Jonathan Wells
You think you know about Darwinism and intelligent design, but did you know:
*There is no overwhelming evidence for Darwinism; *Intelligent design is based
on scientific evidence, not religious belief; *What many public schools teach
about Darwinism is based on known falsehoods; *Scientists at major universities
believe in intelligent design; *Scientists who question Darwinism are punished
--by public institutions using your tax dollars. Battle-hardened veteran with
doctorates in biology and theology sets the record straight in The Politically
Incorrect Guide to Darwin and Intelligent Design.
From the Back Cover
Why Darwinism—like Marxism and Freudianism before it—is headed for extinction
In the 1925 Scopes trial, the American Civil Liberties Union sued to allow
the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools. Seventy-five
years later, in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the ACLU sued to prevent the teaching
of an alternative to Darwin’s theory known as "Intelligent Design"—and
won. Why did the ACLU turn from defending the free-speech rights of Darwinists
to silencing their opponents? Jonathan Wells reveals that, for today’s Darwinists,
there may be no other choice: unable to fend off growing challenges from scientists,
or to compete with rival theories better adapted to the latest evidence, Darwinism—like
Marxism and Freudianism before it—is simply unfit to survive.
Wells begins by explaining the basic tenets of Darwinism, and the evidence both for and against it. He reveals, for instance, that the fossil record, which according to Darwin should be teeming with "transitional" fossils showing the development of one species to the next, so far hasn’t produced a single incontestable example. On the other hand, certain well-documented aspects of the fossil record—such as the Cambrian explosion, in which innumerable new species suddenly appeared fully formed—directly contradict Darwin’s theory. Wells also shows how most of the other "evidence" for evolution— including textbook "icons" such as peppered moths, Darwin’s finches, Haeckel’s embryos, and the Tree of Life—has been exaggerated, distorted . . . and even faked.
Wells then turns to the theory of intelligent design (ID), the idea that some features of the natural world, such as the internal machinery of cells, are too "irreducibly complex" to have resulted from unguided natural processes alone. In clear-cut layman’s language, he reveals the growing evidence for ID coming out of scientific specialties from microbiology to astrophysics. As Wells explains, religion does play a role in the debate over Darwin—though not in the way evolutionists claim. Wells shows how Darwin reasoned that evolution is true because divine creation "must" be false—a theological assumption oddly out of place in a scientific debate. In other words, Darwinists’ materialistic, atheistic assumptions rule out any theories but their own, and account for their willingness to explain away the evidence—or lack of it.
Darwin is an emperor who has no clothes— but it takes a brave man to say
so. Jonathan Wells, a microbiologist with two Ph.D.s (from Berkeley and Yale),
is that brave man. Most textbooks on evolution are written by Darwinists with
an ideological ax to grind. Brave dissidents—qualified scientists—who try
to teach or write about intelligent design are silenced and sent to the academic
gulag. But fear not: Jonathan Wells is a liberator. He unmasks the truth about
Darwinism— why it is wrong and what the real evidence is. He also supplies
a revealing list of "Books You’re Not Supposed to Read" (as far
as the Darwinists are concerned) and puts at your fingertips all the evidence
you need to challenge the most closed-minded Darwinist.
Review
The Design of Life, which is both a sequel to Of Pandas and People (Second
Edition, 1993), and a stand alone book in its own right, brilliantly lays
out all the main lines of evidence and argument in the current dispute between
the Darwinists and the growing body of Intelligent Design theorists. It not
only updates the arguments presented in Pandas but explains the exciting developments
in the new science of intelligent design that have occurred since the early
1990s. Dembski and Wells, who themselves are among the leading practitioners
of the new science, write in a refreshingly carefully reasoned, lucid and
direct style, pulling no punches when it comes to answering the criticisms
of their leading Darwinist opponents including Richard Dawkins and Kenneth
Miller, among many others. They make a formidable case that the indications
of design seen everywhere in nature at all levels of organization (and acknowledged
by the Darwinists) bespeak real and not just apparent design. Nowhere is this
more evident than in the powerful new chapters on irreducible complexity (Chapter
6) building on the ground breaking work of Michael Behe in Darwin's Black
Box, 1996, and specified complexity (Chapter 7) based on Dembski's many contributions
to information theory as it relates to design (e.g., The Design Inference,
1998, and No Free Lunch, 2002). Each of the book's eight chapters is thoroughly
documented with many explanatory footnotes and references to the pertinent
technical literature. These detailed notes as well as the supplemental General
Notes contained on the accompanying CD provide interested laypersons, university
students, and working scientists with a reliable guide to the highest levels
of scientific discussion in the often contentious dispute between Darwinists
and intelligent design proponents. Appended to each chapter is a list of 10
discussion questions keyed to the order of presentation of the topics in the
chapter and to the General Notes. If I were still involved in university teaching
I would enthusiastically adopt The Design of Life as a required text in courses
in evolution and the origin of life and in graduate seminars on information
theory and molecular biology, and use it as a supplement in introductory biology
classes. Dembski and Wells argue calmly and convincingly that intelligent
design theory is empirically testable (in spite of Darwinists' shrill protests
to the contrary) by indicating precisely what it would take to refute the
theory, namely a clear demonstration that systems exhibiting irreducible complexity
with specified complexity can in fact arise spontaneously by purely material
processes. Their discussion takes intelligent design theory far beyond what
we were able to accomplish when we wrote Pandas. I salute Dembski and Wells
for a most worthy addition to the already powerful case that intelligent design
deserves a seat at the academic table in university biology courses and with
all scientists working to unlock the mystery of life's origin. --Dean Kenyon,
Emeritus Professor of Biology, San Franciso State University
Review
When future intellectual historians list the books that toppled Darwin's theory,
THE DESIGN OF LIFE will be at the top. --Michael Behe, biochemist, Lehigh
University
