Paul's Reviews > Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives

"Fundamentalist and evangelical Christian parents who are familiar only with creationist literature ... have no idea how vast is the amount of evidence that supports evolutionary theory, and how weak are the specific claims of creationists."

Robert Pennock writes these lines near the end of this epic 800-page volume that he edits, a significant entry into the long-standing battle between scientists and creationists. It has a ring of truth to it – I grew up in a fundamentalist evangelical home and private school, and evolution was taught in caricature, only enough revealed (or misstated) to debunk, even though, as it turns out, the arguments against it had been answered by scientists numerous times for decades.

Thus I find books like this one to be helpful, not just for me but for any parent – or non-parent! – interested in learning the full measure of what evolution is and what claims are made against it. In a way, "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics" serves as a sequel to "Scientists Confront Creationism," the 1983 series of essays tackling the arguments made by creation scientists about everything from the Cambrian "Explosion" to the alleged lack of missing links. Although that book focused on the Henry Morris-inspired revival of young-earth creationism and its attempts to gain entry into public schools in the 1970s, this one focuses on the Johnson/Behe-fueled surge of "Intelligent Design," a pseudo-scientific argument that actually incorporates elements of the philosophical disputes of the 1920s, when Fundamentalists were ruling out evolution on the basis of its status as a flawed religion rather than attempting to muster scientific-sounding arguments about creation. Unlike "SCC," which contains mostly original essays solely from the scientific community, "IDCIC" alternates essays from creationists and scientists, most of them having appeared elsewhere. The result is a more even-handed treatment of the creationist position – and a just-as-thorough debunking of it. The author list is an all-star cast from both sides: Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski and Alvin Plantinga, among others, on the one side, and Pennock, Evan Fales, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, among others, on the other side.

This book is important, helpful and enlightening. It explores in-depth the mischaracterizations and logical and philosophical fallacies that are not readily apparent when reading the creationist argument; as the subtitle implies – "Philosophical, Theological and Scientific Perspectives" – it is devoted mostly to questions outside the strict realm of natural science, and clearly comes down in favor of evolution as entailing no inherent conflict with Christianity, only with a biblicism that demands an over-literal interpretation of religious texts. In conjunction with "Scientists Confront Creationism," a teacher, parent or plain-old interested Christian or layperson has a comprehensive defense of a subject that has too often been improperly mischaracterized by its religious enemies, many of them also educators and parents. (It's a sign of how impervious to refutation creationist arguments are – how often they have appeared and reappeared since the mid-1960s, if not earlier – that books written in 1983 and 2001 can feel so enlightening in 2015.)

Although I call it important, helpful and enlightening, I do not call it an easy read. It's 800 pages, and some of the essays grow dense as they tackle the intricacies of information theory, epistemology and molecular biology. There's no shame in skimming some of this, and its value may lie more as a reference tool. Nevertheless, most of it I found (as a non-scientist, non-philosopher, and amateur theologian) to be easy to grasp and quite compelling. The essays sometimes grew redundant, and as a result, it could afford to be a couple of chapters and a few dozen pages shorter. Thus it has the rare distinction in my personal rating system of being both four stars (instead of five) yet still earning a place on my "Favorites" shelf. If you have any interest in what Intelligent Design is all about and why it hasn't met with acceptance among scientists, this is absolutely the book to read.