Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism

"A terrific book that explores, fairly and openly, whether proponents of ID have any scientifically valid gadgets in their toolbox at all . . . accessibly written throughout and an invaluable aid to teachers and scientists."––Kevin Padian, professor and curator, University of California, Berkeley, and president, National Center for Science Education

Is Darwinian evolution established fact, or a dogma ready to be overtaken by "intelligent design"? This is the debate raging in courtrooms and classrooms across the country.

Why Intelligent Design Fails assembles a team of physicists, biologists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and archaeologists to examine intelligent design from a scientific perspective. They consistently find grandiose claims without merit.

Contributors take intelligent design’s two most famous claims––irreducible complexity and information-based arguments––and show that neither challenges Darwinian evolution. They also discuss thermodynamics and self-organization; the ways human design is actually identified in fields such as forensic archaeology; how research in machine intelligence indicates that intelligence itself is the product of chance and necessity; and cosmological fine-tuning arguments.

Intelligent design turns out to be a scientific mistake, but a mistake whose details highlight the amazing power of Darwinian thinking and the wonders of a complex world without design.