Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond

by Andrew J. Petto (Editor), Laurie R. Godfrey (Editor), Stephen Jay Gould (Contributor)

From leading scientists, lawyers, and educators―a decisive rebuttal to those who undermine science in the name of religion. In a time when creationist textbooks continue to appear in classrooms and the president of the United States encourages educators to “teach both sides” of the argument, Scientists Confront Creationism presents an accessible defense of evolution and a blueprint to save public education in this country from the dangers of pseudoscience. With sixteen essays from some of the most important advocates in the field, including Kevin Padian, John R. Cole, and Wesley R. Elsberry, Scientists Confront Creationism reveals the persuasive evidence for evolution and the bankruptcy of the creationists’ claims. While telling the history of creationism in America, this powerful collection eviscerates “intelligent design” and reveals the newest tactics taken by antievolutionist proponents. As long as science requires public advocacy, this highly intelligent treasury of scholarship will remain an essential resource for students, teachers, and open-minded citizens

Genres: Science, Evolution, Religion, Nonfiction, Biology, Philosophy

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Matt Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

This small book packs a humongous punch. From Physics to Biology (and everything in between), this book does a great job informing the reader as to why we know evolution is true. It gives good intro to Creationist argument and then swiftly lays them to rest. Highly recommended.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Important Collection of Papers Discussing the History and Analyzing the Veracity of Creationism

"Scientists Confront Creationism: Intelligent Design and Beyond" is an important updated edition of an earlier volume focusing on the history and claims made by "scientific creationists" back in the 1980s. This recently expanded edition, edited by Andrew J. Petto, editor of the Reports of the National Center for Science Education, and Laurie R. Godfrey, the editor of the original edition, takes a long, hard look at the history, scientific claims and educational implications of creationism, especially in its latest, most virulent, flavor, Intelligent Design. This superb tome is subdivided into three parts; the first is a historical and philosophical survey of creationism. The second part explores its most important scientific claims in ample detail. The third section examines creationism from the perspective of trying to understand science, discussing how and why it fails to meet the rigorous self-imposed centuries-old standards of peer-reviewed scientific research. The sixteen contributors include a diverse group of scientists, philosophers, and other educators, including such luminaries as philosopher of science Robert Pennock, geochronologist G. Brent Dalrymple, vertebrate paleobiologist Kevin Padian and historian Ronald Numbers. This is truly an important, exceptional book which deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone seeking to understand the history and aims of American creationist movements, especially that of Intelligent Design.

The opening section on the history and philosophy of creationism features superlative essays written by Ronald Numbers and National Center for Science Education executive director Eugenie Scott. Numbers' essay starts this section with a terse, but vivid, account of the history of American creationism. Scott follows with an in-depth examination of the Intelligent Design movement itself, emphasizing its recent legal debacle, the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial. Anthropologist John Cole's concluding essay focuses on the significance of the Discovery Institute's notorious "Wedge Document" as a "blueprint" for inserting Intelligent Design creationism into almost every important facet of American educational and cultural life.

In the book's second section, there are several essays that I found especially useful. Physicist Victor J. Stenger explains creationism's fascination with cosmology, along with a lucid mathematical rebuttal of Discovery Institute Senior Fellow William Dembski's concept of Complex Specified Information. Geochronologist G. Brent Dalrymple's extensive essay on the ages of the universe and the Earth is the most succinct examination of this issue that I've come across, and one I recommend highly to all. Kevin Padian and Kenneth D. Angielczyk's "'Transitional Forms' versus Transitional Features" is an extensive overview of "missing links" in paleontology and their significance in constructing testable hypotheses about degrees of relationship between different species (or higher taxonomic units) as depicted in cladograms. Marine biologist Wesley Elsberry's extensive refutation of Dembski's Explanatory Filter/Design Inference demonstrates how and why this peculiar abuse of flow-chart diagrams and mathematical logic is quite nonsensical; here Elsberrry has demolished effectively the elaborate - if poorly "designed" - "mathematical" argument that Dembski has offered as "proof" of Intelligent Design.

Ending on a powerful note, the final section of "Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism" contains exceptional essays from philosopher Robert Pennock and evolutionary geneticist Norm Johnson. Pennock - whose superb "Tower of Babel" Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism ranks foremost on my required reading list of books on creationism - tears apart the creationist canard of arguing from ignorance - the so-called "God of the Gaps", by asserting that absence of evidence does not automatically imply support of creationism, especially its Intelligent Design variety. Johnson follows with an insightful overview from his perspective of Drosophila genetics research, demonstrating how pioneering work, early in the last century, showed that evolution was indeed a valid scientific theory. The book's editors offer an intriguing, persuasive, closing essay explaining why it is necessary to explain the "controversial" aspects of contemporary evolutionary theory as part of the standard curricula of biology science classrooms.

