God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory | 
| Authors: Niall Shanks, Richard Dawkins
Publisher: OUP USA
Category: Book
Buy New: £18.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 367491
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 296
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.7 x 0.9
ISBN: 0195161998
Dewey Decimal Number: 213
EAN: 9780195161991
ASIN: 0195161998
Publication Date: February 12, 2004
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 'Deftly skewers the scientific pretensions of ID creationists' February 6, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Many theists recognize the danger in using a 'God of the gaps' approach. As science fills in those gaps, 'God' gets squeezed out of the picture. The proponents of Intelligent Design already seem to be in the position of being squeezed out of existence. Their position is easily seen to be quite sterile and representing little more than a destructive attack on good science. So there is a bit of a question mark over how much time and effort needs to be devoted to countering something which is so lacking in substance.
This said, Niall Shanks has produced an excellent overview of the deficiencies of Intelligent Design. The first chapter of his book considers the historical roots of the 'argument from design' which are traced back to ancient Greece. He then examines how our thinking moved towards seeing organisms in a mechanistic way using crude mechanical analogies such as seeing the lungs as bellows etc. From here we can easily see how much of current ID theory tends to rest on a very mechanical perception of life.
The second chapter considers Darwin's response to the illusion of design. On a personal level, I found this slightly less interesting as my background is not in the biological sciences.
The third chapter is devoted to thermodynamics and has some interesting material on self-organizing systems which was particularly well covered.
The fourth chapter turns to more philosophical considerations. In particular, he examines the difference between the methodological naturalism which would be employed by scientists and the philosophical naturalism which a scientist may (or may not!) adopt.
The fifth chapter examines biochemistry and it isn't surprising that Michael Behe gets quite a bit of attention. He looks at Behe's metaphor of a mousetrap and points out the dangers of using this mechanical analogy when dealing with living organisms.
The final chapter considers cosmology and the anthropic principle before we move to the conclusion where he wraps things up with a discussion about morality and values.
I read this book in parallel with Mark Perakh's 'Unintelligent Design.' Both books are excellent and, if you are interested in this area, highly recommended.
 Unscientific argumentation April 28, 2006
16 out of 48 found this review helpful
Why do those professors who front the Intelligent Design debate argue like school-boys either it concerns those pro et contra?
In this book Shanks reveals how naive the conservative ID movement are and how wrong it is for them to deny the naturalistic science that they in fact are dependent on. But that is the best thing to say about the book.
Mr. Shanks shows that he himself is just as fundamentalistic in his blind belief in Darwin as his God and Richard Dawkins as his Messiah, as those conservative Christian he attacks for believing in God and ID. Shanks is very nasty to those who doesn't believe the same as he does. The ID movement and it's folks are described as parasites crawling on the body of science, and he suggest that God must have been drunk or stupid or both when he created the world. This is not good language if ypu want to build a bridge, but though, this is a well known behaviour of those attacking the ID movement. Richard Dawkins is maybe one of the most respectless to his ID opponents, and he shows his sarcastic hate to Christian also in this book in the preface he has written.
One thing that Shanks criticise the ID movement for doing, is to use bad analogies. Why can't Shanks then try to be better? He tries to prove that ID is wrong by comparing it with the communism. Communism in USSR was intelligent designed and it failed, therefore is ID also a failure. Is this really a professor's way of arguing? He demands exceptional proof from his "enemies" to believe them, but his own proofs for his own concerns are very light. One example is the experiment in the book showing that those people in hospital who are prayed for live longer than those who are not prayed for. Shanks simply doesn't want to believe the results of this scientific experiment and his "argument" to prove this, is that there must have been something wrong with the experiment. What a proof!
