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God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory
In the last fifteen years a controversial new theory of the origins of biological complexity and the nature of the universe has been fomenting bitter debates in education and science policy across North America, Europe, and Australia. Backed by intellectuals at respectable universities,
Intelligent Design Theory (ID) proposes an alternative to accepted accounts of evolutionary that life is so complex, and that the universe is so fine-tuned for the appearance of life, that the only plausible explanation is the existence of an intelligent designer. For many ID theorists, the
designer is taken to be the god of Christianity.
Niall Shanks has written the first accessible introduction to, and critique of, this controversial new intellectual movement. Shanks locates the growth of ID in the last two decades of the twentieth century in the growing influence of the American religious right. But as he shows, its roots go back
beyond Aquinas to Ancient Greece. After looking at the historical roots of ID, Shanks takes a hard look at its intellectual underpinnings, discussing modern understandings of thermodynamics, and how self-organizing processes lead to complex physical, chemical, and biological systems. He considers
cosmological arguments for ID rooted in so-called "anthropic coincidences" and also tackles new biochemical arguments for ID based on "irreducible biological complexity." Throughout he shows how arguments for ID lack cohesion, rest on errors and unfounded suppositions, and generally are grossly
inferior to evolutionary explanations.
While ID has been proposed as a scientific alternative to evolutionary biology, Shanks argues that ID is in fact "old creationist wine in new designer label bottles" and moreover is a serious threat to the scientific and democratic values that are our cultural and intellectual inheritance from the
Enlightenment.
Intelligent Design Theory (ID) proposes an alternative to accepted accounts of evolutionary that life is so complex, and that the universe is so fine-tuned for the appearance of life, that the only plausible explanation is the existence of an intelligent designer. For many ID theorists, the
designer is taken to be the god of Christianity.
Niall Shanks has written the first accessible introduction to, and critique of, this controversial new intellectual movement. Shanks locates the growth of ID in the last two decades of the twentieth century in the growing influence of the American religious right. But as he shows, its roots go back
beyond Aquinas to Ancient Greece. After looking at the historical roots of ID, Shanks takes a hard look at its intellectual underpinnings, discussing modern understandings of thermodynamics, and how self-organizing processes lead to complex physical, chemical, and biological systems. He considers
cosmological arguments for ID rooted in so-called "anthropic coincidences" and also tackles new biochemical arguments for ID based on "irreducible biological complexity." Throughout he shows how arguments for ID lack cohesion, rest on errors and unfounded suppositions, and generally are grossly
inferior to evolutionary explanations.
While ID has been proposed as a scientific alternative to evolutionary biology, Shanks argues that ID is in fact "old creationist wine in new designer label bottles" and moreover is a serious threat to the scientific and democratic values that are our cultural and intellectual inheritance from the
Enlightenment.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
16 people are currently reading
1191 people want to read
About the author
Niall Shanks
9 books10 followersJanuary 18, 1959—July 13, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 20, 2021
"Intelligent design theory is not a genuine attempt to advance scientific knowledge. It is in fact an ideological vehicle carefully crafted to advance a preexisting, conservative Christian social agenda."
It is unfortunate that a book like this even needed to be written, but science is a process of questioning one’s beliefs, and some people hate having their beliefs questioned. They just want to be told what to believe, how to act, who to obey, who to hate.
Niall Shank’s book works its way through the Intelligent Design arguments, demolishing them one after another. It won’t change the minds of any creationists, because they won’t read it anyway, but for anyone wanting a better understanding of the mechanisms of evolution by natural selection, the book provides a good foundation.
Shanks does more than just list the creationist arguments and the science behind the counter-arguments; he has also written a good primer on evolution in general, giving background information on everything from cosmology to genetics as they bear upon evolution as it is manifested in life, the universe, and everything.
I learned a lot from the book, and highlighted numerous passages, so rather than reformulate Shanks’s arguments in my own words, I decided that I would group some of them into general themes and let the author speak for himself.
I was concerned that the book would be too polemical, and at times Shanks’s frustration shows as he describes Intelligent Design’s simplistic positions and disingenuous strategies. However, I figured it is like arguing with a Flat Earther: at some point you realize that logic means nothing to these people, and that no evidence will change their minds, that you are wasting your time, so a bit of eye-rolling is certainly called for.
General Observations
- many strands of the diverse cultural fabric of the Christian community have indeed found ways to accommodate science and religion. Such strands include, but are not limited to, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Anglicans, Methodists, and Presbyterians. For many Christians, belief in God is about how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go.
- No intelligent, sensible, and benevolent engineer would have designed humans to be so subject to diseases like cancer; such a benevolent engineer would surely not have designed pathogens so adapted to our bodies and effective at making us sick. Surely only a buffoon or a malicious intelligence would have designed the human lower back to be the source of so much pain, and no sensible engineer would have come up with a system for childbirth as difficult and painful as that found in humans.
- While it is hard to credit deception on this scale – even self-deception – the theme is one that will resonate with creationists and other Christian extremists in the United States. That is, religion is never to be assessed in terms of its objective consequences, and secularism (Darwinism in the context of science education) is the root of all evil.
- Darwin was evidently swayed by versions of the argument from evil as an argument against the existence of God. In a nutshell, the argument questions whether it makes sense to suppose that an all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present, and completely good God would allow suffering-that is, evil-to exist in the created world.
- Asking what came before the Big Bang might be like asking what is north of the North Pole-a place where "north" has no meaning. It is presumptuous to assume that just because they are suitable for talking about the nature of time today, our ideas of time must also apply to the utmost extremities of spacetime.
