent" is a great read. The contributors to the volume provide critiques of the neo-Darwinian synthesis from a variety of angles. Accordingly, the best way to read the book is to look at the table of contents, flip to the back to read about the contributors, and then choose the chapter that seems the most compelling. This is the way I've read it and have found it entertaining and rewarding. Besides the great look, feel, and organization of this volume from ISI, readers will get a bracing charge from the sheer controversy inside. Challenges to Darwin have long been stock material in religious bookstores, but since the publication of "Darwin on Trial" well over a decade ago, the critiques have become increasingly sophisticated. "Uncommon Dissent" captures much of the best critical material. Although many of the chapters are worth special mention, the best is the last, which is a reprint of a famous Commentary essay by David Berlinski. His arguments are rhetorically devasting and come from a non-religious point of view. As much fun as his piece is to read, the letters written in response to it and his responses to them constitute a spectacular battle of the brainiacs with Berlinski returning fire magnificently. If you are interested in the "evolving" controversy over biological origins, "Uncommon Dissent" is an indispensable addition to your collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Creationist Intellectuals - A New Oxymoron
Review: As with most creationist books, there are simply too many incredible blunders to list them all; but some of my favorites are:
Dembski is known for his paranoid persecution-complex. (At a recent convention, he accused one skeptics organization, CSICOP, of ruthlessly suppressing his opinions; but it was CSICOP that had invited him to speak!!!)
Demonstrating his paranoia here, Dembski claims that atheistic Darwinists hold a monopoly on biology education. (xxiii) Portraying himself bravely fighting an atheistic monopoly may feed Dembski's ego, and his paranoid, martyrdom pose plays well with evangelicals, but his claim is either delusional or dishonest. Thousands of parochial, Bible, charter, and home schools explicitly reject Darwinism, and even many public school teachers deliberately omit evolution in their classes.
More melodrama: "[E]volutionists (ruthlessly) portray critics as morally and intellectually deficient. . . . ad hominem arguments aimed at destroying the critic's credibility." (xxxiii) So? Many of Dembski's essays use exactly the same sort of arguments. Typical, creationist hypocrisy.
Dembski, a seminary professor, denies that ID is a religious crusade. (xxii) So why is it, that 12 of the 16 contributing "intellectuals" rely explicitly (sometimes almost exclusively!!!) on religious-type arguments???
Koons, Sisson, Behe, and Berlinski raise the burden of proof issue, collectively arguing that human intuition of design should be PRESUMED true, until evolutionists provide INDISPUTABLE evidence on every detail, because history shows that human intuition regarding design in nature is highly reliable. Huh???
History shows exactly the opposite! For millennia, early ID-advocates (ID-iots) said sunrise, sunset, volcanoes, earthquakes, rainbows, floods, eclipses, and many other natural phenomena were caused by direct, intelligent intervention. Human intuition has historically been UN-reliable about detecting design in nature. Second, the proposed standard of proof would also reject gravity, relativity, atomic theory, germ theory, thermodynamics, etc., so the standard is obviously ID-iotic.
Johnson claims: "If science does not investigate the purpose of the universe, then in scientific terms the universe effectively has no purpose." (37) Huh??? That's completely ID-iotic, like claiming: "If baseball fans don't watch football, then football doesn't exist."
Schuetzenberger uses mathematics to support ID. So what? 19th-century Christians used mathematics to "prove" the flat-earth theory!
Schuetzenberger claims that Darwinists ignore the possibility that causes may interact with one another. (46) Wrong! Co-evolution, symbiosis, and the Red Queen effect are important evolutionary concepts, all involving causes interacting with one another. Typical, creationist ignorance.
More ignorance: "Functional complexity requires a space within which preliminary analysis has assessed the set of all possible trajectories." (47) Wrong! Engineers routinely use computerized algorithms incorporating Darwinian mutation-selection processes to produce functional complexity, without conducting Schuetzenberger's ID-iotic "preliminary analysis."