[Elliott Bignell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This update of an earlier work delivers with great force a series of tightly-reasoned repudiations of aspects of "intelligent design" and other formulations of creationism. Each of the authors of its various sections is a professional in a related field of biology and/or a scholar in the philosophy and history of science. Indeed, one of the most striking things when comparing their writing to that of pro-ID authors is the level of erudition not merely in their technical field of proficiency but in that of their creationist detractors. These are serious contributors, and the style is always serious. Indeed, that is perhaps the only complaint I would make!

The reasoning is clear and incisive. I owe to this book at least one new piece of vocabulary, since one demolition of Dembski's pseudo-scientific "explanatory filter" carefully and cogently demonstrates that it circularly embodies only its own presumption that the options it sifts through are both "jointly exhaustive" and mutually exclusive. "Mutually exclusive" we all know, but "jointly exhaustive" for some reason was new to me and I shall be using it. As a demonstration of the clarity of reasoning in this excellent work I could probably do no better. Dembski's filter effectively defines "design" as being everything except low and intermediate probability - it embodies the very assumption it purports to demonstrate. The inference that specified complexity can be used to infer design is never actually supported, and indeed begs the very question of evolution which it purports to repudiate. The presumption of joint exhaustion of alternatives is presented pseudo-scientifically as a flow chart, but never shown to be true. The presumption of mutual exclusivity at branch points likewise.

The final chapter deals with science education and how it should now proceed. It makes a strong case that, ironically, the prevalence of ID demonstrates a need for more, and more thorough, science education and specifically more teaching of evolution. Some of the glaringly crude fallacies and misunderstandings promulgated by creationist propaganda outlets simply could not compete in a more scientifically sophisticated cultural milieu. At the moment, their nonsense is actually penetrating levels of society who could be expected to have a more thorough education in the scientific foundations of their own nation, so I tend to agree with the book's judgement that this needs to be corrected for by increased teaching effort.

The authors bring too much technical expertise to the discussion to risk embarrassing myself with a synopsis, but it can be said that they are erudite, careful and convincing. The style is a little straight-faced, but it is worth the effort of engaging with this excellent set of rebuttals.

[Nullifidian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book. The second section has the scope of a textbook, with the slight drawback that it might be heavy going for someone untrained in science (not a problem for me, since I'm a biologist). However, I can see that I'm going to be referring back to this many times.

The first section broadly covers the history of so-called "creation science" and how intelligent design is merely an outgrowth of it. My favorite example of this, though not discussed in the book, is the transitional form "cdesign proponentsists" that was discovered by Barbara Forrest during her preparation for Kitzmiller v. Dover. One of the things in dispute was whether Of Pandas and People (now renamed The Design of Life) was a creationist text. It was shown that in early drafts of the book, prior to the ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) barring equal time laws for creationism, the terms "creationism" and "creationists" were abundant, and these were switched to "intelligent design" and "design proponents" evidently using a search-and-replace process without changing the substance of the text. At one point, someone got clumsy and spliced "design proponents" into "c[reation]ists", thus creating the hybrid, transitional form "cdesign proponentsists".

The third section has a sterling discussion of the philosophy of science relating to the subject of evolution, particularly the fatuous charge that evolution is "just a theory", and gives sound reasons why intelligent design should not be taught alongside evolution. To put it bluntly, ID advocates lie freely, spending all their time erecting and attacking a straw man of evolution, and therefore teaching ID means teaching IDists' misrepresentations of evolutionary biology and the work of mainstream scientists, most of which K-12 students are not competent to evaluate. Of course, sowing intellectual confusion is the IDists' goal, which is why it's imperative to oppose their agenda. It wouldn't mean just eliminating the most successful unifying theory in biology, but also miseducating generations of students until they're unable to carry on and expand the research that has already been done because they don't understand it. In basic terms, ID is a quick way into a new Dark Ages.

[Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gets a high rating although it is not a traditional "good read." It's a series of scientific reviews, each copiously footnoted, that convincingly demolish different aspects of the "intelligent design" hypothesis. Some chapters are tough going: dry and detailed. Don't try to read it right through. Dip into it and then keep as a reference in case you ever get into contention with an advocate of "intelligent design."