- Ordinary stellar mechanisms will generate elements up to about iron in the periodic table. To get the heavier elements, such as lead, gold, and uranium, special stellar events known as supernovas must occur. These events are caused when large stars collapse in on themselves. A supernova is a massive explosion, and it can outshine an entire galaxy. The resulting energies are such that the truly heavy elements in the periodic table can form by the fusion of lighter nuclei. In a sense, then, all of us here on Earth are made of star stuff formed in the hearts of stars.
- a supernatural solution looks like a cop-out. Invoking supernatural beings and supernatural causes (about which little is ever said and even less evidence is presented) amounts to little more than a shallow excuse for a violation of the laws of nature.
Intelligent Design
- Intelligent design theorists are very interested in the origins of things. Things in nature, such as biochemical systems, are said to have their origins in intelligent design. But at this point their curiosity about issues of origins mysteriously comes to an end. How did the design originate? By what processes was it effected? These issues are left unanswered as mysteries beyond the ken of design theorists.
- in the end, there is always the question of evidence. Intelligent design theorists tell us nothing about the designer, save that they think it ought to be the god of Christianity. The methods and materials employed by the designer and any account of supernatural objects themselves (how they differ from physical objects, how they bring about effects in the physical world) are apparently beyond the scope of human knowledge.
- Intelligent design theorists do not even have a program of research in which answers to the intelligent design questions might meaningfully be sought.
- Contemporary advocates of intelligent design, however, have failed to take the evidential high road, preferring instead to refute parodies of natural science while refusing to face their own evidential obligations. To a person, they have refused to offer credible evidence that there are any supernatural objects. They have also failed to explain how supernatural objects can interact with physical objects. They have not explained how we might even begin to gather evidence to examine claims about the details of design.
- One does not have to scratch far below the surface to get much closer to the real motivations of the intelligent design movement, which in reality have little to do with science but a lot to do with politics and power-in particular, the imposition of discriminatory, conservative Christian values on our educational, legal, social, and political institutions.
- Kent Hovind, for example, who runs Creation Science Ministries in Florida and promulgates theories favored by the antigovernment groups, maintains, "Democracy is evil and contrary to God's law"
- Henry Morris of ICR [the Institute for Creation Research] has said of evolution that "the entire monstrous complex was revealed to Nimrod at Babel and perhaps by Satan himself.... Satan is the originator of the concept of evolution."
- Whatever the initial motives were in joining hands with Islamic fundamentalists, it appears that in the hands of Islamic creationists, ICR's anti-Darwinism involves much more than a rejection of secular biological science. It involves a rejection of secular politics and the secular society that supports it.
- In the end, it is the moral implications of the intelligent design movement and not its instrumental manipulation of science and science education that we all, collectively, need to be concerned about.
The Wedge Strategy to infiltrate Creationism into schools and politics
- the thin end of the wedge has been carefully crafted to get a hearing from audiences wary of the excesses of creationist silliness. Not for nothing is intelligent design theory known as stealth creationism.
- At the thin end of the wedge, it is claimed that there are features of the world that stand as evidence of intelligent design, even though we do not know who the designer was, how design was accomplished, or to what end.
- At the thinnest end of the wedge are questions about Darwinism. As the wedge thickens slightly, issues about the nature of intelligent causation are introduced. As the wedge thickens still further, the interest in intelligent causation evolves into an interest in supernatural intelligent causation. At the fat end of the wedge is a bloated evangelical theology.
- the dark side of the wedge strategy, lurking at the fat end of the wedge, lies in the way that it is intelligently designed to close minds to critical, rational scrutiny of the world we live in.
- once the wedge is driven home, even the rules of reasoning and logic will be have to be adjusted to sit on theological foundations. In this way, critical thinking and opposition will not just be hard but literally unthinkable!
Genetics and Natural Selection
- The distinction between an organism and its genes underlies one of the most basic distinctions in genetics, that between phenotype and genotype: The ‘phenotype' of an organism is the class of which it is a member based upon the observable physical qualities of the organism, including its morphology, physiology, and behavior at all levels of description. The 'genotype' of an organism is the class of which it is a member based upon the postulated state of its internal hereditary factors, the genes"
- The locus of a gene is its position on a chromosome. For a given locus, a population of organisms may contain two or more variant forms of the gene associated with that locus. These variant forms of a gene are called alleles. In diploid organisms (e.g., mammals), there are two alleles of any gene, one from each parent, which occupy the same relative position on homologous chromosomes.
- Entire genes can be duplicated, and when this happens the resulting genome has two copies of a gene where before it had one. Duplication events are very important for evolutionary biologists. First, because with two copies of a functional gene, one can continue its old job, while the new copy can undergo mutation and acquire new functions that can participate in the life of an organism in novel ways.
- Important for evolution, then, is the existence of multiple alleles in populations of organisms. A given allele may be found with a given statistical frequency in a population. Evolution occurs in a population when the relative frequency with which alleles are found in that population changes (for whatever reason) from one generation to the next.
- what gets replicated are genes, and it is genes that travel down the generations-genes, barring mutations, that are identical by descent.
- What parents pass on to their offspring are alleles. Alleles that contribute positively to reproductive success are more likely to find themselves in the next generation, in higher frequencies, than alleles that do not. Such alleles are said to confer fitness advantages.
- the line that leads to modern humans diverged from the line leading to modern chimpanzees about 7 to 10 million years ago (Lewontin 1995, 15-16). This is about the same span of time separating deer from giraffes.
- to a rough approximation, we humans share most of our developmental regulatory genes not only with flies, but also with such humble creatures as nematodes and such decidedly peculiar ones as sea urchins.