Pearcey and others claim that Darwinism led to the eugenics movement, laissez-faire capitalism, and Hitler. But they all conceal the fact that Christians, undoubtedly ID-advocates, were the enthusiastic majority in all three movements! Typical, creationist dishonesty.
In fact, Dembski, Behe, and Johnson frequently repeat some of Hitler's arguments from Mein Kampf in their own statements!
Pearcey, especially, is blatantly dishonest, implying that Thornhill's study of rapists "justified" rape. Thornhill actually condemned rape and proposed sensible strategies to reduce it! Why is it, that self-righteous, moral crusaders are frequently the most dishonest? Typical creationist.
Sisson claims that evolutionists unfairly arranged the Scopes trial to prevent evolution itself from being cross-examined. So? Perhaps not in Scopes, but evolution WAS cross-examined in the 1981 McLean case; and that judge ruled the creationist arguments patently religious, not scientific, despite testimony and affidavits from ID "experts" Kenyon, Wickramasinghe, and Geisler.
Tipler argues that ID-iots should not have to pass standard peer review, because it suppresses radical, new ideas. As proof, Tipler names a few scientists whose radical, new ideas were not only published, but eventually won them Nobel prizes. Huh??? Doesn't that prove that radical, new ideas DO get published???
Tipler recommends having "giants" perform peer review. Fine! Boltzman, Einstein, and Hawking all endorsed evolution. Is that enough? Wait, there's more!
In the 1989 Edwards case, 72 Nobelists endorsed evolution and rejected creationism. 72! Is that enough? Wait, there's still more!
In 2004, four Nobelists from Texas wrote to the Texas textbook committee, endorsing evolution and explicitly rejecting ID. Tipler is either clueless about the fact that the "giants" have already spoken, or dishonest in failing to acknowledge it. Typical creationist.
Behe always tells people about the flagellum, "because when they hear of it, they quickly realize it's a machine and that gives a strong indication about where it came from." (141) But Denton blasts Behe's ID-iotic argument. (160)
Behe argues that modern biologists and Haeckel both believed that embryology helps prove evolution, but Haeckel used faked data, so modern biologists must be wrong too. Huh??? That's completely ignorant, like arguing: "The inscription on the `James ossuary' allegedly indicates Jesus was real, but the inscription was forged, therefore Jesus was not real." Hello! There's other evidence in both cases that needs to be considered! Duh!
Hirsch rejects Darwinian evolutionary theory, because it did not anticipate significant, new developments, like horizontal gene transfer. Gee, I guess we`ll also have to reject gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, etc., since they also failed to anticipate significant, new developments.
Berlinski relies heavily on the Argument from Personal Incredulity, the same argument that "proved" that volcanoes, earthquakes, eclipses, etc., required direct, supernatural intervention. That's "intellectual"???
Berlinski took Monod's quote about ultimate causes and Dawkins' quote about principal causes, two completely different topics, and concluded that evolution was impossible. That's like taking descriptions of two different parts of an elephant and concluding that, since the descriptions don't match, elephants don't exist. Typical ID-iocy.
I did agree with this: Johnson regards young-earthers as kooks and recommends keeping them OUT of science classrooms. (39)
ID-iots don't like being called "creationists," but their similar arguments, their endless, arrogant moralizing, their dishonesty, and their lack of relevant credentials, make it entirely appropriate to so label them.
If ID-iots genuinely want to differentiate themselves from young-earth kooks, they need to learn that being an expert in one field doesn't automatically make you one in every field. Duh!
