The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer

Rating:
Summary: A Scientific Analysis for the Existence of God
Review: A well written and thought provoking book that is detailed and scientifically valid. Those who state otherwise either have not read the book, or do not know how to conduct philosophic and scientific inquiry.

J. P. Moreland and a panel of experts consider philosophical arguments about whether it is possible for us to know if an intelligent Designer had a role in creation. Then they evaluate the creation hypothesis against scientific evidence in four different areas: the origin and formation of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of major groups of organisms, and the origin of human language.

The team of experts assembled for this work includes a philosopher, a mathemetician, a physicist, a linguist, a theologian, a biophysicist, an astronomer, a chemist, and a paleontologist.

The contributors include Stephen C. Meyer, William A. Dembski, Hugh Ross, Walter L. Bradley, Charles B. Thaxton, Kurt P. Wise, John W. Oller, John L. Omdahl, John Ankerberg, and John Weldon.

Their data and their conclusions challenge the assumptions of many and offer the foundation for a new paradigm of scientific thinking.

Rating:
Summary: A good and detailed defense of the design inference
Review: This is an excellent introduction to scientific evidence for a creative agent. Although I found some of the criticisms of Darwinism a wee bit ad-hoc, the book as a whole has some powerful arguments from the likes of some of the more noteworthy theists such as JP Moreland, Michael Dembski and Hugh Ross. Ross' essay was probably the best in the book as it dealt with clear, un-ambiguous evidence for a supreme mind. There is also an interesting article on the specificity of language being a sound analogy to the specificity & complexity of DNA.

Now, many of the reviewers who gave it one star do not appear to have even read it. Two of them bragged as much. Regardless of the subject matter of a book, I often find it difficult to review a work w/out reading it. I can only cast my suspicion on other people's ability to do so.

One of the most frequent criticisms of "Creationism" (for lack of a better term) is that it is unfalsifiable & therefore bad science. I concede the point that it is unfalsifiable, but I would caution an atheist against calling it bad science.

Most physicists believe they have it all figured out up to 10^-43 power of one second after the Big Bang (known as the Planck Epoch). Beyond this instant (an incredibly small instant) the universe existed in the state of a singularity of infinite density and infinite temperature. The laws of physics as we know and love them came into being at 10^-43 of one second. Therefore, if the atheist is not to insert an arbitrary double-standard, ALL speculations and theories of "what happened before" MUST be labeled as bad science. I know of few atheists who are willing to demote Sagan's oscillating universe theory or the universe as a quantum-fluctuation-gone-awry paradigm as bad science. However, the atheist cannot have it both ways.

Also, due to the enormous "specificity" in the laws of physics which were necessary for life (also known as the Anthropic Principle) the rival claim of the atheist to an intelligent designer is the multiple universe theorem. The idea is that since the odds are so incredible that a universe such as ours' could have emerged from a singularity "just so" (according to the British physicist Roger Penrose the odds are of the magnitude of 10^10^123), there must be many (perhaps an infinite number) of alternate universes. Why? To justify this one. Otherwise, it is mathematically unacceptable to believe that this could be the only universe and yet it turned out "just so."

Now, I have no problem with atheists formulating hypotheses such as this. However, when they do so they are commiting the same "crime" that they are accusing the Creationists of. Again, you can't have it both ways.

Ultimately, whatever one tries to "place" before the Planck epoch and "outside" this universe is going to be a bad Hypothesis. Period. No matter if it comes from the calibre of a scientist such as Feynman, Dyson or Hawking, it is STILL incapable of being proven or disproven. So, all we can do is take the data that is inside THIS universe & make our inference from there. This book is a good tool for those on both sides of the debate to do just that. If you are close minded (as most of the 1 star reviewers are), there is no need to bother reading any books in the realm of cosmology.

For futher reading on the Anthropic Principle I would recommend "Universes" by the philospoher of science John Leslie. A great book.

Rating:
Summary: This is an excellent book arguing for design
Review: This is what a teleological argument should look like. Moreland is concise and logical as always. Dhembski's philosophical spadework is GREAT. But Meyer's contribution seems a bit irrelevent. In terms of the actual evidence: Hugh Ross does a pretty good job in physics, cosmology, and astronomy. Bradly and Thraxton are EXCELLENT in analyzing the origin of life! Geologist Kurt P. Wise has some very clever arguments on the fossil record. The language guys are inferior, though. I am majoring in both philosophy and biology and enjoyed the combination of both science and philosophy. Usually books on evolution and such overkill on evidence without ever putting it in the form of a valid argument. And I am talking about both theists and non-theists. The book is written professionally so those who wish to do more research will find the endnotes and bibliography very helpful. esp Yockey's book.

Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: This was a good book, it covers many different areas as to why evolution is not possible (the kind evolutionists say lead to humans). I did think there was an error in the intro however where someone, not sure who, says that biologists have no business being philosophers, or he said it the other way around, either way. H ewas saying that people who were educated in the fields in universities had no business teaching what they weren't educated in, which of course, is wrong. You don't need to be educated in a university in a class and get straight A's or average grades to teach certain things in a field you weren't trained in, anymore than a Christians needs to be to say why evolution is wrong even though he doesn't know much about the intricacies of biology.

I also thought the book would have been good to explain why there is dash in front of the numbers that show the odds against a man evolving by chance, because I was told that there is no such thing as a negative probablity, of not, what is that dash there for? If anyone knows please email me at [e-mail]

Other than the intro, like I said, this is a good book.

You might also want to check out http://athiesm.tk for more information that backs up the bible.