Rating: 
Summary: The right direction!!!
Review: "Unintelligent Design" by Mark Perakh is a remarkable book. This book is not an easy read... so you will not finish it in one setting. This book requires some thinking and ruminations. He is very methodical and therefore we find his perspective. Usually by his inquisitiveness, an inheritive intuitiveness through observation, and by immense detail Perakh works through the stated problem. I found the book fascinating, well written, with impeccable detail, well documented and a wealth of information. I believe that Perakh has only scratched the surface... but that scratch went deep. At least with this work, we are pointed in the right direction. In conclusion I would say that both the scientific community and the reading public owe a debt of gratitude to a figure such as Perakh who, has done an equally excellent job with respect to tackling its polar opposite with an "Unintelligent design" that is sure to entice, entertain, and help educate the next generation of critical thinkers.
Rating:
Summary: The Power of Scientific Logic.
Review: 'Unintelligent Design' is a monumental work in the on going "debate" between creationism and evolution. Perakh exposes the fraudulent claims made by Johnson, Dembski, and Behe, exposing them as narrow-minded, one-sided, and unscientific. He shows those who favor "intelligent design" are not out to seek real truth, but are actually trying to impose a religious ideology on society.
Certain sections of the book are boring and unnecessary. This is because Perakh takes the time to demolish ridiculous beliefs only religious fanatics want to believe. No rational person would believe in such nonsense. Nonetheless, Perakh dismantles the beliefs to the point where they have no validity.
The "intelligent design" theorists try to make the scientific society look dogmatic and totalitarian, when in fact, it is the other way around. The scientific community, for the most part, is more open minded the the religious community. Science and the theory of evolution are the best explanations of how everything came to be. "Intelligent design" and most religions don't explain anything, and have not intellectual curiosity whatsoever.
Rating:
Summary: The Power of Scientific Logic.
Review: 'Untelligent Design' is a monumental work in the on going debate between evolution and 'intelligent design'. Perakh exposes the the numerous flaws in the intelligent design' argument and shows that those favor the argument are very vague and don't define their terms in their case. He also shows the scientic community is not out to end religion, and in fact, they are out to seek more truth than the 'intelligent design' theorists.
Some sections of the book are boring. This is mainly because Perakh takes the time to demolish some absurd beliefs creationists cling to claim is as science. It is worth the read because its the most open-minded argument one will read on this debate.
Yes, evolution may have some flaws but that does not mean it is not a valid theory. In reality, it is the most intellectual argument as to how we came to be. Intelligent Design explains nothing and has no intellectual curiosity whatsoever.
Rating:
Summary: Unconventional but very successful
Review: A new player seems to have appeared on the field, and he seems to be indeed a good player. There have been many books published which approach the Intelligent Design-related controversy from various vantage points, and some of them have been quite good. To find an additional niche for another book was not an easy task. Perakh, in my view, has done it quite successfully - his book is unlike any other published so far about Intelligent Design or about biblical neo-apologetics. The format of this book is rather unconventional - it is built around a set of publications (books and articles) by, first, the most prominent defenders of the Intelligent Design and, second, by some Christian and Jewish writers, all of whom Perakh unequivocally debunks. I was impressed by the strict logic of Perakh's narrative. For example, after having read chapter 1, which contains a very meticulous analysis of publications by William Dembski (perhaps the most prominent champion of Intelligent Design), I could not help but to say to myself, "Gee, the king is naked." Using unrelenting logic, Perakh has demonstrated the lack of substance in Dembski's theory, whose quasi-mathematical appearance serves as pure embellishment covering the lack of meaningful contents. I will be looking for other publications by Perakh, starting from his posts on the Talk Reason web site. Welcome to the fray, Perakh, you get five stars from me.
Rating:
Summary: A fine treatise on the essence of genuine science
Review: Although I have read the entire book with a lot of interest, I was especially impressed by its chapter dealing with the features of genuine science vs. pseudo- or bad science. Although the author of Unintelligent Design warns readers that he is not a philosopher of science and approaches his subject mainly from the position of his personal experience as a scientist, in my opinion his treatment of this subject will invoke envy on the part of some professional philosophers of science. The examples illustrating his thesis, many of them from his own experience, are very telling. I think the chapter in question is one of the best and most substantive explorations of a complex and insufficiently understood subject: what are the features of genuine science and what distinguishes it from crank science? The chapter on probability theory is likewise a very well written introduction into this often misapplied field, providing a fine elucidation of the concept of probability and of how it has to be handled. Overall a very useful book.