Rating:
Summary: Depth, Breadth and Clarity
Review: In any field marked by an endless proliferation of droning monographs and marred by polemical debates, a collection of honest and well-thought essays written by various authors is always refreshing. Each contributor has a unique perspective, and because the essay format allows each one only limited space in which to express his or her views, the writing tends to be clear and punchy. And if the collection is skilfully compiled, it can reveal a broad spectrum of viewpoints while baring the cutting edge of the field in full gleam. Uncommon Dissent realizes all of these advantages. Uncommon Dissent is divided into four sections: (1) A Crisis of Confidence, (2) Darwinism's Cultural Inroads, (3) Leaving the Darwinian Fold, and (4) Auditing the Books. The oddly-numbered sections contain three essays each; the even ones contain four each. Section 1 deals with the question of why an increasing number of people question Darwinian premises and conclusions. Section 2 deals with the effect that these premises and conclusions have had and are having on society and culture, largely through the offices of public and higher education. Section 3 deals with the intellectual transformations of three contributors (Behe, Denton and Barham) who have embraced and rejected Darwinism at different times in their lives. Finally, Section 4 - in my opinion, the section of greatest scientific and philosophical interest - deals with the internal and external consistency of Darwinism, offering more detailed analyses of the profoundly circular relationship between Darwinian premises, models, and conclusions. The highlights of the book will be different for everyone. For me, they are too numerous to list here. A few of my favorites: an interview with world-class mathematician Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, whose intelligence positively glitters off the page as he succinctly explains the mathematical failings of Darwinism vis-a-vis the critical dependence of biological science on various branches of applied mathematics (Section 1); an eye-opening expose on the failings and inequities of peer review by physicist Frank Tipler (Section 2); the wars fought between religious faith and scientific orthodoxy in the minds and careers of Michael "irreducible complexity" Behe and Michael Denton (Section 3); and every one of the essays in Section 4. Of particular interest to me in Section 4 were Roland Hirsch's evaluation of findings from the Human Genome Project, and an uncommonly penetrating discussion in Chapter 13 (Christopher Langan) of problems and potential solutions in the modeling of causal processes. Finally, I think it appropriate to caution potential readers against overly pejorative, polemical or dismissive reviews. The kind of person who could write that kind of review regarding this kind of book is the kind least likely to have given it a fair reading, or having read it, to have fairly evaluated its contents. Accordingly, the complaints and motives of anyone impugning the contributors' intellectual honesty or denying the scientific relevance of their analyses should be viewed with suspicion. Not only do some of its authors write eloquently and with stunning honesty regarding their personal intellectual journeys, but the book also contains original and deeply-thought analyses of the models, methods and reasoning processes commonly employed by Darwinian scientists. Such analyses are both original and scientifically relevant; if they are not classified as "science" in the most restrictive sense of the word, then the word should be rethought, and in fact this point is one of many that the book convincingly makes. As those familiar with the evolution controversy are already well aware, the Darwinism-versus-ID debate is politically supercharged. As in all politically-charged debates, those with the heaviest axes to grind are often the first to leap onto their own side of the balance in hopes of flinging the other side right off the beam. Obviously, this is not how scientific or public opinion should be shaped; meaningful opinions are formed not through the preemptive closing of minds by those whose minds are already closed, but only after close attention has been paid by all concerned to all sides of the debate. It would be well to remember this before giving much weight to the opinions of people who are plainly attempting to discourage a fair hearing for the opposition, especially when some of "the opposition" do not so clearly fit that description. This book is worth every one of the five stars I'm giving it. If I had to choose one book from the entire library of books written on the "anti-Darwinian" side of the evolutionary debate - and after reading chapter 13, for example, I'm not so sure that "trans-Darwinian" wouldn't be a better descriptor - this would be it. It offers the clearest writing, the greatest variety of perspectives, some of the deepest insight, and holds the reader's attention like few others in the genre. Very highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: An Important book
Review: This book is an excellent collection about professors and others who
have doubts about Darwin. One of the best chapters was the eye-opening
expose of the many failings and inequities of peer review by the well
known physicist Frank Tipler. He shows that peer review, as we know it
today, has become wide spread only since World War II. Before this the
editor often determined what was published (and even in this case the
review was designed to weed out only clearly "crack pot papers").
