Rating: 
Summary: Good description of the ID Movement and its origins.
Review:
I give the book high marks for detail and the authors for doing their homework on the principal proponents of the Intelligent Design movement, their history, and their motivations. It is clear from the depth and breadth of the information provided, including numerous quotes from Behe, Dembski, Wells, Johnson and others, that the central premise of the book is well-supported. ID really is a Trojan Horse for creationism.
I did not give the book five stars because, even though I agree that ID is not really science and that many of the proponents use questionable tactics in pursuing their public relations agenda of making ID a "legitimate" scientific movement, the authors do seem to go overboard in their rhetoric at times.
Yes, the Discovery Institute folks seem to care much more about spin than about truth. However, this does not mean that people of faith should be denigrated, simply because they are people of faith. At some points, the usually implicit but occasionally explicit tone is that many of the ID leading lights and their supporters are religious fanatics, and that simply because of this fact, we should be wary of them. The book would have been better, I think, without this occasional underlying tone.
Having said that, I think their characterization of the motives and tactics of the CSC (Center of Science and Culture) and wedge proponents is valid. I visited the CSC website today, and found lots of sanctimonious complaining about PBS and others trying to gag or censor ID ideas. Most of this seemed to mischaracterize ID opponents, and of course, there is never any acknowledgement that there might be legitimate reasons to believe that ID is bad science (or not even science at all) and that it deserves to be ignored. Here is Robert Crowther complaining about an article on ID in a Pittsburgh newspaper.
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" . . . . Let's start at the beginning. The lead begins:
"The flap over "intelligent design," the latest terminology behind the old theory that the universe and its organisms developed at the discretion of a supernatural creator, ..."
Rather than report about something interesting --such as the vast difference between how some scientists critical of design theory use this definition and the definition used by scientists who support design theory-- Toland merely adopts the definition of the ACLU and others as the defacto proper definition. It is not.
Furthermore, journalistic integrity requires that you attribute a claim such as this to the person or group that made it. Only critics of design claim this is the definition. Design scientists disagree. . . . . . "
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Is Crowther justified in complaining about a lack of journalistic integrity? Perhaps, but more likely his indigination is calculated to create the false impression that the only thing wrong with the ID movement is that their is some kind of conspiracy against it.
The problem is most of the behaviours the ID folks complain about on the part of their opponents are ones they themselves are guilty of, usually to a much greater degree. The creationist movement is unfortunately known for a lack of journalistic and intellectual integrity, and the ID movement, although it tries to distance itself from earlier creationists, unfortunately employs many of the same disingenuous tactics.
"Creationism's Trojan Horse" documents these well. It does serve as a wake up call that those who value science and education cannot just sit idly by and hope the CSC PR machine disintegrates on its own. It is unfortunate but true that poor arguments and bad ideas can gain political sway among vast segments of the population.
Rating: 
Summary: Courageous, intellectual, and thorough
Review: "Intelligent design" (ID) is a religious and political movement that claims that only a designing intelligence (the Christian deity) could be responsible for the order we see in the natural world. It seeks to overthrow "scientific materialism" (what everyone else just calls "science") and replace it with Christian doctrine. Although its proponents claim ID is science, there are essentially no papers describing the "theory", testing it, or making predictions from it in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Instead, its proponents publish popular books with religious or political presses. ID books are full of self-praise and hype, but very little actual science. What little science there is is full of flaws (one crucial calculation in Dembski's _No Free Lunch_ is off by 65 orders of magnitude, a fact he has never publicly admitted). This book is the first to document, in exhaustive detail, the religious and political motivations behind ID. Forrest and Gross show how the movement was conceived after a religious conversion by a law professor; how it is bankrolled by a Christian reconstructionist millionaire; how it is based on nonexistent science; and how it seeks to replace science at all levels, from grade school to the National Science Foundation, with Christian dogma. Contrary to the claim by one reviewer (who did not dare give his name), there is essentially no name-calling in this book. Instead, the analysis is scholarly, impeccable, and sober; the endnotes alone run for 65 pages. If you are concerned about how the Religious Right is hijacking science education in the United States, this book is essential reading. Be sure to take your blood pressure medication before starting, because the unrelenting duplicity that Forrest and Gross chronicle in the ID movement is sure to make you burst a blood vessel. Will the scientific community heed this wake-up call? I certainly hope so.