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: Falls way short
Review: As a whole this book contains much good material, but the author constantly resorts to name calling and ad hominem attacks. A few of the more obvious examples include Johnson is a "militant dilettante" (p.141), Hugh Ross is on a "crusade of ignorance" (p. 173), Grant Jeffrey is an "ignoramus" and
"arrogant" (p.193, 206) and on and on. Johnson is attacked because he is a lawyer, yet Perakh is a retired physics teacher who writes about biology. In this book Perakh attacks anyone who believes God had some role in history, including theistic evolutionists, such as many of the people involved in the intelligent design movement (Behe and Heeren, for example). This common response to theists bothered me when I was an atheist. My co-atheists constantly called believers of the theistic kind stupid, ignorant, uninformed, arrogant and such. Our kind of believers had the truth and only we were intelligent, we thought. Many of the leading atheist (and I knew some fairly well) were not exactly geniuses and had a good share of short comings as well, such as to look down on all theists. I have also noticed that it is now a trend for Darwinists to use more and more hateful and inflammatory rhetoric, including likening those that doubt Darwin to holocaust deniers. In the end, I think that it is likely that this ploy will backfire.
Rating: 
Summary: Finest, most rigorous rebuttal to ID yet seen
Review: As an evangelical Christian believer in the Bible as is, including Genesis Creation in 6 calendar days, who has accepted on historical evidence and faith that Jesus the Logos created all things by the power of His love and authority, I give this book 4 stars.
5 stars for being the finest, most rigorous, well-intentioned rebuttal to ID I have yet seen. Its arguments are cogent and meticulous. Not only does Mr. Perakh marshall his facts in an organized and cumulatively persuasive fashion, he writes with a simplicity about complex matters that is a literary tour de force in itself. It is the best that can be expected of 2-dimensional thinking on a planar level of (x,y) coordinates of earth existence.
1 star deducted, however. This book lacks the full 3-d volumizing necessary in attempting to grapple with Ultimate Origins in a fully-orbed way. Simply stated, the 'z' axis is missing. In all fairness, Dembski and other IDers picked the playing field as (x,y), so Mr. Perakh is more than happy to frequently outplay them at their own 2-d game, making more than his share of interceptions and recovering many ID fumbles inherent in the 'game-in-the-flat'.
This book more than succeeds as a formidable rebuttal to the ID argument on its own merits and with the parameters pre-established as (x,y) dimensionality. What is lacking is ample consideration of the 'z' factor: either Divine, Alien or Natural Agency as Prime Order Primordial causation/initiator and sustainer of the whole universe we are all trying to seek congenitality for. Hopefully, this author or someone will take on that challenge, getting us off the 2-d chessboard into 3-d chess with some verticality to assess. As long as things are debated on the horizontal level ad infinitum, it will be like Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue: sometimes Human ID will prevail, sometimes AI, but it all eventually arrives at: DRAW without due incorporation of the vertical Ultimate Agentivity 'Z' factor.
Full congratulations to the author for a fine book.
Rating:
Summary: just what the doctor ordered
Review: As someone who is very familiar with a wide range of pseudoscientific literature from Bible codes to creation myths masquerading as astrophysics, I can report that this book is a classic both in the breadth and depth of its coverage. Perakh's life as a professional scientist gave him the skills to see right through the fog of notational obfiscation that has lately be used by the pseudoscientists to disguise the paucity of their case, and he applies these skills with merciless precision. Definitely a must-read.
Rating:
Summary: An intelligently designed book on today's hot topics
Review: Being familiar with Dr. Perakh's work on the Talk Reason website, I was attracted by the title of his new book, which echoes the title of a Talk Reason section. While the ID advocates may have indeed unintelligently designed their theories about the creation of this planet, Perakh quite delightfully and skillfully shows where and how they have gone wrong. This book, though, contains more than just a refreshing and intelligent view of one of today's hottest science and education controversies. The chapter on Bible Codes is a must-read for anyone who wonders what all the fuss is about or who wishes to find out if the findings are as scientific as their promoters claim. Of more general application, the chapter on the characteristics of good, bad, and pseudo-science and the chapter on probability will be of use to anyone attempting to formulate a position on any topic currently being researched.
|
