Marketing Intelligent Design: Law and the Creationist Agenda [Hardcover]

It is clear that Lawyer Ravitch does not like those persons who find major problems with orthodox Darwinism, and wants a state enforced censorship of their views in public schools. This book is almost totally a review of the polemics written against critics of Darwinism, and little evidence exists that the author did much, if any, reading of the writings of those he criticizes in his book. He over and over equates Darwin critics' ideas, such as Iirreducible complexity, with astrology, alchemy, the ether theory, UFOlogy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster and even Mad magazine (page 54)!

He argues in his book that Intelligent Design (ID) is religion and, therefore, should not be taught in state supported schools. The fact is, it is now widely taught in American schools. As has been well documented in numerous empirical studies, the problem is not if it is taught, but how it is taught. As has also been documented in numerous studies, if teachers present material in support of ID, they could be terminated, but when teachers present information against it, rarely do problems result. If ID is religion then teachers who teach against it should also be fired as are those who presented scientific information for ID.

The result is schools have become, not places for the objective pursuit of knowledge no matter where it leads, but indoctrination conduits. Ravitch also argues that ID should not be taught because only a few scientists support it, but never mentions the fact that a major reason why few scientists support it is because of the one sided indoctrination, with few exceptions, that exists against ID in our schools. If the evidence for ID was taught objectively, in my experience many scientists would recognize they have some valid points. He argues for theistic evolution in one chapter but gives not one reason to accept the concept of a God and gives much information to reject God. This purports to be a scholarly book, but often descends to gutter language that Amazon will not allow (see page 148 for a mild example).

The only ID concept he mentions is irreducible complexity (IR), which he concludes has been falsified because the examples Behe uses, such as the mouse trap, are not IR because the house mouse trap does not need all of the required parts because they can be used for something else, such as a paper clip (page 29)! Really! In other words, you do not need two up quarks and one down quark to make a proton because an up quark can be used to make another subatomic particle. Nor do humans need a heart to live because a heart can be used as a doorstop. One has to wonder how someone gets through law school with such specious reasoning.

Then again, anyone who has experience with lawyers and courts realizes that lawyers can descend to absurd arguments to win cases, and sometimes it works. One also wonders how he got this book published by Cambridge University Press. He concluded that Darwin Doubters have not been discriminated in Academia, yet it is clear that he is not familiar with the literature in this area, and cited no references to either the relevant court cases, nor the published literature on this topic.

Marketing Intelligent Design: Law and the Creationist Agenda

I've battled the Creationism /Intelligent Design folks for many years. Every case in which they have argued that science cannot explain scientific evidence has been overwhelmingly disproved, Worst of all, Intelligent Design is the "answer" to all complex scientific questions, even before they are asked. The I.D. folks would gut science of its stringent application of investigative rules.

I have looked forward for a long time to reading this book by my colleague.

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