Rating:
Summary: Courageous, intellectual, and thorough
Review: "Intelligent design" (ID) is a religious and political movement that claims that only a designing intelligence (the Christian deity) could be responsible for the order we see in the natural world. It seeks to overthrow "scientific materialism" (what everyone else just calls "science") and replace it with Christian doctrine. Although its proponents claim ID is science, there are essentially no papers describing the "theory", testing it, or making predictions from it in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Instead, its proponents publish popular books with religious or political presses. ID books are full of self-praise and hype, but very little actual science. What little science there is is full of flaws (one crucial calculation in Dembski's _No Free Lunch_ is off by 65 orders of magnitude, a fact he has never publicly admitted). This book is the first to document, in exhaustive detail, the religious and political motivations behind ID. Forrest and Gross show how the movement was conceived after a religious conversion by a law professor; how it is bankrolled by a Christian reconstructionist millionaire; how it is based on nonexistent science; and how it seeks to replace science at all levels, from grade school to the National Science Foundation, with Christian dogma. Contrary to the claim by one reviewer (who did not dare give his name), there is essentially no name-calling in this book. Instead, the analysis is scholarly, impeccable, and sober; the endnotes alone run for 65 pages. If you are concerned about how the Religious Right is hijacking science education in the United States, this book is essential reading. Be sure to take your blood pressure medication before starting, because the unrelenting duplicity that Forrest and Gross chronicle in the ID movement is sure to make you burst a blood vessel. Will the scientific community heed this wake-up call? I certainly hope so.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent expose of the 'awful truth'
Review: After perusing the sometimes bizarre anonymous 'reviews' of this exceedingly well documented book, I have to wonder if these 'reviewers' actually read the same book I did. 'Namecalling on every page'? 'Conspiracy theories'?
Maybe they have confused this book with Phil Johnson or Bill Dembski's latest, where I have little doubt that name calling and conspiracy mongering run rampant. It is obvious and true that the so-called and ironically named "Discovery Institute" and its cadre of propagandists stopped being concerned about science early on, when, apparently, they realized that science was not going to provide them with what they had hoped for. Instead, as Forrest and Gross exhaustively document, they have opted to appeal to the largely scientifically illiterate masses and equally clueless politicians, relying on rhetoric and innuendo rather than honest discourse. It is no 'conspiracy theory', it is the ugly and sad truth. This book is very timely and important, and anyone that thinks those sleazy press releases from the DI are anything but infantile propaganda may want to ignore the nonsensical negative reviews and see for themselves that the Discovery Institute Emperors have been running around stark naked for the last several years.
Rating: 
Summary: Neither fair nor balanced!
Review: An open minded individual requires a fair and balanced view of the issues involved. You won't get that here. Please read what the other side says to see how much misdirection and misrepresentation is occurring in all of this. In the book "Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design" by William Dembski, Charles Colson, Dembski, a philosopher/mathematician who has been an important theorist for the intelligent design movement, handles a wide range of questions and objections that should give both fans and detractors of ID plenty to chew on. William Dembski's very recent PDF file on the web called "Irreducible Complexity Revisited" gives you his latest on these issues, pointing out clearly the problems involved and why the issue isn't going away like political Darwinists would like, but is instead getting more and more attention and sophistication. To get some feel for how political things are, do a Google search for "what is the wedge document" which will lead you to a PDF file by Discovery Institute called "The Wedge Document: So What?". This responds to Barbara Carroll Forrest, Paul R. Gross book "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design". You'll get a good idea about how much the Forrest-Gross book is like political propaganda based on hysteria.
