Rating: 
Summary: A Valuable Service
Review: Forrest and Gross have done the country a valuable service by documenting the political and ideological foundations of the intelligent design movement. Anyone who still believes that movement is primarily, or even partly, a scientific endeavour need only search PNAS, BIOMED, BIOSIS, and the like for published research on intelligent design creationism in biology. There is none to be found. The ID movement's "scientists" publish no ID science. What, then, has all the fuss in Kansas, Ohio, Texas, New Mexico, West Virginia, and so on been about? Not science, for sure. Forrest and Gross describe with rich documentation just what is driving the intelligent design movement in spite of its scientific sterility.
Rating:
Summary: This book needed to be written
Review: I remember my astonishment, a little over eight years ago, when I read David Berlinski's article, "The Deniable Darwin," in Commentary magazine. After a few paragraphs, I wondered if I were reading a parody. I was shocked that Commentary had published something that merely substituted insults for facts and logic.
Of course, there were letters to the editor. Including a half-page one from Paul Gross. He rightly asked, referring to Berlinski's article, "How could Commentary not have let some biologist read it" (after which, one would hope, there was no way Commentary would have published it). He mentioned that he didn't have the space to refute all of Berlinski's unsupported or dead-wrong assertions in a short letter. I'm happy to report that he and Barbara Forrest have now taken the time and trouble to refute the Intelligent Designers in a full length book.
Still, as Forrest and Gross explain, the main problem is not with the content of the Intelligent Design arguments. It is with the lack of content. I was to discover this eight years ago when I read Berlinski's response to the letters to the editor. Berlinski spent over a page replying to Gross. No problem with that. The problem was that Berlinski didn't address the points Gross had made. And I finally realized that Berlinski had done this intentionally, simply writing down words that gave a vague appearance of having something to do with the topic but did not in fact counter any arguments.
The authors make this fundamental point about the "intelligent designers" (the "Wedge"). The Wedge has substituted public relations for facts and for logical arguments. As Forrest and Gross quite properly put it, "The issue is not Darwinism or science: the issue is the Wedge itself."
According to the authors, the Wedge seeks to do something other than challenge a debateable set of scientific assertions. It is trying "to overthrow the system of rules and procedures of modern science and those intellectual footings of our culture laid down in the Enlightenment."
I agree with Forrest and Gross that what we need is not so much a debate about Darwinian evolution: the authors answer the critics, but that topic was put to bed in any scientific sense of the term many decades ago. What we all need to address is what to do about the threat of public policy on scientific matters being determined on grounds which are entirely divorced from any semblence of scientific knowledge. And I hope this book will help us do that.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Dissection of ID Pseudoscience
Review: If ID represents such superior science, why do its advocates devote their efforts almost exclusively to political and religious activism, while doing virtually nil actual science? Why do they continually conflate methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism, or abiogenesis with modern evolutionary theory? Forrest and Gross provide a meticulously documented history of the modern ID movement, and forcefully lay to rest any notion that ID has anything to offer science, if it ever did. They lay bare the particular religious motives of ID's principle advocates who, it seems, don't really care about science at all (if they did, one might think they'd roll up their sleeves, get into a lab somewhere, and do some actual research). Instead, they merely dredge up the usual, well-worn anti-Darwinian Creationist canards, repackage them in spiffy new & improved ID wrappers, and solicit politicians and other policy-making bodies for support ... demanding equal time for ID in the name of "fairness." If ID means to be taken seriously as science, and if its advocates really want to be fair, is it too much to ask that they provide actual evidence for their assertions? I could assert that there are pink teapots orbiting Pluto until I'm blue in the face, but if I can't provide empirical evidence to back my claim, why should anyone (let alone scientists) take me seriously? So, without evidence, why should the claims of ID be regarded any differently? By the way, I can't help but notice that the "review" from a reader in Sunnyvale (now San Jose, I see), CA is repeated, word for word, in a "review" of Mark Perakh's "Unintelligent Design." Has the Sunnyvale/San Jose reader actually read either of these books? Or is this merely vacuous boilerplate blather?