- The point is made if we realize that to evolve a human eye, we do not need everything at once, and more rudimentary structures of varying degrees of complexity can get a job done that is selectively advantageous in the environment in which it is found.
- Evolution is pure demographics. It is about the production of offspring who can themselves reproduce. Ecological circumstances exist in which cutthroat competition is a way to succeed in this endeavor, but circumstances also exist in which cooperation with one's fellow creatures and even altruism can be as effective a strategy to the same end.
- Darwin's crucial insight was to consider the problem from the standpoint of populations. First of all, individuals come and go, but populations typically exist for many generations. Individuals live and die, reproducing if they are lucky, but they do not evolve. Populations of individuals evolve over time.
- Many are tried in the court of natural selection that a few may succeed. Evolution by natural selection is an unintelligent wasteful process, but it gets the job done, for it is a natural process whereby populations of organisms can change their characteristics over time and thus remain adapted and functional in an environment that is changing with them.
It is unfortunate that a book like this even needed to be written, but science is a process of questioning one’s beliefs, and some people hate having their beliefs questioned. They just want to be told what to believe, how to act, who to obey, who to hate.
Niall Shank’s book works its way through the Intelligent Design arguments, demolishing them one after another. It won’t change the minds of any creationists, because they won’t read it anyway, but for anyone wanting a better understanding of the mechanisms of evolution by natural selection, the book provides a good foundation.
Shanks does more than just list the creationist arguments and the science behind the counter-arguments; he has also written a good primer on evolution in general, giving background information on everything from cosmology to genetics as they bear upon evolution as it is manifested in life, the universe, and everything.
I learned a lot from the book, and highlighted numerous passages, so rather than reformulate Shanks’s arguments in my own words, I decided that I would group some of them into general themes and let the author speak for himself.
I was concerned that the book would be too polemical, and at times Shanks’s frustration shows as he describes Intelligent Design’s simplistic positions and disingenuous strategies. However, I figured it is like arguing with a Flat Earther: at some point you realize that logic means nothing to these people, and that no evidence will change their minds, that you are wasting your time, so a bit of eye-rolling is certainly called for.
General Observations
- many strands of the diverse cultural fabric of the Christian community have indeed found ways to accommodate science and religion. Such strands include, but are not limited to, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Anglicans, Methodists, and Presbyterians. For many Christians, belief in God is about how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens go.
- No intelligent, sensible, and benevolent engineer would have designed humans to be so subject to diseases like cancer; such a benevolent engineer would surely not have designed pathogens so adapted to our bodies and effective at making us sick. Surely only a buffoon or a malicious intelligence would have designed the human lower back to be the source of so much pain, and no sensible engineer would have come up with a system for childbirth as difficult and painful as that found in humans.
- While it is hard to credit deception on this scale – even self-deception – the theme is one that will resonate with creationists and other Christian extremists in the United States. That is, religion is never to be assessed in terms of its objective consequences, and secularism (Darwinism in the context of science education) is the root of all evil.
- Darwin was evidently swayed by versions of the argument from evil as an argument against the existence of God. In a nutshell, the argument questions whether it makes sense to suppose that an all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere present, and completely good God would allow suffering-that is, evil-to exist in the created world.
- Asking what came before the Big Bang might be like asking what is north of the North Pole-a place where "north" has no meaning. It is presumptuous to assume that just because they are suitable for talking about the nature of time today, our ideas of time must also apply to the utmost extremities of spacetime.
- Ordinary stellar mechanisms will generate elements up to about iron in the periodic table. To get the heavier elements, such as lead, gold, and uranium, special stellar events known as supernovas must occur. These events are caused when large stars collapse in on themselves. A supernova is a massive explosion, and it can outshine an entire galaxy. The resulting energies are such that the truly heavy elements in the periodic table can form by the fusion of lighter nuclei. In a sense, then, all of us here on Earth are made of star stuff formed in the hearts of stars.
- a supernatural solution looks like a cop-out. Invoking supernatural beings and supernatural causes (about which little is ever said and even less evidence is presented) amounts to little more than a shallow excuse for a violation of the laws of nature.
Intelligent Design
- Intelligent design theorists are very interested in the origins of things. Things in nature, such as biochemical systems, are said to have their origins in intelligent design. But at this point their curiosity about issues of origins mysteriously comes to an end. How did the design originate? By what processes was it effected? These issues are left unanswered as mysteries beyond the ken of design theorists.
- in the end, there is always the question of evidence. Intelligent design theorists tell us nothing about the designer, save that they think it ought to be the god of Christianity. The methods and materials employed by the designer and any account of supernatural objects themselves (how they differ from physical objects, how they bring about effects in the physical world) are apparently beyond the scope of human knowledge.
- Intelligent design theorists do not even have a program of research in which answers to the intelligent design questions might meaningfully be sought.
- Contemporary advocates of intelligent design, however, have failed to take the evidential high road, preferring instead to refute parodies of natural science while refusing to face their own evidential obligations. To a person, they have refused to offer credible evidence that there are any supernatural objects. They have also failed to explain how supernatural objects can interact with physical objects. They have not explained how we might even begin to gather evidence to examine claims about the details of design.
- One does not have to scratch far below the surface to get much closer to the real motivations of the intelligent design movement, which in reality have little to do with science but a lot to do with politics and power-in particular, the imposition of discriminatory, conservative Christian values on our educational, legal, social, and political institutions.
- Kent Hovind, for example, who runs Creation Science Ministries in Florida and promulgates theories favored by the antigovernment groups, maintains, "Democracy is evil and contrary to God's law"
- Henry Morris of ICR [the Institute for Creation Research] has said of evolution that "the entire monstrous complex was revealed to Nimrod at Babel and perhaps by Satan himself.... Satan is the originator of the concept of evolution."