Rating: 
Summary: Darwin in the Fluff Cycle
Review: Apparently unintended irony drips from every page of this book. While the authors continually attack the scientific credentials of anyone daring to espouse Intelligent Design (the fact that only adherents to the Darwinian dogma can readily advance academically and be published in peer-reviewed journals in the biological sciences is apparently not taken into account), the credentials of the authors themselves are squishy at best (Ph.D. in Philosophy; Whoo-Hoo!), as are may of those quoted in the book as supporting Darwinism. The now universally discredited inaccurate embryonic drawings of Haekel (Look, Mom, I had gills when I was 14 days old!) that have appeared in American textboks for years were not, the authors tell us, "faked," they were simply and understandably "fudged." (I am not making this up - see p. 105 in the 2004 edition.)
Lacking the scientific understanding to make a credible defense of Drawinism, the authors quickly descend into ad hominem attacks on the defenders of Intelligent Design (e.g., "Theocratic Extememists") and automatically disqualify any Christian who agrees with Intelligent Design from having any credibility (as if the Darwinists have absolutely no world-view presuppositions that might affect THEIR reasoning).
Their cited example arguing against irreducible complexity (Michael Behe's concept that complex organisms can only function as an integrated whole and could not have developed piecemeal as Drawinism posits) is a recent discovery involving blue-green algae. While blue-green algae are amazingly complex compared to the suppositions that were prevelant in Darwin's day (at that time, biological science was not too many years past the belief that flies were spontaneously generated in rotting meat), this seems a flimsy example in comparion to the workings of the human body (or even a snail darter).
While I am open to the possibility that somewhere there may be a cogent defense of Darwinism that has arisen out of the primiordal soup, this is not it.
Rating:
Summary: This book failed miserably
Review: Creationism's Trojan Horse is an attempt to understand the intelligent design community (IDC). It failed miserably for several reasons. A major one is because the researchers were outsiders whom, from the start (as is obvious from their earlier writings), had as their not so hidden agenda to wholesale discredit the movement. They were not objective scholars, but persons looking to justify their preconceived conclusions. Also, as outsiders, they have over generalized the nuances of the movement. The IDC brags that they are the "big tent" encompassing every type of theist from short age creationists to agnostics and even some atheists. The common interest of those involved is their real scientific (and some, admittedly, theological) problems with Darwinism and their belief that another scientific paradigm can be scientifically fruitful. This book makes it appear that the only motivation is theological when this is not at all the case. To understand the positions of those in the ID community, a representative sociological survey of all of those involved needs to be completed. My experience with the movement for the last decade is they encompass a wide range of opinions on many topics including Darwinism. Many feel that the IDC should involve themselves in the work of influencing the public school curriculum, but many others believe that they should not, in any way, attempt to influence the public school curriculum. Many IDC have made it very clear that the whole IDC program should be empirical research, and they will not even testify before school boards if called. Do the scientific research first, and then the results will filter down into the public schools. Besides that, someone has to teach them evolution anyway even to do ID research. Much is made in the book about the lack of publications specifically directed at demonstrating ID by the ID Community. Actually, many in the closet ID researchers (and even some out of the closet scientists) have published research supporting ID theory in the peer reviewed literature. Using Intelligent Design as a search keyword will not find these studies in the literature because use of this term in an article will almost guarantee the article's rejection. Thus it is avoided, although the implications of the ID published articles are often clear to an informed researcher. Stories of positions lost, degrees denied, fellowships rescinded, tenure rejections, and other repercussions that result from supporting ID are common (and well documented) in the ID community. And, unfortunately, books like this will only increase the repercussions (which is likely its intended effect).
Rating:
Summary: An invaluable resource concerning the politics of ID
Review: Examines and criticizes the Intelligent Design (ID) version of creationism and the movement supporting ID. While Forrest and Gross give summaries of why ID makes no biological sense, and survey the major personalities involved in ID, their unique contribution in this book is their in-depth description of the political and religious aspects of ID. The ID movement have been working on a comprehensive strategy revealed by their infamous "Wedge" document. Here, ID proponents promise to produce plenty of scientific research to support ID. It is clear now that in the scientific arena they have been a complete failure. As a political and public relations operation with ambitions to influence high school biology education, however, they have done very well. Forrest and Gross reveal ID to be a an integral part of the culture wars of the Religious Right. In the current political climate, ID may well have good prospects for success.