Rating: 
Summary: They get it right, but they may underestimate their opponent
Review: Is this a book where you get a definitive history and understanding of the intelligent design movement? Is it a fair and balanced treatment? No, not at all. This is a debunking treatment. This book correctly places the intelligent design movement in its political and cultural context as an unfortunately successful attempt to discredit central elements of modern science ... in principle replacing the legitimate scientific tradition with a reformist theistic science as far as it succeeds. Forrest and Gross do a superb job of showing why ID is not legitimate science according to the history and values that have driven science since its inception. Yet in taking a scientific debunking approach and equating ID with "creationism" in general (and the "Scientific Creationism" of Henry Morris and Adventist literalism in particular) the authors also seem to miss some of the _non-scientific_ subtleties in their opponents' reasoning which make it as compelling and successful as it has been, even to many who aren't congenial to "Young Earth Creationism" and Seventh Day Adventism. Forrest and Gross often discount rather than listening to their opponents, and in the process they often appear miss the internal logic and completely different way of thinking of the ID proponents. This results in arguments that must genuinely sound ad hominem and question-begging to ID enthusiasts, accusing the ID authors of deliberate fraud and deception of various kinds. The ID movement has deceptive aspects to it, but then so does the marketing of evolutionary theory in the popular press. What Forrest and Gross do not consider, and should, is the extremely radical nature of the ID claims. They treat ID as bad alternative science, seemingly because the IDers present it as an alternative scientific paradigm to evolutionary biology and natural selection. They observe that it is neither conventional science nor speculative science ... concluding that it is therefore a fraud. This doesn't quite seem to capture it. Leaders of the ID movement often claim that science has been mistaken *from its inception* about rejecting a Creator of some sort. In other words, they do not pretend to be doing naturalistic science and then sneak in a Creator, so much as they are claiming that science should have been theistic all along. A Creator might possibly work through evolution, but with highly visible opponents like Richard Dawkins who often use natural selection as a reason to deny the existence of a Creator, IDers have little reason to split hairs between theistic and naturalistic evolution. Their (often hidden) point is the designer, not the design. An early hero of the ID revolution, Michael Denton ("Evolution: A Theory In Crisis"), has no argument at all with natural selection, only with its use as an all-encompassing explanation of form and function throughout living things. His popularity among IDers reveals something important about the movement: their focus on making nature consistent with the presumed designer rather than worrying about the specific mechanisms used in design. The rejection of Aristotelian purposes for all things was pretty clearly a positive step in the development of physical science, and this is a big part of what originally drove the rejection of teleology. The ID folks are not entirely wrong in claiming that the rejection of a Creator itself was the somewhat arbitrary result of opposing the medieval Church's tradition in general along with Aristotle's pervasive teleology. It was not a logical, empirical, or epistemic neccessity, but a cultural value associated with the Enlightenment faith in the autonomy of reason. The core reasoning of the IDers is consistent and reasonable, given their assumptions, so the tone of Forrest and Gross will likely come off as shrill to their IDer opponents. In the end, Forrest and Gross are surely right to be alarmed at this movement, even though it is probably more sincere than they credit it. The problem with ID is not with its rather trivial observation of design in nature, but in the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) reinterpretation of scientific data in light of scripture and an unspoken but shared vision of the Creator as an alternate way of reasoning in competition with the scientific tradition. IDers do end up confusing the issue by claiming to be doing science (or "real science,") when in fact they are proposing "a new kind of science" rooted in theistic belief completely outside of the tradition to which we give that name. Even if many scientists and philosophers were wrong to deny possibility of a Creator and the role of the Creator in natural events (something half of Americans seem to defend) Forrest and Gross are *still* right to be suspicious of a movement that borrows the name of the scientific tradition while seeking to reform it completely to reshape biology in completely non-evolutionary terms against the epistemic values and evidentiary basis of the field. Forrest and Gross are not fooled by the superficial similarity and pretended association of ID with scientific reformers and fine-tuners of evolutionary theory. They are at their best making it clear that scientific reform of biology and the non-science of intelligent design are two very different things. This book is a splash of cold water to those who still may think of creationism in any form as something that belongs as a "theory" alongside biological science in a classroom. ID is not alternative science, but an alternative *to* science, a part of a "culture war" to redefine the public symbols of truth and meaning. Forrest and Gross provide the evidence of this, although in avoiding the internal logic of the opposing arguments and considering their opposition to be based mostly on fraud and ignorance, they don't seem to fully realize just how powerful their opposition's reasoning can be to many people.