Another example of unscientific behaviour of a professor, who through this book tries to show us that he belong to the enlightenment tradition, is that he denies any intelligent design of cosmos because there are no proof good enough for him, and that's OK, but when he is confronted with the fine tuning of all the parameters in the universe, he instead of accepting intelligent design as one possible solution, proposes the highly metaphysic theory that there must exist many parallel universes and therefore one of them must be like ours. He is just as metaphysic as those he criticise for being so, and he choses his arguments from his own bias.
There are some good points in this book, but for the most it is a disappointment. Why can't anybody rise the ID debate to a scientific level?
I think, in the end, that either those attacking or those promoting ID never can make any proof which the other part can accept. It turns out to be a matter of belief.
 Great for philosophy - pretty bad if you like hard science March 22, 2006
18 out of 44 found this review helpful
I waited a month to get a copy of this book and was very keen to read it. Frankly, I wish I hadn’t bothered. I have had a long standing interest in the theory of evolution and the alternatives. Thus, I have read a number of books on the topic on both sides of the argument. Unfortunately, this has to rate as one of the worst books I have personally read for a long while. Whatever you might think about the anti-evolutionary bunch some of the books like “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis” and “Darwin’s Black Box” are good solid science books, well written, well thought out and make a clear well argued point. Many of the books are long on hard facts and detailed technical descriptions while still remaining readable. Even if you don’t accept the arguments you can see that they are reasonable positions to take. As a hard nosed science type I was very interested in this book as it seemed to promise to take on the anti-evolution arguments head-on. In short, it simply didn’t. It waffled and prattled around the edges. Although it would be unreasonable to call it ‘fact free’ it certainly seemed avoid ‘hard facts’ and detailed technical examples and descriptions. It tried to refute a number of points made by various other authors but to my way of thinking failed badly and (more importantly to me) didn’t even try to take on the main substantive points. All the rebuttals seemed mainly philosophical in nature and hollow with references to other publications. As an example, instead of giving hard-nosed examples of how things (did or could of) evolved the author seemed to prefer to pick minor faults in other authors books. In short, I personally found it very unconvincing from a scientific point of view and see it more as scientific philosophy than hard science.
Here we go again - preaching to the converted March 8, 2006
23 out of 77 found this review helpful
Richard Dawkins has been the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University for quite a few years now. And he regularly lectures on evolution in the USA.
Yet that same period of time has seen a decline in the number of UK students wanting to study the sciences at university, and a significant rise in various forms of opposition to evolutionist ideas, particularly so-called Intelligent Design.Whilst I DON'T want to make a direct link between these two facts it does appear that we can learn a lesson here - and one which the authors of this book have noticeably failed to grasp: However good the case for evolution may be, and however flawed the opposing arguments may be, the "war of words" is NOT being won by the defenders of evolution theory. Hey, guys, wake up and smell the coffee - YOU AREN'T MAKING CONTACT! And this book, written in a manner that is virtually guaranteed to re-inforce every reader's existing viewpoint, be it pro or anti, is nothing but a waste of perfectly good trees. Like so many other books on the subject, the authors depend on allegedly "rational/factual" arguments to make their case. But what they overlook is a simple fact known to every psychologist - people don't make decisions based on reason, they make them on the basis of "gut instinct", for want of a better expression, then they rationalize their choice later - if necessary. So, if you already believe what the authors believe, then you'll believe what's in this book. If you don't, you won't. And like it or hate it, THAT is a genuine "fact".
God, the Devil, and Darwin June 11, 2005
36 out of 49 found this review helpful
An exceptionally thorough rebuttal of 'stealth creationism'. Shanks tackles 'Intelligent Design' arguments in physics, biochemistry, and cosmology. He exposes them as attempts to smuggle in an interventionist God by the backdoor. At times perhaps a little too caught up in an academic debate with old ID foes, the author nevertheless manages to engage the general reader's attention throughout. It might not interest a reader wanting purely to explore cosmological issues, such as the fine-tuned universe, but there is enough such material for those prepared to wait for the later sections of the book. And Richard Dawkins writes the introduction, if that makes any difference either way.
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