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Review Summary: Dembski punches it home. |
Date: 2008-06-27 |
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Details: Before I begin my review proper, I have this caution for the "one star" denigrators: when you call someone who is obviously a brilliant, educated, thoughtful, and careful thinker (such as Behe, Meyer, Wells, and Dembski) a fool, the only sensible conclusion one can draw is that the fool is the one writing the review.
Now for the review: Until I read this book, my position in the ID vs. Darwinism debate was that the neo-Darwinian synthesis was basically dead--it simply lacked the ability to explain the complexity and variety of the millions of life forms on earth (or even the variety of cells). I arrived at this conclusion after having read Michael Denton, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and a couple of essays by Dembski. However, I felt that the issue of design would be better left outside of science. In other words, I believed that science should limit itself to what can be known about the material world. The proper (and honest) stance of science on the subject of the origin and development of life thus should be: "Science has no explanation of how it began, nor any explanation of how it evolved." Then everyone who had an interest in the subject could form their own conclusion regarding whether life (and the Universe, for that matter) has been designed by an intelligent agent or not.
Having read No Free Lunch, however, I have changed my mind. Dembski has convinced me that the conclusion that something has been designed or engineered is among the valid inferences that can be drawn based on empirical evidence, along with the conclusion that something was the result of chance or the operation of natural law.
The central concept of the book is Complex Specified Information (CSI), which something exhibits if it has a probability less than 1 over 10 to the 150th power (a very, very small number, which Dembski arrives at based on the probabilistic resources of the entire known Universe since the Big Bang), and if it conforms to a pattern that can be specified independently of it. So although the result of flipping a fair coin 1000 times will exhibit a pattern which has a probability less than that bound, it does not constitute CSI because the pattern of heads and tails cannot be specified independently of the actual result of the 1000 tosses. On the other hand, the DNA coding for a particular protein is CSI because it satisfies both conditions: the probability is small enough, and the pattern can be specified independently (coding for that protein). Dembski makes the case that CSI is a marker for intelligent design. When CSI is present, we can reliably (and scientifically) conclude that the information is the result of the work of an intelligent agent. I won't try to recapitulate his argument here. You really need a book to do it justice, so if you are interested, I urge you to read the book.
Dembski also makes it clear that the inference that something was designed tells us nothing else about the designer. We don't know if the designer (or designers) of earthly living systems was embodied (an ET, for example, as Francis Crick and Richard Dawkins hypothesize), God, or something or someone else. Nor can we conclude much, if anything, regarding its motives. This is science, not religion.
The reason I gave the book four stars instead of five is that Dembski tries valiantly to make the fairly sophisticated math on which his analysis is based available to the lay reader, but with mixed success. Perhaps the job is impossible. (I have a masters degree in math, and I don't think I could do it.) So there are places in the book where Dembski tries to convey the math without actually giving you the math, and the result is extremely difficult to follow. Fortunately, these sections are not crucial to the argument, and Dembski gives the reader a guide in the preface on what to skip if you don't want to try to wade through the mathematically based expositions.
Some of the most interesting parts of the book are in the last chapter, where Dembski discusses the ramifications of his conclusions for science, education, philosophy, and religion.
My own opinion: These results are stunning. If Dembski's work is sound (and I believe it is), then life itself points directly and powerfully to the existence of a Creator. This will have enormous consequences for our society, our culture, and our intellectual and emotional life in the coming decades. But beware--as Dembski points out, the knowledge of the existence of an intelligent agent tells us nothing about his/her/its qualities or motives. Is this Creator the Christian God, Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, the All of Buddhism, or Something Else? A great adventure of discovery awaits us, but only if we keep our minds open. |
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Review Summary: Stop trying to fill in the blanks |
Date: 2007-07-10 |
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Details: Even if someone decided to believe that evolution cannot explain every single detail about nature, there is no reason to simply fill in the blanks with some kind of god.
A lack of complete knowledge is a reason to keep studying and keep searching for the verifiable answer. To fill in the gaps of our knowledge with "god did it" is senseless and irresponsible logic.
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Review Summary: An excellent argument, intelligently presented |
Date: 2006-08-21 |
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Details: I was surprised to see this book tagged by someone named "John" (most likely the John Kwok who reviewed the book below) with 'science fiction.' Ironically, avowed atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins once stated that "this book [referring to one of his books] should be read as though it is science fiction."
This book is very technically complex with mathematics that went completely over my head. However, the fact remains that evolution does not answer all the questions that neo-Darwinians wished it did. Intelligent design provides that answer. If an arrowhead were found, an archaeologist would study it and classify it as perhaps coming from the Bronze Age. But to then turn around and state that the more highly complex DNA molecule 'just happened' by 'blind, random chance' is a huge leap of faith and seems, by all accounts, unreasonable and illogical.