Rating: 
Summary: A little too narrowminded, cannot see beyond religions
Review: For the record: I am agnostic atheist, who has a more moderate, rather then fundamentalist sectarian view of reality most 'ardent' secular people have.
This book states what most people who have ever studied religion already know: That the bible and Christianity are untrue, and there are believers who are trying to use ID as justification for false beliefs. (Wow big surprise) But regardless, ID itself if practiced in a scientific fashion would 1) Overturn creationism and all religion because if ID was true, then all religions now become within the purview of scientific scrutiny and hence automatic rejection through rational inquiry rather than pseudo-intellectual gymnastics.
Regardless of whether ID is influenced by creationism or belief in god, it still does not deal with the substance of the arguments put forth by ID advocates. Any man/woman worth his or her salt knows that creationism and the bible god are fiction. ID does not depend on the bible or Christianity being true or any religion for that matter. This fact is totally glossed over and outright ignored, the first sign of closed-mindedness and pseudo-intellectualism at its best.
This is an age old question that is not dependent on anyone's religion: Taken all the way back the Greeks Atomists vs. teleologists. Take a look at the animations of the flagellar motor and bloodclotting system and there is unmistakable pattern of machinery and chemical engineering there, anyone that says there isn't has not taken nor studied seriously engineering or molecular biology. The fact that fundamentalist secularists deny this vehemently shows their closed-mindedness to the fact that: We will be a "founding class" of designers in the future when we create and engineer new life forms and sentient beings that will be their own life forms and will also be designing things through their own intelligent agency and intervention. These life-forms will have come about by direct intelligent (human) or otherwise (agent) intervention. Interventionism has gotten a bad rap ever since Darwin but this does not mitigate the fact that every technological wonder of human beings cannot be reduced to natural processes without intelligent agency/intervention.
The ancient Greeks, attempted to hash it out long ago. Long before we got a hold on scientific methods, and good underpinning philosophies for science. The atomists and the 'the teleologists' had these arguments and these arguments go 'way way way' back. They are not even confined to when we think we know they occurred or what group of people we think espoused them first. They are not dependent on religion. They exist independently of them. I know naturalism as a philosophy is a good philosophy but there's the question of exploring the concept of design in a scientific manner I think deserves exploring which secular fundamentalists dismiss (or fear, or both).
Like I said before, in the future we will be creating life, robots, and all sorts of new beings and they will not have evolved. They will have been the result of intervention by a pre-existing intelligence (namely us). So we are "the founding class" of a series of causes that will go (perhaps) forever into the future with our own creations creating their own beings and so forth until we hit a natural limit or one of natures walls.
The question and idea most closed-minded secularists have pre-decided is not worth exploring I have stated thusly below:
So the question to all rational human beings is: Don't you think the concept of "founding class" of designer(s) is at the very least worth exploring in regards to human origins? Not only would it put the nail in the coffin of religion and creationism, we will have done ourselves a great service in exhausting that question and option in a scientific manner and once and for all at the same time debunk all related ideas if we truly find out it has no merit. When our future creations look back to their history 'we' will be 'the founding class' of designers. Then it's suddenly connected to nature and evolution... and perhaps it might arouse their suspicions that we are not the result of 'just' evolution but a previous "founding class" of designer(s).
The problem is for us, do we have the courage to ask the question... are we the result of someone else's science and technological sophistication? Are we the result of applied science? A question no one has ever dared explore in a scientific fashion.
Rating:
Summary: A major contribution
Review: Forrest and Gross have done a splendid job by simultaneously exposing the poor science undergirding intelligent design theory, and by displaying in public the odious social agenda that is hitch hiking along with this new form of pseudoscience (and which has so far been hidden from public scrutiny with the aid of smoke and mirrors). They must have done something right, because they have evidently stirred up a hornet's nest of hostile reviews from the friends of ID.
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