From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Fri Aug 30 2002 - 19:36:21 EDT
Various persons on this list have expressed an interest in Bill Dembski's
latest book, No Free Lunch. For a variety of reasons I decided to give this
book a thorough read and to evaluate both its rhetorical strategy and its
scientifically-relevant claims. The resulting review essay is now posted on
the AAAS web site at:
www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/perspectives/vantillecoli.pdf
To whet the appetite of ASA listserve members, here is the title and
abstract info:
E. COLI AT THE NO FREE LUNCHROOM
Bacterial Flagella and Dembski's Case for Intelligent Design
by
Howard J. Van Till
Professor of Physics and Astronomy Emeritus
Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI 49546
Draft 7/22/02, as submitted for posting on the AAAS website, DoSER section.
ABSTRACT: The Intelligent Design movement argues that it can point to
specific biological systems that exhibit what ID's chief theorist William A.
Dembski calls "specified complexity." Furthermore, Dembski claims to have
demonstrated that natural causation is unable to generate this specified
complexity and that the assembling of these biological systems must,
therefore, have required the aid of a non-natural action called "intelligent
design." In his book, No Free Lunch, Dembski presents the bacterial
flagellum as the premier example of a biological system that, because he
judges it to be both complex and specified, must have been actualized by the
form-conferring action of an unembodied intelligent agent. However, a
critical examination of Dembski's case reveals that, 1) it is built on
unorthodox and inconsistently applied definitions of both "complex" and
"specified," 2) it employs a concept of the flagellum's assembly that is
radically out of touch with contemporary genetics and developmental biology
and 3) it fails to demonstrate that the flagellum is either "complex" or
"specified" in the manner required to make his case. If the bacterial
flagellum is supposed to demonstrate ID, then ID is a failure.
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