- Whatever the initial motives were in joining hands with Islamic fundamentalists, it appears that in the hands of Islamic creationists, ICR's anti-Darwinism involves much more than a rejection of secular biological science. It involves a rejection of secular politics and the secular society that supports it.
- In the end, it is the moral implications of the intelligent design movement and not its instrumental manipulation of science and science education that we all, collectively, need to be concerned about.
The Wedge Strategy to infiltrate Creationism into schools and politics
- the thin end of the wedge has been carefully crafted to get a hearing from audiences wary of the excesses of creationist silliness. Not for nothing is intelligent design theory known as stealth creationism.
- At the thin end of the wedge, it is claimed that there are features of the world that stand as evidence of intelligent design, even though we do not know who the designer was, how design was accomplished, or to what end.
- At the thinnest end of the wedge are questions about Darwinism. As the wedge thickens slightly, issues about the nature of intelligent causation are introduced. As the wedge thickens still further, the interest in intelligent causation evolves into an interest in supernatural intelligent causation. At the fat end of the wedge is a bloated evangelical theology.
- the dark side of the wedge strategy, lurking at the fat end of the wedge, lies in the way that it is intelligently designed to close minds to critical, rational scrutiny of the world we live in.
- once the wedge is driven home, even the rules of reasoning and logic will be have to be adjusted to sit on theological foundations. In this way, critical thinking and opposition will not just be hard but literally unthinkable!
Genetics and Natural Selection
- The distinction between an organism and its genes underlies one of the most basic distinctions in genetics, that between phenotype and genotype: The ‘phenotype' of an organism is the class of which it is a member based upon the observable physical qualities of the organism, including its morphology, physiology, and behavior at all levels of description. The 'genotype' of an organism is the class of which it is a member based upon the postulated state of its internal hereditary factors, the genes"
- The locus of a gene is its position on a chromosome. For a given locus, a population of organisms may contain two or more variant forms of the gene associated with that locus. These variant forms of a gene are called alleles. In diploid organisms (e.g., mammals), there are two alleles of any gene, one from each parent, which occupy the same relative position on homologous chromosomes.
- Entire genes can be duplicated, and when this happens the resulting genome has two copies of a gene where before it had one. Duplication events are very important for evolutionary biologists. First, because with two copies of a functional gene, one can continue its old job, while the new copy can undergo mutation and acquire new functions that can participate in the life of an organism in novel ways.
- Important for evolution, then, is the existence of multiple alleles in populations of organisms. A given allele may be found with a given statistical frequency in a population. Evolution occurs in a population when the relative frequency with which alleles are found in that population changes (for whatever reason) from one generation to the next.
- what gets replicated are genes, and it is genes that travel down the generations-genes, barring mutations, that are identical by descent.
- What parents pass on to their offspring are alleles. Alleles that contribute positively to reproductive success are more likely to find themselves in the next generation, in higher frequencies, than alleles that do not. Such alleles are said to confer fitness advantages.
- the line that leads to modern humans diverged from the line leading to modern chimpanzees about 7 to 10 million years ago (Lewontin 1995, 15-16). This is about the same span of time separating deer from giraffes.
- to a rough approximation, we humans share most of our developmental regulatory genes not only with flies, but also with such humble creatures as nematodes and such decidedly peculiar ones as sea urchins.
- The point is made if we realize that to evolve a human eye, we do not need everything at once, and more rudimentary structures of varying degrees of complexity can get a job done that is selectively advantageous in the environment in which it is found.
- Evolution is pure demographics. It is about the production of offspring who can themselves reproduce. Ecological circumstances exist in which cutthroat competition is a way to succeed in this endeavor, but circumstances also exist in which cooperation with one's fellow creatures and even altruism can be as effective a strategy to the same end.
- Darwin's crucial insight was to consider the problem from the standpoint of populations. First of all, individuals come and go, but populations typically exist for many generations. Individuals live and die, reproducing if they are lucky, but they do not evolve. Populations of individuals evolve over time.
- Many are tried in the court of natural selection that a few may succeed. Evolution by natural selection is an unintelligent wasteful process, but it gets the job done, for it is a natural process whereby populations of organisms can change their characteristics over time and thus remain adapted and functional in an environment that is changing with them.
March 3, 2011
This is certainly the best analysis of ID -- and of Creationism in general -- that I've come across. Shanks has actually, as an evolutionary biologist teaching at East Tennessee State University, fought in the front lines against Creationist claptrap -- you can find his very funny essay about these experiences, "Fighting for Our Sanity in Tennessee", by googling. He brings some of that battle-hardenedness to this far more sombre work; although there could hardly help but be a few moments worth chuckling over, his intent here is deadly serious. He also manages to explain the principles of ID more clearly than any IDer I've read! I'd shyly suggest this is a very important book, and, if you care at all about trying to push back against those forces who'd like to see us enter another Dark Age of ignorance and deprivation, one you should put on your reading list.
March 6, 2007
Good reading, very in depth and answers alot of questions. Critisizes Intelligent Design "theory"
July 7, 2008
A bit scattered and repetitive, occasionally hard to follow, but a good introduction to what's wrong with "intelligent design." Good bibliography
August 29, 2019
Demolishes the modern argument from design
Professor Shanks has done somebody a real service here in painstakingly demonstrating the utter intellectual poverty of so-called "intelligent design theory." Just who that person is I don't know. Perhaps it's a US congressman. Most people I know either haven't a clue about the subject, or are rationalists and are well aware that the intelligent design argument is scientifically vacuous and actually a religious power play, or they are religious true believers themselves and uncritically accept the notion that the universe was designed by a supernatural being whom they call God.