The chapter on the ages of the Earth (4.54 billion years is the quoted estimate), Solar System, Galaxy (13.5 billion years) and Universe ( 13-15 billion years) is impressive in its adept synthesis of the different lines of evidence for an old Earth. A billion years is truly "deep time." Think about ways to reach a emotional appreciation of how very long it is.

Do not overlook the introduction. It nicely summarizes the fundamental intellectual deficiencies of creationism while freely admitting fault in the way some professional scientists (I'm one) hesitate to philosophize and stumble at teaching.

The index is excellent.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A SIGNIFICANT UPDATING OF THE ORIGINAL 1983 BOOK

Editor Andrew Petto teaches Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Wisconsin, and Editor Laurie Godfrey teaches anthropology at the University of Massachusetts. This 2007 book (originally published as ‘Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism’) contains essays by writers such as Ronald Numbers; Eugenie Scott; Victor Stenger; G. Brent Dalrymple; Robert Pennock, and others (including the editors).

They note in the “Acknowledgements” section, “It is because we hear questions and concerns from parents, teachers, journalists, clergy, and school administrators that we have such an extensive knowledge of anti-evolutionary pseudoscience. Without them, most of us in the sciences and related fields would spend our time on our own narrow specialties. Because of these people and the challenges that are being raised against evolution in their own communities, we knew we had to bring the original 1983 book---Scientists Confront Creationism---up-to-date, and it is for them that we knew we had to succeed.” (Pg. 9)

They add in the Preface, “Anti-evolutionism is back, and it has new aliases. But, as many chapters in this book will show, these aliases are little more than new labels for the same tired arguments… The substance of the argument has changed little in the years since this book’s first edition… We seek here to address the newer ‘alternatives’ and approaches, such as ‘intelligent design theory,’ and (1) to show explicitly their links to the ‘creation science’ that motivated the first edition; and (2) to provide a critique of more recent anti-evolutionist materials and formulations… Anti-evolutionism is… a phenomenon deeply embedded in cultural history, trends, and institutions. We offer this revised edition as an overview of the complex world of anti-evolutionism at the beginning of the twenty-first century.” (Pg. 14-15)

Eugenie Scott notes in her essay, “The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories proposed a new form of creationism that did not rely directly on the Bible: there were no references to a universal Flood, to the special creation of Adam and Eve or any other creature, or to a young earth. But, echoing creation science, [the book] emphasized supposed scientific problems of evolution. ‘Mystery’ used the language of science, with only brief references in an epilogue to the necessity for intelligence to be involved in the origin of life---and even here, it was claimed that this intelligence need not be transcendent… although the authors express their preference for creation by God.” (Pg. 61-62) Later, she adds, “But who or what is the designer (or Designer)? Here the ID proponents, mindful of the legal problems faced by creation science in being overtly religious, deny that the designer NECESSARILY is God, although that is their preference.” (Pg. 69)

She notes, “Both creation science and ID supporters reject theistic evolution, for largely the same reasons. Both regard it as an unacceptable Christian compromise toward evolution.” (Pg. 86) She continues, “Although presented as a new scientific paradigm, ‘intelligent design’ turns out to be a politically more sophisticated version of creation science… ID has claimed that great scientific insights are just around the corner, as soon as the new paradigm is accepted. Yet even after twenty years, the promissory notes are still out, with no prospect for redemption… given the thinness of the science of ID, if the movement did not have grave consequences for public school education and church-and-state separation, ID would languish in academic obscurity.” (Pg. 94)

Victor Stenger says in his essay, “Many theists see the anthropic coincidences as evidence for purposive design of the universe… Let us examine the implicit assumptions here. Foremost… is the wholly unwarranted assumption that only one type of life is possible---the particular form of carbon-based life we have here on earth. Carbon WOULD seem to be the chemical element best suited to act as the building block for the type of complex molecular systems that develop lifelike qualities… However, to assume that ONLY carbon life is possible is simply ‘carbocentrism’ that results from the fact that you and I are constructed mainly of carbon. Given the known laws of physics and chemistry, we can imagine life based on silicon (computers, and the Internet?) or other elements chemically similar to carbon… Furthermore, nothing in anthropic reasoning indicates any special preference for HUMAN life, or indeed intelligent or sentient life of any sort---just carbon.” (Pg. 145)