Rating:
Summary: A thorough autopsy of a popular fallacy
Review: It is telltale that the critics of Forrest & Gross's book mostly hide their names. It is easy though to figure out who they are - they are those ID advocates whose literary output and political maneuvers are shown for what that are so clearly in Forrest and Gross's excellent exposure. Forrest and Gross have performed a thorough study of the ID movement and wrote a very well substantiated analysis of this modern incarnation of creationism whose proponents try so hard to present themselves as scientists which they are not by a long shot. No wonder they attack this book cowardly hiding their names and affiliations. The underhanded anonimous repudiations of Forrest & Gross's book wherein their opponents offer no arguments of substance but try to cast shadow on the strong argumentation of these authors is the best sign that Forrest and Gross succeeded in hitting the ID advocates quite aptly revealing the real nature of the ID movement whose pseudo-scientific mantle cannot conceal the futility of their conceptual system. A very useful and timely book.
Rating:
Summary: Telling It Like It Is
Review: Paul Gross and Barbara Forrest have undertaken the thankless task of exposing the true foundations of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. They have succeeded brilliantly. The book is devoid of ad hominem attacks and name-calling. Rather, Gross and Forrest allow their meticulously collected evidence to do their speaking for them. What the evidence shows is that as science ID is dead in the water. They have contributed no new ideas of their own, and their criticisms of mainstream science are simply wrong. Worse, for all their protestations to the contrary, they have little interest in doing actual scientific work. Rather than working in the lab to prove their ideas have merit, they spend their time and considerable money lobbying school boards and sympathetic politicians. Serious scientists holding controversial ideas do not try to seize the reins of public power to promote their views. But then, the ID folks are not serious scientists. These facts explain why, when confronted with the cogent, calm, well-documented arguments of people like Gross and Forrest, the ID folks reply with slurs, character assassination, and bleats about scientific conspiracies. They are cranks and pure and simple. We all owe a great debt to Gross and Forrest for proving that point so well.
Rating:
Summary: A remarkable and valuable contribution
Review: People who read (and review) this extraordinary book are likely to be split between those who understand its importance, and give it high marks, and people of a creationist bent, who will also understand its importance, but who will uniformly give it a one star rating, but what else would you give to a book that so carefully, and in such detail, provides an expos\'e of the terrifying politics and theocratic philosophy behind the ID creationism movement? If you are even remotely open-minded, and have any concern for how a small band of zealots is trying to hijack the educational system, please, please read this book. Although it is thoroughly readable, this is not a piece of pulpy page-turner literature of the conspiracy theory genre. It is a carefully researched, and meticulous work with a truly remarkable degree of documentation (over 60 pages of references alone). It is written by serious academics writing for an intelligent, but lay audience, and comes from a serious academic publisher.
Rating: 
Summary: Anti-Creationism's Achilles Heel
Review: Recipe for removing unpalatable items from the Origins Issues menu?
1. Label the unsavory entrees as concoctions not worth digesting without adequate substantiation.
2. Claim your delicacies ONLY are edible with self-proclaimed substantiation.
What it boils down to: Unintelligence vs. Intelligence, Designerless Design vs. Designer's Design, Natural Selection vs. Meta-natural Selection, Untargeted Decisionmaking Process vs. Targeted Decisionmaking.
Problem: It is the height of Irrationale to believe in SELECTION that is Unintelligent, Undeliberate, Unintentional, etc. You can't have Draft Choices without a Draft and Choices. You can't have Draft and Choices without Teams. You can't have Teams without Games. You can't have Games without Sports. You can't have Sports without Officials, Rulebook, Boundaries, etc. But most of all, no Sports without need for Amusement. Can't have Amusement without One to be Amused. In other words, you need a Muse, a Mind, an Intelligence, a Genius who sets the whole Perpetual Motion Machine in Play to begin with and keeps it playing.
