This is a book many of our society don’t want you to read, so by all means, pick up your copy today! There are few questions bigger than where did life come from? Following closely on the heels of that one is why should things work as they do--from the micro-biological level on up to the cosmological? In short, why do we find order instead of chaos? Intelligibility as opposed to gibberish? Is our existence and that of everything else we see around us the culmination of a random, blind, and purposeless process (cf. Richard Dawkins)? If so, ultimate meaning, value, and purpose are illusory; we simply got lucky in a cosmic lottery. End of story. But if `design' really is a detectable feature of our world...
...Enter the controversial theory of Intelligent Design. Brining up these two words is sure to raise the hackles (and blood pressure) of Darwinian Fundamentalists everywhere. For example, you may have seen, heard, or felt the fall out from Ben Stein's recent movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. So what is the big deal?
Now, enter the student trying to make sense of all this. Who is right? Who should you believe? You don't want to be ignorant, but you also don't want people telling you what to believe before you have examined the evidence. Bottom line: You owe it to yourself to read this book and explore the issues yourself. This conversation isn't going away anytime soon.
In, Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language, William Dembski and Sean McDowell have done us all a great service (especially students, parents, and youth pastors). In straightforward writing, they discuss the key issues, what's at stake, and the evidence for their position (pro-ID). And you don't have to have a PHD (or 2 like Dembski has) to understand it!
Here is the Table of Contents and my brief summary of the big ideas of each chapter:
1. Welcome to the debate (what is the big deal?)
2. Intelligent Design to the Rescue! (Discuses the various approaches to questions of design, the worldview of naturalism, and locates ID in the evolution/creation debate).
3. The Surprising Truth (that the actual evidence for Darwinian evolution is surprisingly weak)
4. What story do the rocks tell? (a careful look at the fossil record; especially the Cambrian Explosion)
5. Science or religion? (clears up confusion about what science is and isn't and whether ID falls into the scientific or religious category--this chapter is worth the price of the book since science is viewed as the ultimate authority for knowledge in western culture)
6. The design Inference (design and intelligence go hand and hand and there are robust and legitimate ways of detecting design in nature)
7. An unsolved mystery: the origin of life (what is the best explanation of how `all there is' got here?)
8. Putting Darwin's theory to the test (how does Darwin's theory do under close scrutiny?)
9. At home in the universe (the fine-tuning of our universe and a discussion of the privilege planet we inhabit)
10. Joining the design revolution (ID is not just about science, it has profound implications for all of life--what part of getting the word out will you play?)
The appendices are helpful as well. Especially the "quick response guide." We live in a society of the well-placed slogan. In other words, slogans and one-liners are often used instead of argument, substance, and careful thinking. Appendix B - helps you respond to claims like: "ID is religiously motivated" and "ID is a science stopper."
By and large, ID has not gotten a fair shake in the media. They refuse to distinguish ID from Creationism based on Genesis 1 & 2 or from people who believe in a flat earth. Agree or disagree, this is an important book because it will help bring sanity and clarity to a topic that is often dismissed without being first understood.