Intelligent design is not simply going to go away because a few atheists and scientists want it to. A poll revealed that 51% of Americans doubt the validity of evolution. Does this mean that they are all 'stupid' and 'uninformed' as Dawkins once claime? No, it does not. It means that the evidence for evolution has not completely convinced them. Religion may or may not be a factor, since even agnostics put their trust in intelligent design. To dismiss it as being a theological or religious argument ignores this fact and reduces it to a philosophical debate, not an empirical one. |
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Review Summary: 'Tis Philosophical Nonsense, Might as Well be a Text on Klingon Cosmology..... |
Date: 2006-08-14 |
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Details: I had once remarked, in a previous Amazon.com review of another book written by William Dembski, how I was amazed by his literary productivity, observing that he had published far more books in a short span of time than either Niles Eldredge or Frank McCourt combined (I am sure that both Eldredge and McCourt would be in complete agreement.). My amazement continues in my latest review of "No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence", since Dembski has had more time writing self-serving defenses of Intelligent Design and his "explanatory filter" than conducting any serious research which could shed some light on this issue. Once more, Dembski uses some intellectually sloppy logic to contend that irreducible complexity cannot be the result of anything other than intelligence, presumably from the hand of an Intelligent Designer (He's unnamed, but for those who wish to understand who the Designer is, then you should realize that this individual is known to millions as Jehovah, Allah, Ahura Mazda, or rather, in plain English, our Christian Lord, GOD.). As another customer reviewer has noted aptly, Dembski has provided a transparently sophisticated statement of William Paley's "Watch maker" argument, which was considered, then refuted, by leading scientists during the 18th and 19th Centuries, many of whom were also members of the Protestant clergy, especially in Great Britain (In other words, "Intelligent Design" is not a bold new scientific theory, but merely, the rebirth of an outmoded, intellectually disingenuous idea which was rejected by prominent scientists hundreds of years ago.).
The arguments presented by Dembski are not only intellectually dishonest, but now, irrelevant, as determined by Republican Federal Judge John Jones in his landmark, historic decision for the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Board of Education trial; Jones concluded that intelligent design is a religious doctrine masquerading as science (It is posted online:
htttp://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/all_legal/2005-12-20_kitzmiller_decision.pdf).
Furthermore, thoughtful, reasonable conservatives like Charles Krauthammer and George Will have written lucid, brilliant columns praising the theory of evolution via natural selection, and condemning intelligent design for being an unscientific, religious doctrine (EDITORIAL NOTE: I greatly appreciate Luther Lucidity's thoughtful comments on Intelligent Design (SEE BELOW), which merely emphasize my point that it is an intellectually dishonest misappropriation of science, and a point that Judge Jones would be in complete agreement.).
There are other, more important - and intellectually sound - books available on the so-called "creation vs. evolution" controversy (Intelligent Design has been judged correctly as the latest flavor of creationism enjoying some popularity amongst fundamentalist Protestant Christians; one notable biologist has referred to it as "reborn creationism".), which I regard as more worthy than any of Dembski's self-serving defenses of Intelligent Design. Philosopher Robert Pennock's "Tower of Babel" is a splendid historical overview and philosophical deconstruction of creationism, including the best written rebuke of "Intelligent Design" which I've come across (He also covers Dembski's "explanatory filter", and demolishes it too from a philosophical perspective.). Philip Kitcher, another philosopher, published "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism" back in the early 1980s, but his arguments are still quite valid today. My friend Ken Miller's "Finding Darwin's God" has an eloquent critique of Intelligent Design, focusing on Michael Behe's mousetrap model of irreducible complexity which claims to bestow validity on Intelligent Design. Distinguished American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) invertebrate paleobiologist Niles Eldredge offers yet another brilliant critique of Intelligent Design in his book "Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life", the elegant companion volume to the AMNH Darwin exhibition which he curated, soon to embark on a tour taking it to many of North America's and Great Britain's finest science museums. And last, but not least, Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education (www.ncseweb.org), has written a fine textbook on this issue, "Evolution vs. Creationism". All of these books are more desirable than Dembski's "No Free Lunch". Otherwise, if you insist on purchasing this book, then perhaps you might choose to acquire instead a splendid text devoted to Klingon cosmology (Neither Klingon cosmology nor "Intelligent Design" can be regarded as scientific, since both depend on faith, not reason, to validate their principles.). |
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Review Summary: A Mathematical Proof of Intelligent Design |
Date: 2006-06-21 |
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Details: No Free Lunch, the sequel to mathematician and philosopher William Dembski's Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference, explores key questions about the origin of specified complexity. Dembski explains that the Darwinian search mechanism of random mutation coupled with natural selection is incapable of generating novel complex, specified information (CSI).
This observation translates into "No Free Lunch" (NFL) theorems, which Dembski explains are inherent constraints upon natural systems. Natural Darwinian mechanisms can shuffle this information around, but only intelligence can generate novel CSI. In other words, when it comes to generating truly novel biological complexity, Darwin can have no free lunch.
Some critics have asserted that he has never applied his model for detecting design to any real biological systems. The latter half of this book debunks this fallacious objection, and provides a detailed calculation of the CSI found in the bacterial flagellum. Dembski assesses the complexity of the flagellum on various levels, including its protein parts and its assembly instructions, finding that the amount of CSI contained in the flagellum vastly outweigh the probabilistic resources available in the history of the universe to construct such a structure, absent intelligent design.
No Free Lunch demonstrates that design theory shows great promise of providing insight in the field of evolutionary computation. If Dembski is right, then the ability of genetic algorithms to solve complex problems is a function of the amount of intelligent design inputted by their programmers. |
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out of 28 Reviews