G. Brent Dalrymple observes about creationist suggestions that radioactive decay rates may have changed, “It is difficult to see what kind of scientific experiments or observations might be conducted to test whether or not radioactive-decay constants were significantly different between ‘the Fall’ and ‘the Flood’ than they are now. Not only is this hypothesis unscientific, it is incredibly naïve. A significant change in radioactive-decay rates requires changes in fundamental and delicately balanced physical constants, such as Planck’s constant and the speed of light… The result is a universe that no longer works---or at least one that works much differently than the one in which we live.” (Pg. 154-155) Later, he adds, "Isotropic-dating methods were not perfected until the latter half of the twentieth century, and one of the first problems to which they were applied was the geologic time scale… isotropic dating found no errors in the relative order of the major subdivisions of the geologic time scale. The isotropic ages of the time-scale subdivisions fall in the same sequence as their observed relative order.” (Pg. 168)

Another essay suggests, “It has long been thought that feathers characterized birds and no other animals… Their obvious use in flight… has long prompted questions about the original use of feathers and from what structures they were derived… [But] it is clear that feathers with shafts, vanes, and barbs were already present in a variety of nonavian theropods that did not fly, and hence feathers did not evolve FOR flight… Therefore, not only structures but functions may be ‘transitional,’ in the sense that they can have multiple purposes. A structure that originally keeps an animal warm … if its components develop features that stiffen and interlock its filaments, can contribute to a workable airfoil.” (Pg. 208) Later, they add, “half a wing… can be perfectly functional… the first wings and feathers were not at all for flight… It is not necessary to postulate that the first animals that possessed these wings and feathers could fly as well as a bird can today. At first these structures performed different functions entirely, and flight evolved in increments.” (Pg. 219)

Another essayist deals with the evolution of the eye: “The resolution of this puzzle is both simple and surprising: The proteins of the lens are a motley collection of preexisting housekeeping proteins recruited into doing double duty as lens crystallins… These surprising discoveries illustrate a common theme in evolutionary reconstruction: The process relies on the use and reuse of preexisting parts. The evolution of the complex eye did not involve the simultaneous construction, from scratch, of all the parts required to capture, focus, and perceive light. Instead, the eye emerges from the constant experimentation of mutation and the constant sorting of available variants.” (Pg. 242-243)

This is an excellent, well-argued collection of essays, that will be welcome reading for anyone studying the evolution/ID/creationism issue.

[Madison Orlowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite pedantic and inaccessible for the average reader, and possibly best read by choosing essay topics of interest from the table of contents. I particularly disliked how much of the book was dedicated to diving into the background or history of creationism and intelligent design, which I find unimportant. I would rather see more direct explanation of creationism and intelligent design with counter arguments (which essays did contain, but swathed between fluff).

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Scientists Confront Creation" was originally published in 1983, and that's the version I read. It's a series of essays tackling a number of creationist arguments against evolution and responding with the care and thoroughness that such arguments require to refute them. The book was completely redone and retitled "Scientists Confront Creationism and Intelligent Design," but I read the older version because I was curious to see the responses to many of the arguments I learned from fundamentalist Christian curriculum as a high school student.

I was indeed impressed by the incredible weight of the evidence in favor of evolution presented by the authors in this collection. Indeed, the conclusion becomes inescapable that the leaders of creation science either knowingly deceive their followers or are impossibly incompetent interpreters of scientific data. In reading this book, it becomes clear how pseudoscience thrives in the face of overwhelming countervailing evidence: It is very easy to pull quotes out of context, misstate scientific findings and distort evidence in favor of a simple-sounding conclusion — much easier, in fact, than it is to go back and accurately reconstruct that context, provide the nuance of the original findings and provide a full picture of the evidence. And since scientists have full-time jobs actually doing science, they often don't pay attention to the arguments of those who are misusing their data, or if they do, they don't have the time to undertake the effort of rebutting it.

That's what makes this book such a service, even today, 32 years after its publication. Although a snapshot of what the scientific evidence looked like before the sequencing of the human genome and the resulting leaps in the study of genetic evolution, it is compelling for how thoroughly science even then refuted the notion of a literal six-day creation less than 10,000 years ago.

Among the highlights: A full explanation of the laws of thermodynamics and how they do not, in fact, contradict evolutionary theory, a thorough treatment of radiometric dating and how its use is not a circular fallacy, an explainer on what it means if evolution did not occur in a uniformly gradual fashion (Stephen Jay Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium was a big anti-evolution talking point back in the day), and a detailed narrative describing the fossil evidence for human evolution, from Australopithecus xeuxis (a pre-simian primate) to Homo sapiens (modern humans).

