Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New CreationismMatt Young, Taner Edis Historically, religious scriptures are defined as holy texts that are considered to be beyond the abilities of the layperson to interpret. Their content is most frequently analyzed by clerics who do not question the underlying political or social implications of the text, but use the writing to convey messages to their congregations about how to live a holy existence. In Western society, moreover, what counts as scripture is generally confined to the Judeo-Christian Bible, leaving the voices of minorities, as well as the holy texts of faiths from Africa and Asia, for example, unheard. In this innovative collection of essays that aims to turn the traditional bible-study definition of scriptures on its head, Vincent L. Wimbush leads an in-depth look at the social, cultural, and racial meanings invested in these texts. Contributors hail from a wide array of academic fields and geographic locations and include such noted academics as Susan Harding, Elisabeth Shussler Fiorenza, and William L. Andrews. Purposefully transgressing disciplinary boundaries, this ambitious book opens the door to different interpretations and critical orientations, and in doing so, allows an ultimately humanist definition of scriptures to emerge." |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Grand Themes Narrow Constituency | 9 |
Grand Designs and Facile Analogies Exposing Behes Mousetrap and Dembskis Arrow | 20 |
Common Descent Its All or Nothing | 32 |
Darwins Transparent Box The Biochemical Evidence for Evolution | 48 |
Evolutionary Paths to Irreducible Systems The Avian Flight Apparatus | 58 |
Evolution of the Bacterial Flagellum | 72 |
SelfOrganization and the Origin of Complexity | 85 |
Chance and Necessity and Intelligent Design? | 139 |
There Is a Free Lunch after All William Dembskis Wrong Answers to Irrelevant Questions | 153 |
Is the Universe FineTuned for Us? | 172 |
Is Intelligent Design Science? | 185 |
Organizations and Web Sites | 197 |
207 | |
About the Contributors | 223 |
227 | |
The Explanatory Filter Archaeology and Forensics | 107 |
Playing Games with Probability Dembskis Complex Specified Information | 121 |
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anthropic archer argue argument artifacts avian flight bacterial basic types behavior Behe's Bénard cells biochemical biological biologists birds cells chance and necessity chapter claims common descent construction cosmological constant creation creationist creativity Darwin Darwinian evolution Dawkins's design inference dynamic-creation model energy eubacterial flagellum evidence evolutionary algorithms evolved example explain explanatory filter fact figure filament fine-tuned fitness function fitness landscapes flagellar proteins flagellum forensic fossil record Free Lunch genes genetic genome human humerus hypothesis ID movement inference intelligent design intelligent-design irreducible complexity irreducibly complex irreducibly complex system Kolmogorov complexity MATT YOUNG Michael Behe motility motor mousetrap muscles natural selection NFL theorems organisms origin pattern peak Perakh physics probability problem proponents pseudoscience result science education scientific scientists self-organization sequence snowflake specified complexity string structure supernatural Taner Edis target theory thermodynamics tion type-III secretory system universe variation wasps William Dembski wing Z-factor
Popular passages
Page v - It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.