This is the Achilles Heel of Anti-Creationism, Anti-ID, Pro-UD. You can't have SELECTION without a Selector, Design without a Designator. You can't have a Mechanism without a Mechanic, Process without Processor, Programming without Programmer. You can't have Perpetual Motion Machinery without a Perpetually Motive Machiner-Engineer. You can't have a Game, Play, Sports without a Gamester, Playmaker, Sport.
I think I see what the attraction is for ID's alternative being 'Unintelligent Design': Unintelligentsia is the Key to this faith system.
At least the Trojan Horse was historical fact: the Greeks destroyed Troy with the masterful strategic ruse. But Achilles is Myth, eliminated by a simple arrow to the heel.
This reader will take Historical Fact over Cosmythology any day.
Rating:
Summary: Long Overdue - but Worth the Wait
Review: Several prior reviews say that this is a book that needed to be written. I agree, but I also add - what a pity! Yes, what a pity it is that serious scientists doing serious work, some of them Nobel prize winners, have had to take time away from their tasks to deal with this religious rubbish. The ID folks have been slugging away for over ten years, and so far have nothing to talk about from a scientific standpoint. Not one single new idea, proof, method, experiment, or design. Nothing! Nothing at all!
But it was never really about the science anyway, and that is one of the things this book does a very fine job of explaining. It is about the wedge, and the wedge is about establishing a theocracy. It sounds so innocent on the surface, as many others have noted, and the appeal to "fairness" is indeed a master stroke. Their whole strategy is well conceived, and so far, with the exception of the science part, is being beautifully executed. The science part, unfortunately, doesn't matter, because they have successfully created the illusion that evolutionism is falling apart. They are convincing the politicians and the general public that the foundations of biology are crumbling before the onslaught of new "scientific" principals.
Although the ID "scientific" arguments are trivial and easily defeated, it is difficult if not impossible to frame the truth in such a manner as to be comprehensible to the general public, and therein lies their greatest strength. I am not a scientist by trade, but my knowledge of science is probably a bit above most of the general public, and yet I have a hard time following some of the rebuttals to the ID arguments. The arguments themselves, however, are simple enough for those with even no scientific background to follow, and yet are extremely difficult to see through without the requisite scientific knowledge.
In my opinion, it does not matter how many thousands of reputable scientists are lined up against the few that ID can muster, this issue will not be decided by a preponderance of the evidence, but by politics and spin. They are winning because they have chosen the issues, determined the scope, and set the agenda for the conflict. As Creationism's Trojan Horse clearly states, the stakes couldn't be higher.
If the purpose of writing Creationism's Trojan Horse was to have it serve as a "wake up call" to those of us who want to continue teaching scientific truth in our nation's classrooms, it does an admirable job. Most of America does not understand what is going on and why. It is up to those of us that do, and we are not all, nor do we have to be practicing scientists, to do whatever we can whenever we can. Monitor what is going on in our communities. Write and respond to letters-to-the-editor. Join The National Center for Science Education, an organization dedicated to science education in our schools.
In short, it is going to take all of us to prevail in this thing. Just because you don't have letters after your name, don't think you can't get involved. You do think, after all, and that's why you are considering the purchase of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Conspiracy theory hysteria
Review: The better the book, the longer my review. This will be a short review. I have two problems with Forrest and Gross' work. First, as is common in conspiracy theory writings, it commits the fallacy of the neglected aspect; it builds its case on very carefully selected evidence that supports the authors' belief. The result is a gross misrepresentation of the true state of affairs (the second problem). Unfortunately, this type of hysteria/urban myth plays to the popular audience who keep the newspaper tabloids in business. If one is truly interested in what intelligent design scientists actually propose, one will be much better off reading what they actually say. In my opinion, William Dembski's No Free Lunch would be a good start.
|