In other words, all the close and detailed analysis done by Shanks in this book--and trust me, he really addresses the question in the most thorough way--isn't about to persuade anybody one way or the other. Most people won't--and could not even if they tried--read it. It is entirely too finely meshed in technical detail about matters of no particular interest to them: cosmology, quantum mechanics, probability theory, biochemistry, thermodynamics, etc. Yet the book had to be written just for the record, one might say. All the pseudoscience served up by the creationists and the intelligent designers needed to be answered thoroughly, and Shanks has done that in a most impressive manner.
Shanks takes the intelligent designers seriously and presents their arguments, and then, piece by piece, refutes them. Frankly, I believe he gives them more attention than they deserve. After all, how seriously can one take a man (leading intelligent design theorist, William Dembski, for example) who writes: "My thesis is that all disciplines find their completion in Christ and cannot be properly understood apart from Christ"? (p. 157) I mean, isn't it enough to just quote such a person? He's a true believer and all his "arguments" are merely attempts to justify his belief in a supernatural being and supernatural causation. No amount of counter argument from logic or scientific experiment or from the multitudinous conclusions of the various sciences is going to sway him one iota.
But of course Shanks is not aiming his arguments at Dembski or his colleagues. Rather, like the good teacher he is, Shanks wants it spelled out for his students and for students everywhere just how absurd and wanting is the case for intelligent design. He is writing for those not yet entirely corrupted by religious propaganda and as yet innocent of the weight of the scientific evidence.
Why, one might ask, are the religious fundamentalists so intent on attacking Darwinism? Is it because they are uncomfortable with being closely related to apes, as were the Victorians? They probably are, but the real reason is that "Darwin's theory of evolution can be viewed as a sustained refutation of the argument from design..." (p. 24) Before evolution it was a mighty mystery as to how species arose, and any argument was as good as another, with the hoary argument from design being especially agreeable; and therefore pronouncements from the clergy held not only psychological, social and political sway over the masses, but intellectual sway as well. Darwinism changed all that, with the result that the Church lost an enormous amount of power and prestige--power and prestige that it has been desperately trying to regain ever since.
Noteworthy is the fine introduction by Richard Dawkins who has fought long and hard himself against the stupidities of the creationists and intelligent designers. Note well his sharp and decisive tone: "Intelligent Design 'theory' is pernicious nonsense which needs to be neutralized before irreparable damage is done to American education." (p. x)
That really is the bottom line. All that we have learned from science and rationalism is under attack from the forces of ignorance, mostly right-wing religious fundamentalists who would substitute their authoritarian mumble-jumble for reality in an attempt to seize the reigns of political power and usher in a return to the Dark Ages with themselves at the throne. Professor Shanks is to be commended for his efforts to prevent such a catastrophe, as unlikely as such a catastrophe might be.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
Professor Shanks has done somebody a real service here in painstakingly demonstrating the utter intellectual poverty of so-called "intelligent design theory." Just who that person is I don't know. Perhaps it's a US congressman. Most people I know either haven't a clue about the subject, or are rationalists and are well aware that the intelligent design argument is scientifically vacuous and actually a religious power play, or they are religious true believers themselves and uncritically accept the notion that the universe was designed by a supernatural being whom they call God.
In other words, all the close and detailed analysis done by Shanks in this book--and trust me, he really addresses the question in the most thorough way--isn't about to persuade anybody one way or the other. Most people won't--and could not even if they tried--read it. It is entirely too finely meshed in technical detail about matters of no particular interest to them: cosmology, quantum mechanics, probability theory, biochemistry, thermodynamics, etc. Yet the book had to be written just for the record, one might say. All the pseudoscience served up by the creationists and the intelligent designers needed to be answered thoroughly, and Shanks has done that in a most impressive manner.
Shanks takes the intelligent designers seriously and presents their arguments, and then, piece by piece, refutes them. Frankly, I believe he gives them more attention than they deserve. After all, how seriously can one take a man (leading intelligent design theorist, William Dembski, for example) who writes: "My thesis is that all disciplines find their completion in Christ and cannot be properly understood apart from Christ"? (p. 157) I mean, isn't it enough to just quote such a person? He's a true believer and all his "arguments" are merely attempts to justify his belief in a supernatural being and supernatural causation. No amount of counter argument from logic or scientific experiment or from the multitudinous conclusions of the various sciences is going to sway him one iota.
But of course Shanks is not aiming his arguments at Dembski or his colleagues. Rather, like the good teacher he is, Shanks wants it spelled out for his students and for students everywhere just how absurd and wanting is the case for intelligent design. He is writing for those not yet entirely corrupted by religious propaganda and as yet innocent of the weight of the scientific evidence.
Why, one might ask, are the religious fundamentalists so intent on attacking Darwinism? Is it because they are uncomfortable with being closely related to apes, as were the Victorians? They probably are, but the real reason is that "Darwin's theory of evolution can be viewed as a sustained refutation of the argument from design..." (p. 24) Before evolution it was a mighty mystery as to how species arose, and any argument was as good as another, with the hoary argument from design being especially agreeable; and therefore pronouncements from the clergy held not only psychological, social and political sway over the masses, but intellectual sway as well. Darwinism changed all that, with the result that the Church lost an enormous amount of power and prestige--power and prestige that it has been desperately trying to regain ever since.