Tipler notes that pre World War II most papers sent to journals were
published, partly because not that many were submitted then and, those
that were, were often written by dedicated scholars. Few professors
published much until the early 1950s because only then did universities
begin to realize that their prestige depended less on the quality of
their teachers than the scholarly reputation of those professors. From
this insight developed the publish or parish mentality. As a result,
many journals were flooded with papers, some written largely to allow
professors to get tenure or promotions. Now, instead of teaching five to
six courses per semester, many professors teach two to three (this is
true of most universities where I have taught) to give them time to
write papers (most of which, even when published, are rarely, if ever,
read). As a result, many more bad papers are weeded out by peer review
but, Tipler explains, many very good papers are also rejected. He
documents numerous cases where papers that later won Noble prizes or
were major breakthroughs were rejected one or more times by the peer
review process. He documents the fact that, all too often, peer review
amounts to pygmies standing in judgment of giants (page 116). He also
documents the fact that ideas in science papers that openly support
Judaism or Christianity, such as Intelligent Design, are likely to be
rejected out of hand. Yet critiques that support intelligent design have
a much better chance of being published if ID concepts are called by
another name and even have been indorsed by the leading Darwinists. His
examples used to support this claim are excellent and, in my experience,
are common. In short, lack of peer review hardly proves an idea wrong
and those who reject ID because openly ID papers have not yet appeared
in the peer reviewed scientific literature are using a rhetorical ploy
to argue their mistaken point. Actually, many papers in support if ID
have been published (I have published several dozen) but they can not
openly support ID (otherwise they would not be published).
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding-Impressive in its intellectual depth
Review: This book is better than I could have hoped for. There are a variety of different topics relating to Intelligent Design (ID) covered here and the depth of thought is impressive. It is really impossible, in the space of a short review, to cover the richness and breadth of everything in this book.
Particularly enjoyable for me were the essays that don't deal with ID or Darwinism as such, but with the related issues, such as argumentation tactics and intellectual culture. Edward Sisson analyses the rhetoric and argumentation tactics of the anti-ID/pro-Darwin crowd and shows how they are often invalid and unfair. Frank Tippler takes on the peer review system (which is often used as club to beat on ID), and shows how it is both historically anomalous and is used to enforce ideological correctness. Dembski does a nice job of showing how, often, supposed scientific refutations of ID cited by its opponents amount to little more than intellectual bluffing. When the bluff is called there is nothing behind it. Rob Koons has an excellent essay on why the burden of proof should lie with those who wish to deny the basic human intuition towards accepting design. He also lays out nicely how the Darwinian crowd has actually done very little in terms of meeting this burden of proof, whatever their claims may be.
Also very interesting and encouraging is the fact that, contrary to the (bogus) claims regularly made by Darwinists, the contributors to this book do not display a uniformity concerning religious beliefs. They run the spectrum from evangelical Christians like William Dembski and Nancy Pearcey to completely irreligious folks like David Berlinski and Christopher Michael Lanagan, who proposes the idea of a non-supernatural, teleological universe. Also of particular interest in this regard is the section of the book in which Michael Behe, Michael Denton, and James Barham tell their personal stories regarding how they came to question the truth of Darwinism. Of these three, only Behe seems to hold to any kind of serious tradititional religious belief.This spectrum of varying beliefs gives the lie to claims often made by the anti-ID crowd that ID is nothing but religious creationism is disguise, and that IDers are nothing but rabid fundamentalists who wish to overthrow America and establish a theocracy. Such claims reveal more about the anti-religious fervor of many Darwinists than they do about intelligent design.
The interview with Marcel Schulzenberger, and Berlinski's "The Deniable Darwin" are both fun reads, and particularly fun are the critical responses to Berlinski's article by many in the mainstream scientific community and his responses to their criticisms. This part of the book also reveals Berlinski's sense of humour in contrast to the often humorless, mean spiritedness of many of the most prominent Darwinists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. In fact, for an excellent example of the difference in substance and tone between the output of IDers as opposed to that of Darwinists, I highly recommend reading this book alongside of Niall Shanks' "God, the Devil, and Darwin." The one is thoughtful, substantial, and well reasoned while the other amounts to little more than a mean spirited, often dishonest, polemic. Shanks' book also provides an excellent example of what Edward Sisson discusses in his chapter of the book.
I'm not overly hopeful about the ultimate success of ID, given our present cultural and intellectual climate, but books like this show that even if ID does fail in the end, it won't necessarily be because it's proponents have failed to make an impressive, well-reasoned presentation of their perspective. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: What dissent?