As someone who learned in school that scientists had no good responses to the supposedly airtight arguments for a literal understanding of Genesis 1-11 and has since understood that not to be the case, it is still shocking how impressive is the weight of evidence in favor of evolution — and how badly creationists have misconstrued (to be charitable) such evidence in seeking to dismiss it.

The coup de grace for this book is not the best-written chapter, but it's the one that takes the greatest pains to respond blow-for-blow with the statements of creationist founders like Henry Morris and Duane Gish. "Fossils, Stratigraphy and Evolution" by the geologist Steven Shafersman shows with great clarity not only that the fossil evidence supports evolution, but that the fossil evidence as presented by creationists is filled with "factual distortions and specious arguments," including, most egregiously, the quoting of scientists and removing key qualifying phrases without indicating they had done so. Shafersman concludes: "The creationist relies to a large extent on the sheer volume of distortions, facile arguments and superficial explanations to achieve the desired end of confusing the reader and on suggesting antiscientific implications that remain in the reader's memory, rather than on persuading the reader with convincing arguments and evidence."

In an ideal world, this book would have settled the debate once and for all. The fact that a more recent version exists, comprising a whole new batch of essays, shows it clearly did not do so. But given the creationist tendency to cling tenaciously to arguments long after they've been debunked, "Scientists Confront Creationism" remains sadly relevant and informative three decades after its initial publication.

[Bob Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collections of essays is, unfortunately, uneven. Some are a joy to read, and others a slog. I found the first half of the book tolerable always, rising sometimes to entertaining, and the second half to be less so. It can’t really be helped; in a compilation of experts such as this, each is bound to have their unique voice, their peccadilloes, and certainly not all can write with the capability to both engage and inform. My favorite in the book is “Creation Science Lite” from Eugenie Scott, which details how ID arose from erasing the word “creationism” and typing “intelligent design”, in a very literal way. Dalrymple’s section on dating rocks, the Earth, the Solar System and the universe is fascinating even out of context; it alone would be worth a read. John Cole’s section, “Wielding the Wedge”, is a good overview of the ‘wedge strategy’ of ID proponents: getting the foot in the door just a little is a great accomplishment to them, because they see it as getting closer to their actual goal of making the public shift away from understanding science as a naturalistic process (naturalism in general seems to be a bogeyman among these types). The last part that I want to call out is Victor Stenger’s takedown of the information complexity argument against evolution: he bases his rebuttal on strict physical definitions and processes, and it is a brief joy to read. The diamonds in this book are well worth the time taken to read them, and who knows, maybe someone else will enjoy the other parts of this book more than I have.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of essays written by evolutionary biologists addresses the theories of creationism and intelligent design. It presents thorough arguments which address the specific points of creationism and explains why it is not only bad science but also why it is unanimously rejected by the scientific community as a reasonable explanation for the origin of the various forms of life. The recent popular publications on intelligent design and their author's methods are also picked apart through several chapters and it is explained in satisfactory fashion to the reader why those writings failed to pass the litmus tests for becoming legitimate scientific hypotheses and eventually accepted scientific theory. This book is a useful tool for any critical thinking student of biology to refer to when trying to understand why the religiously-based origin theories are still accepted by some groups but why they are treated as religious ideas by the education boards, the court systems, and the scientific community as a whole.

[Jessie]

I wasn't sure how to rate this, it depends on your level of scientific sophistication. The book eloquently describes the history and dogma of the creationist movement and in somewhat painful detail. It assumes some knowledge of the intelligent design pseudo science though and takes a long time before describing them. For the most part the book does a good job in devastating intelligent design but it is not a great book for the layperson looking for talking points. It can get very technical.

[Vctor Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a great book!!, sometimes a little to technical in some areas, but has a lot of explanations of the 'loopholes' that creationists think they found in the evolution theory. A must read for those interested in science.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compilation of essays that are well-written and well-documented; interesting reading.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and on-the-whole quite readable essays which discuss and dispute creationists arguments against evolution.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very enlightening book and a must read for anyone interested in this debate. I may be Biased a bit because Dr. Petto is my father but it is a great read.

[Elizabeth]

As seen in the Expo at the American Chemical Society's 238th National Meeting in Washington, DC.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit clunky prose-wise, these are clearly scientists and not authors, but thorough. There wasn't a lot of information here I was unaware of, but I'm a biology nerd.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quite a slog. Glad I can now go back to fiction.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

most of it was very good. 1st essay by R Numbers was terrible. the rest nicely destroyed ID.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not lite reading, but I glad that I read this many years ago.