Noteworthy is the fine introduction by Richard Dawkins who has fought long and hard himself against the stupidities of the creationists and intelligent designers. Note well his sharp and decisive tone: "Intelligent Design 'theory' is pernicious nonsense which needs to be neutralized before irreparable damage is done to American education." (p. x)
That really is the bottom line. All that we have learned from science and rationalism is under attack from the forces of ignorance, mostly right-wing religious fundamentalists who would substitute their authoritarian mumble-jumble for reality in an attempt to seize the reigns of political power and usher in a return to the Dark Ages with themselves at the throne. Professor Shanks is to be commended for his efforts to prevent such a catastrophe, as unlikely as such a catastrophe might be.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
December 26, 2020
This was a tough read, and I’m an atheist.
I’m not a scientific person and was hoping for something... different. In some places it was over technical which I assume was necessary but my unscientific mind had difficulty grasping the points. I’m sure it’s all great and necessary but most of it went over my head.
I genuinely enjoyed the last 1/3 of the book but by then I was just wanting to be done with it...
I’m not a scientific person and was hoping for something... different. In some places it was over technical which I assume was necessary but my unscientific mind had difficulty grasping the points. I’m sure it’s all great and necessary but most of it went over my head.
I genuinely enjoyed the last 1/3 of the book but by then I was just wanting to be done with it...
Want to read
September 24, 2016To boldly go where no retard has gone before - creatardism
August 18, 2024
A TEACHER OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY LOOKS CRITICALLY AT "ID" THEORY
Niall Shanks is a professor of philosophy, as well as of biological sciences, physics, etc., at East Tennessee State University. He has also written books such as 'Animal Models in Light of Evolution,' 'Animals and Science: A Guide to the Debates,' 'Logic, Probability And Science,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2004 book, "A culture war is currently being waged in the United States by religious extremists who hope to turn the clock of science back to medieval times... The chief weapon in this war is a version of creation science known as intelligent design theory... The proponents of intelligent design are openly pursuing what they call a wedge strategy. First, get intelligent design taught alongside the natural sciences... [then the wedge] can be driven ever deeper to transform ... the educational enterprise itself into a system more open with respect to its aim of religious instruction... At the fat end of the wedge lurks the spectre of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. This book, however, is about the thin edge of the wedge: supernatural science. Ultimately, it is about two basic questions: Is intelligent design theory a scientific theory? Is there any credible evidence to support its claims?" (Pg. xi-xii)
He adds, "My own experience with creationism... goes back to 1996, when I had the pleasure of engaging in a public debate with Duane Gish [e.g., 'Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record']... Teaching evolutionary biology in one of the Bible Belt's many buckles, I have had many close classroom encounters with ideas derived from creationism and ... intelligent design theory... Intelligent design theory represents... a serious challenge to the outlook of modern science itself. This is a challenge that needs to be taken seriously and not dismissed." (Pg. xii) He further adds, "I must be blunt with you. I am an atheist, and by this I mean that I am someone who does not believe that there is any credible evidence to support belief in the existence of God." (Pg. 14)
He recounts that "Where others saw intelligent, beneficent design, Darwin saw misery... and he evidently struggled with it, as can be seen in ... remarks to his friend Asa Gray... 'I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent God would have designedly ... [intended] that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force." (Pg. 53)
He argues, "The motivation behind the intelligent design movement is to justify the claim that there is evidence for a supernatural designer indistinguishable from the God of Christianity---not some idolatrous Hindu deity, not some incompetent, stupid, supernatural bungler, and not some evil manufacturer of torture devices." (Pg. 157) Later, he adds, "Intelligent design theorist William Dembski [e.g., 'Intelligent Design'] believes that the design and creation of the universe was done with a spoken word... Where is the evidence? That it is in the Bible is no guarantee that it even makes coherent sense, let alone is a candidate for truth or falsity." (Pg. 213)
This book (which has a Foreword by Richard Dawkins ['Climbing Mount Improbable') will be of great interest to critics of Intelligent Design (or even to proponents, looking at both sides of the issue).
Niall Shanks is a professor of philosophy, as well as of biological sciences, physics, etc., at East Tennessee State University. He has also written books such as 'Animal Models in Light of Evolution,' 'Animals and Science: A Guide to the Debates,' 'Logic, Probability And Science,' etc.
He wrote in the Preface to this 2004 book, "A culture war is currently being waged in the United States by religious extremists who hope to turn the clock of science back to medieval times... The chief weapon in this war is a version of creation science known as intelligent design theory... The proponents of intelligent design are openly pursuing what they call a wedge strategy. First, get intelligent design taught alongside the natural sciences... [then the wedge] can be driven ever deeper to transform ... the educational enterprise itself into a system more open with respect to its aim of religious instruction... At the fat end of the wedge lurks the spectre of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. This book, however, is about the thin edge of the wedge: supernatural science. Ultimately, it is about two basic questions: Is intelligent design theory a scientific theory? Is there any credible evidence to support its claims?" (Pg. xi-xii)
He adds, "My own experience with creationism... goes back to 1996, when I had the pleasure of engaging in a public debate with Duane Gish [e.g., 'Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record']... Teaching evolutionary biology in one of the Bible Belt's many buckles, I have had many close classroom encounters with ideas derived from creationism and ... intelligent design theory... Intelligent design theory represents... a serious challenge to the outlook of modern science itself. This is a challenge that needs to be taken seriously and not dismissed." (Pg. xii) He further adds, "I must be blunt with you. I am an atheist, and by this I mean that I am someone who does not believe that there is any credible evidence to support belief in the existence of God." (Pg. 14)
He recounts that "Where others saw intelligent, beneficent design, Darwin saw misery... and he evidently struggled with it, as can be seen in ... remarks to his friend Asa Gray... 'I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent God would have designedly ... [intended] that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force." (Pg. 53)
He argues, "The motivation behind the intelligent design movement is to justify the claim that there is evidence for a supernatural designer indistinguishable from the God of Christianity---not some idolatrous Hindu deity, not some incompetent, stupid, supernatural bungler, and not some evil manufacturer of torture devices." (Pg. 157) Later, he adds, "Intelligent design theorist William Dembski [e.g., 'Intelligent Design'] believes that the design and creation of the universe was done with a spoken word... Where is the evidence? That it is in the Bible is no guarantee that it even makes coherent sense, let alone is a candidate for truth or falsity." (Pg. 213)
This book (which has a Foreword by Richard Dawkins ['Climbing Mount Improbable') will be of great interest to critics of Intelligent Design (or even to proponents, looking at both sides of the issue).
