Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language (ConversantLife.com)

Not only is this a great introductory book to Intelligent Design, but it’s also incredibly accessible and easy to understand. McDowell and Dembski compare and contrast ID with Darwinian Evolution in a very easy to understand way. It’s also a pretty fast read.

It's easy to be a critic. You don't even have to buy the book. Just browse the TOC and spit out your rhetoric. You can go on for 10,000 words and make people think you actually held the book in your hand. I bought it, I read it. I liked it. It was the easiest book I have found on Intelligent Design. I generally have a hard time reading Dembski. But this book was an easy read. And it addressed every aspect of ID that I have come across. I was a little put-off by the first few pages that made the book sound like a creationist work because it talked about how naturalism/atheism is a dominating ideology (theology) in the media and in the education system that causes young people to lean towards atheism -- which is no doubt true. But after those first few pages it was all ID. I liked the discussion of why critics continually call ID "creationism" even though they must know the difference, or else they have never actually read anything about ID. That reason being the presumption of materialism/naturalism -- if a conclusion suggests a possible non-materialist cause then it must be thrown out according to their "methodology." So when someone says "design" then these folks scream "creationism" (although it seems to me that if you insist on materialism, then you could use that "design" evidence to justify your belief that life on earth was created by space aliens, as we saw Francis Crick do many years ago, and also saw Dawkins admit in "Expelled"). Creationism, of course, is actually an evangelical biblical literalist belief system that says the bible is first and if science doesn't fit it, then science is wrong. This book is not that. In my opinion this is the best ID book that I have seen for regular folk. Its a great book. Love it. Highly recommend it.

Although I find Intelligent-Design (ID) arguments inadequate (but not nearly as much as Darwinian ones), I would be unjustified in denying the book 5 stars, for its earnest pursuit of truth in the subjects, notwithstanding abusive attacks by opponents. Let me first get off the chest my main dissatisfaction with the book. It needlessly mixes in Christian dogma while its other arguments may be persuasive to many non-Christians, and disturbing me most is (p.183) the quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia that man "has himself brought about the evil from which he suffers by transgressing the law of God...". Did the Holocaust victims transgress that law, or did their persecutors, following the law of Darwin? Since speaking of Darwin, I might focus on a chief issue doubly discrediting him, the "slight modifications" he contends occur randomly in, and lead to survival of, organisms. Such slight modification compared to the lack of it hardly effects the survival of one group and not the other. There must obviously be a substantial enough difference to lead to that result. But more to the point is his allegation that an organism's form is functional in both stages of the modification. Often quoted (p.138) is his: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." This is one instance where ID falls short. Its "irreducible complexity" (p.140) makes a strong case that such slight modification is insufficient for an organ to be functional in both stages. This is, however, not conclusively demonstrated, Darwinists continually arguing, though equally not demonstrating, that an organ can have a function in each stage. The trouble is concentration on an organ, like the eye, or other part of the whole, as if that part belonged at some stage to another whole. The slight modification is to occur to the organism considered as whole; so whereas it may be conceivable that before such modification the eye for one functioned appropriately in another organism, it evidently did not in the same one. It is clear without more research that absence of a functioning component of an organ in the same organism causes some disability. ID's also introduced "specified complexity" (p.104) likewise lacks reliability. By it "Complexity...ensures that the object in question is not so simple that it can be readily explained by chance", and "Specificity...ensures that the object exhibits the type of pattern that could signal intelligence". "Pattern" is vague here. It is exemplified (p.106) by "ice crystals, but such a design would be embedded in the laws of nature". It may be asked whether ID would not belong to laws of nature as well; regardless, as an example of a qualifying pattern is given the combination that opens a lock and "is therefore both complex and specified, and thus exhibits design" (p.107). The combination, however, could be said to display a purpose rather than pattern. Purpose, or goal, is indeed what ID looks for in the formation of organs spoken of above by Darwin, as noted by the authors regarding computer programs (p.109): "The specified complexity was there all along, having been inserted by the programmer to achieve the program's goal". Whether the formation of organisms is "directed", "guided", "purposeful", or not is what the great dispute is about. From purpose is then made something of a leap to intelligence, and God. It has been my effort in reviews here and in other work ( On Proof for the Existence of God, and Other Reflective Inquiries ) to show that the search for purpose in the organism's form overlooks a much simpler observation, of a phenomenon too familiar to be thought of, namely the behavior itself that distinguishes all live organisms: its "directedness" toward the "goal" of preservation. This purpose controls all of life, including the living's formation and adaptation, requiring no further searches in this respect.

I haven't personally read this, but the author is excellent and my 19 year old nephew, a budding apologist and future youth minister, was ecstatic to receive it. When I was 19-ish, I read this author's father's apologetics books and found them to be very valuable in my own walk with the Lord as well as in defending my faith, the Bible and Intelligent Design/Creationism through my public university bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry. If you plan to send your children to a secular university especially if they plan to study science or medicine, Sean McDowell is a great author to help hold onto the Truth even in light of new information.

Intelligent design has its merits and is indeed ultimately the only explanation for everything that's here in existence. People like Dembski and McDowell, however - people who mix up all the absurd fables and impossible beliefs of their cult while supposedly defending I.D. - such people are counterproductive to the eventual emergence of a truth explanation for the universe. It's a badly written book at about the intellectual level of a seven year old and is the worst thing that could happen to I.D.

4 stars for this because it's a bit difficult to follow some of the material on the first reading because it's some years since I was @ university and biology has discovered so much more since I was learning it full-time. HAving said that; on the rare occasions when I had ot read material twice ; it became clear and I became equipped to understand the arguments for irreducible complexity and for the need to a Designer / s to explain what we observe as scientists. IT looks very strongly as if the Designer is in the details ... Not the devil ! An informative read. If you're interested in finding out for yourself what is at the root of the current schism in the biological sciences ... You would do well to start here.