The new creationist textbook, The Design of Life, is now available, or very shortly will be.
This definitive book on intelligent design (ID) comes as a shot across the bow to dogmatic defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy. Written by two key ID theorists, mathematician William Dembski and biologist Jonathan Wells, it presents the full case for intelligent design to a general audience. Critics, in dismissing The Design of Life, contend that intelligent design has collapsed in the wake of the 2005 Dover trial. Author William Dembski responded, "Those same people have been announcing intelligent design's demise every year since 1990. Strangle it as they might, intelligent design just won't die. The Design of Life shows why the better arguments and stronger evidence are now on the intelligent design side."*
That's really funny, because I thought the creationists have been announcing the demise of Darwinism for, oh let's see ... about 148 years now.
Further thoughts discusses the news release. I'm sure it will be detailed in detail at Pharyngula.
I must say, that I'm rather disappointed, and have been for some time. I've read it, or at least an earlier draft of it, and it is exactly the same as every other major creationist work of the last few decades. There is nothing new in it at all. This is starting to get boring.
The claim is being made that it is not intended to be a textbook, but we'll see how that goes. It kinda looks like a textbook.
Comments
Dembski's projection abilities never cease to amaze me. I read a lot of anti-creationism sites and I don't recall any of them saying ID will go away; in fact, the opposite. Most of them regularly claim that it will never go away. At the same time, Dembski has been predicting the imminent return of Jesus - I mean death of Darwinism - on an almost regular annual basis, hasn't he?
Posted by: pough | November 20, 2007 5:38 PM
I read the 1st chapter available online and it was horrible, and I think they're shooting themselves in the foot by continuing to state that this is Of Pandas and People v.3 (although that's a good thing for us given how notorious the previous installments were). I'm surprised they finally got their act together to get the book out, as well; they've been promising its release for a long time, every once in a while bringing it up to tell us we should be quaking in our boots. I see no such reason for fear, especially since intelligent design was effectively gutted long ago (no one seems to remember poor old Paley and Darwin's refutations of natural theology).
Posted by: Laelaps | November 20, 2007 8:07 PM
My comment got "disappeared" at Dembksi's blog Uncommon Descent for suggesting that "The Design of Life" would be just as successful as "Pandas".
They just can't handle the truth...
Posted by: J-Dog | November 20, 2007 8:56 PM
The Design of Life shows why the better arguments and stronger evidence are now on the intelligent design side...
Strange, then, that the Discovery Insititute have spent the 0.0005% of intellectual effort which isn't allocated to writing whiny press releases entirely on producing a textbook for schoolkids. It's almost as if the only time that their 'better arguments' aren't laughed out of the room is when their audience knows no science whatsoever...
Posted by: Chris Rowan | November 21, 2007 6:43 AM