Intelligent Thought

‘Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement’ is a recently published collection of sixteen essays edited by John Brockman that includes the major part of the ruling by Judge Jones in the Kitzmiller Intelligent Design. The essays refute the ridiculous idea that Intelligent Design is an alternative to evolution as a scientific explanation for the existence and diversity of life in the universe. The ID movement’s politico-religious motivation and entire lack of scientific credentials have been fully exposed in the Kitzmiller ruling. This entertaining and informative collection of essays drives another nail in ID’s coffin. It contains excellent and scholarly rebuttals of ID’s claims from prestigious evolutionary biologists, such as Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, palaeontologists such as Scott Sampson and Tim White, cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker, and philosopher Daniel Dennett.

Of course there will be howls of protest from the ID websites and from ID proponents like Dembski and Behe. Since the ID movement is a religiously motivated pressure group, its adherents are not interested in discovering the truth but in promoting a religiously prejudiced agenda. The fact that it has failed to make any impact amongst knowledgeable scientists, and that its claims to be scientific have been roundly rejected both by the scientific community and by judicial process will not stop it – the ID movement will continue to seek ways to push their agenda into education and scientific funding.

Read Brockman’s collection of essays if you can – they entertainingly unmask and demolish Intelligent Design’s upstart claims. I'll be saying more about individual essays in the days to come: starting woth Coyne's insight into 'strong' and 'weak' ID and his dismantling of the idea that either flavour, strong or weak, can be part of science; and followed by physicist Susskind's reflections on the links between the anger generated amongst extreme conservatives by their defeat in the culture wars and their current attempt to foment distrust of scientists and their views.