Review: This collection of essays suggests a wish rather than a reality, but points to the reason for the problem: the uncommonly strong hold of the Darwin paradigm on the intellectual public. Worth the price of the book is the reprint of the Berlinski critique from Commentary magazine. An essay by Edward Sisson pinpoints the way in which the defenders of the Darwinian paradigm adopt a legalizing party-line mentality that preempts doubt. Frank Tipler reviews the way in which the peer review system freezes dissent, and constitutes a form of de facto censorship. Whatever one's views on Intelligent Design these analyses are an alarming indication of the unique social conditioning factor that has beset the era of Big Science. Dembski's collection here is valuable but doesn't find too many dissenters beyond the range of the ID movement regulars. That's both alarming and sad, and a grim reminder of the totalizing ideology at work in the promotion of Darwin's theory.
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting Reading For Open Minds
Review: This compendium of articles from diverse individuals of towering intellect needs to be absorbed. The religious fervor of the Darwinists that write to my local paper astonishes me. If the issue were simply scientific in nature, I fail to see why they would have to continually knock down straw men and ridicule those of dissenting opinions. Instead, they are "evangelical" in their zeal to squelch and squash dissent. The authors in this book are hard to deride. Their arguments deserve a fair reading from open minded people. Closed minds who are content to be blinded by the prejudice of preconceived opinion need not bother with this book.
Rating:
Summary: Evidence of design reveals a universe without evolution
Review: This is an interesting collection of articles that only goes to show the obvious: evidence of design reveals a universe without evolution. Exactly the opposite of what Richard Dawkins, without any evidence whatsoever, has been saying to gullible evolutionists.
Since evidence of design is overwhelming (v.g. biology; ecology; anatomy; astrophysics), since no one has seen evolution happening nor has anyone found an information generating mutation, and since natural selection selects from pre-existing materials, eliminating information, we can only conclude that evolution is nothing more than a "social construction of reality" (as Peter Berger would put it), based entirely on materialistic assumptions without any empirical and foundational basis.
As the post-modern thinkers of our age would say, evolution is pure interpretation and narrative. Simply put, evolution is "science as fiction".
In my view, the problem of the intelligent design movement is that it does not go far enough. It reminds me the time of the Protestant Reformation, when the magisterial reformers (from their university positions) were not able to go all the way in reforming the Church because they compromised with the Catholics in matters such as the sacraments, infant baptism, national churches, etc.
It took the radical evangelical reformation (mostly from outside the mainstream ecclesiastical and educational institutions), to really make the necessary reforms. It was these reforms that oppened the way to political reform in the realms of republicanism, democracy, rule of law, human rights, freedom of conscience, constitutionalism, etc. We need creationist levellers, diggers and a Oliver Cromwell. Using english puritan jargon, we may say that intelligent design is still too "royalist".
Once again, it is necessary a radical evangelical approach to the evolutionary paradigm. Now, as in the time of the Reformation, a purely magisterial approach, such as the intelligent design movement, just won't to the job. This is because it doesn't go to the root of the naturalistic problem. Besides, many of these intelectuals show some signs of intellectual and conceptual restlessness and confusion.
The radical approach is really one that starts with the Creator, and takes His Word seriously when it comes to understand His Creation. A willingness to compromise with the naturalistic and proud scientific establishment may seem very obvious and intellectually mandatory at first, but in reality it is part of the problem, because it doesn't approach this proud establishment from God's perspective. The intelligent design movement still gives the final word, the "competence of the competence", to the scientific community. Their "law" is still the "higher law": SCIENTIA LOCUTA, CAUSA FINITA!
As with radical reformation, radical creationism should have only one single prior commitment: The Word. In a fallen Universe dominated by relativity and entropy, the Word is the ony Absolut. Heavens and Earth will pass away, but The Word endures forever.
Radical biblical creationism must challenge the evolutionary establishment and its random, purposeless, fideistic, naturalistic assumptions head on: NO COMPROMISE!
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