October 21, 2019
The argument Niall is well presented. He managed to list all of the controversial subjects of creation vs mindless nature in a logical organized way. I’ve respected his scientific approach to counter the creation theory for the universe in calm and a detailed methodology with an open mind. A rare approach from similar atheists writers. Agreeing with his arguments is a different matter. I believe that he didn’t manage to personally convince me that this vast universe, the amazing human body, the perfectly balanced ecosystem could be just by “ luck” or an accident by a “dumb” mindless nature. To the contrary, he managed to display in the several cases he discussed from the Behe argument, closed systems and perfectly balanced universe to the big bang that all of this is impossible for a logical, reasonable and scientific person to believe that it just happened without an intelligent creator.
Yes, If i see a watch i would still believe someone has created it. William Paley’s example is still valid centuries after he discussed it. Niall and most atheists ignore the simplest logic that Paley has presented brillianty. It's a simple founded logic that is hard to refute. Niall also totally ignores the most important question the source of life itself. What is driving all the creatures in the universe? The essences of life that until today science theories fails to answer. Resting the answer that we still have gaps in our knowledge is not satisfactory enough. What Niall misses and his fellow atheists writers that believing in an intelligent creator for the universe is not necessarily against believing in evolution. My faith in a creator is well established through science. Science presentes how complex, integrated and massive is the human body and the universe that simply no mindless nature can create.
Yes, If i see a watch i would still believe someone has created it. William Paley’s example is still valid centuries after he discussed it. Niall and most atheists ignore the simplest logic that Paley has presented brillianty. It's a simple founded logic that is hard to refute. Niall also totally ignores the most important question the source of life itself. What is driving all the creatures in the universe? The essences of life that until today science theories fails to answer. Resting the answer that we still have gaps in our knowledge is not satisfactory enough. What Niall misses and his fellow atheists writers that believing in an intelligent creator for the universe is not necessarily against believing in evolution. My faith in a creator is well established through science. Science presentes how complex, integrated and massive is the human body and the universe that simply no mindless nature can create.
May 24, 2020
This is an interesting, sometimes challenging book to read. About 40% of the time he was describing scientific theories and processes of which I have very little understanding. Things like quantum physics and thermodynamic laws. I waded through those sections, having to re-read some parts working to make sense of what he was trying to illustrate. Key take aways: 1. Our understanding of evolution and the cellular and genetic processes are vastly more complicated than Darwin ever imagined. 2. We have learned things that were unthought of years ago. Just because we can’t explain something now does not mean we won’t be able to explain it in the future. 3. While the christian right is screaming and advocating for intelligent design to be taught in our classrooms, their ultimate goal is a complete take over of our educational and political systems by their brand of religion. He offers evidence of this. 4. There are various brands of intelligent design theory and they sometimes bitterly disagree with each other. But then christian vs. christian is nothing new. BOTTOM LINE We must maintain our rational scientific system that is soundly based on clear, observable, demonstrable facts.
March 18, 2025
very detailed and argumentative book, not always hard to follow. it makes good material for a real discussion on the topic.
November 8, 2013
Intelligent Design entered my consciousness as a proposed scientific alternative to evolutionary theory. I was quick to discover that the scientific objections raised by ID proponents had no scientific basis, yet my experience with proponents of the theory suggested that fact didn't really matter too much.
ID, by and large, is a philosophical doctrine - a modern restatement of natural theology dressed up in modern language. The analogy to design (if it looks designed, then it must have a designer) is still here, only it's given the name "the design inference" complete with an argument about how we can know that a designer was involved. Irreducible Complexity is a question of what the Darwinian process can do. And under question is the nature of science itself, of the idea that metaphysical naturalism is a priori biasing the intellectual inquiry away from God.
So the best person for the job is a philosopher.
The book does both the reader and the concept a service by spending the time properly framing the debate in its historical context. Before we even get to the arguments, we have a history of evolutionary theory, a history of natural theology, then an explanation of origins of order in our universe. Anyone familiar with creationist arguments would have no doubt come across pronouncements on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Shanks patiently takes the time to explain the role of thermodynamics in our universe, giving the reader every opportunity to understand how the concept is used (and thus misused) by overzealous arguments.
What impressed me about the book was the way in which Shanks takes down the arguments, doing so in only a way that a philosopher can. Not only was it a good survey of the science, but the examples served to show how the ID proponents make claims that are contradicted by existing knowledge. One standard approach to ID arguments is to point out they are god-of-the-gaps arguments (otherwise known as arguments from ignorance), but Shanks patiently and in as much detail as needed shows that the arguments are already contradicted by counterexample. To make matters worse, those counterexamples are often from papers that the ID proponents cite! In any case, a reader of this book should come away with a better understanding of the conceptual issues surrounding the particular arguments used by ID proponents.
Perhaps the most important issue covered is the idea of methodological naturalism. And this is where the Wedge Strategy comes into play, where ID proponents are trying to use less controversial issues in order to drive home the more controversial issues of their agenda. Shanks not only presents a clear understanding of the differences between methodological and metaphysical naturalism, but contrasts them with supernaturalism in terms of an explanatory framework. Why is it that if ID is an alternative to evolutionary theory that it works just as well for the cosmic design? Shanks' reasoning should give a clear answer as to why. It's easy to break out supernatural explanations, or talk of the self-limiting nature of science, but if superficial plausibility were all that was needed to do science, then we wouldn't need highly-trained experts.
Because ID masquerades as a science, and because its importance is cultural, this book is important. Anyone reading this book should come away with a better understanding of science, of how nature works, and where ID needs to vastly improve if it is to be taken seriously as the alternative it craves to be. We could easily (and fairly) dismiss ID as rebranded creationism, but it is important to not do so without understanding the relevant philosophical issues the proponents try to raise.
ID, by and large, is a philosophical doctrine - a modern restatement of natural theology dressed up in modern language. The analogy to design (if it looks designed, then it must have a designer) is still here, only it's given the name "the design inference" complete with an argument about how we can know that a designer was involved. Irreducible Complexity is a question of what the Darwinian process can do. And under question is the nature of science itself, of the idea that metaphysical naturalism is a priori biasing the intellectual inquiry away from God.
So the best person for the job is a philosopher.
The book does both the reader and the concept a service by spending the time properly framing the debate in its historical context. Before we even get to the arguments, we have a history of evolutionary theory, a history of natural theology, then an explanation of origins of order in our universe. Anyone familiar with creationist arguments would have no doubt come across pronouncements on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Shanks patiently takes the time to explain the role of thermodynamics in our universe, giving the reader every opportunity to understand how the concept is used (and thus misused) by overzealous arguments.
What impressed me about the book was the way in which Shanks takes down the arguments, doing so in only a way that a philosopher can. Not only was it a good survey of the science, but the examples served to show how the ID proponents make claims that are contradicted by existing knowledge. One standard approach to ID arguments is to point out they are god-of-the-gaps arguments (otherwise known as arguments from ignorance), but Shanks patiently and in as much detail as needed shows that the arguments are already contradicted by counterexample. To make matters worse, those counterexamples are often from papers that the ID proponents cite! In any case, a reader of this book should come away with a better understanding of the conceptual issues surrounding the particular arguments used by ID proponents.
Perhaps the most important issue covered is the idea of methodological naturalism. And this is where the Wedge Strategy comes into play, where ID proponents are trying to use less controversial issues in order to drive home the more controversial issues of their agenda. Shanks not only presents a clear understanding of the differences between methodological and metaphysical naturalism, but contrasts them with supernaturalism in terms of an explanatory framework. Why is it that if ID is an alternative to evolutionary theory that it works just as well for the cosmic design? Shanks' reasoning should give a clear answer as to why. It's easy to break out supernatural explanations, or talk of the self-limiting nature of science, but if superficial plausibility were all that was needed to do science, then we wouldn't need highly-trained experts.
Because ID masquerades as a science, and because its importance is cultural, this book is important. Anyone reading this book should come away with a better understanding of science, of how nature works, and where ID needs to vastly improve if it is to be taken seriously as the alternative it craves to be. We could easily (and fairly) dismiss ID as rebranded creationism, but it is important to not do so without understanding the relevant philosophical issues the proponents try to raise.
August 3, 2008
This is a devastating critique of creationism.
Modern biologists see Darwin as having taken important first steps toward an evidentially grounded scientific explanantion of the structures processes and changes that we see in the biological world around us.
a species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potetial for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms.
intrinsic cohesion mechanisms include
1. gene flow
2. stabilising selection (cannot diverge too far due to natural selection)
3. developmental constraints.
4. repreoductive isolation.
chimps and man are separated by the same time span as deer and giraffes.
creationists are immoral in the sense that they subsume man's responsibilities.
Modern biologists see Darwin as having taken important first steps toward an evidentially grounded scientific explanantion of the structures processes and changes that we see in the biological world around us.
a species is the most inclusive population of individuals having the potetial for phenotypic cohesion through intrinsic cohesion mechanisms.
intrinsic cohesion mechanisms include
1. gene flow
2. stabilising selection (cannot diverge too far due to natural selection)
3. developmental constraints.
4. repreoductive isolation.
chimps and man are separated by the same time span as deer and giraffes.
creationists are immoral in the sense that they subsume man's responsibilities.
May 14, 2013
One of the most detailed arguments against Intelligent Design 'Theory' I have read. However, it is probably too detailed for most lay readers. Unless you want arguments that include references to Aristotle, Hume, Kant, the Laws of Thermodynamics, Biochemical processes, self-organization and irreducible complexity, redundant pathway complexity, cosmology, anthropic coincidences, multiverses & meta-cosmology, then you will probably want to stick with the numerous books aimed at general audiences regarding this subject.
October 28, 2015
The single best critique of ID I have read, yet, the best part about this book is that unlike most other books of this or similar topic, this is a book without an agenda or ulterior motive.
Shanks takes a purely scientific approach to taking apart the components of ID argument, one at a time, and at no point does he come off as outspoken or opinionated. He presents facts to educate the readers, not to convert them and personally, that really is the best route to take.
Five out of five. The book was equally entertaining and informative.
Shanks takes a purely scientific approach to taking apart the components of ID argument, one at a time, and at no point does he come off as outspoken or opinionated. He presents facts to educate the readers, not to convert them and personally, that really is the best route to take.
Five out of five. The book was equally entertaining and informative.
October 7, 2017
Just Read it.
January 21, 2024
Destroys IDT - people in the States should read it at school. An Ohio born ex-girlfriend of my uncle didn’t believe in dinosaurs, and was a teacher at a kindergarten.
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