God, the devil, and Darwin - Niall Shanks

9780195322378

Oops!

Unfortunately it looks like someone took the last one.

Sign up to the musicMagpieStore to be the first to hear about the latest offers, competitions and product information!

Sign up now
Title
God, the devil, and Darwin - a critique of intelligent design theory
Author
Niall Shanks
format
Paperback / softback
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Language
English
UK Publication Date
20070315

In the last fifteen years a controversial new theory of the origins of biological complexity and the nature of the universe has been fomenting bitter debates in education and science policy across North America, Europe, and Australia. Backed by intellectuals at respectable universities, Intelligent Design Theory (ID) proposes an alternative to accepted accounts of evolutionary theory: that life is so complex, and that the universe is so fine-tuned for theappearance of life, that the only plausible explanation is the existence of an intelligent designer. For many ID theorists, the designer is taken to be the god of Christianity.
Niall Shanks has written the first accessible introduction to, and critique of, this controversial new intellectual movement. Shanks locates the growth of ID in the last two decades of the twentieth century in the growing influence of the American religious right. But as he shows, its roots go back beyond Aquinas to Ancient Greece. After looking at the historical roots of ID, Shanks takes a hard look at its intellectual underpinnings, discussing modern understandings of thermodynamics, andhow self-organizing processes lead to complex physical, chemical, and biological systems. He considers cosmological arguments for ID rooted in so-called "anthropic coincidences" and also tackles new biochemical arguments for ID based on "irreducible biological complexity." Throughout he shows howarguments for ID lack cohesion, rest on errors and unfounded suppositions, and generally are grossly inferior to evolutionary explanations.
While ID has been proposed as a scientific alternative to evolutionary biology, Shanks argues that ID is in fact "old creationist wine in new designer label bottles" and moreover is a serious threat to the scientific and democratic values that are our cultural and intellectual inheritance from the Enlightenment.

We are Rated Excellent on Trustpilot
Here's what you say about us...

Niall Shanks, a native of England, earned his Ph.D. at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is currently Curtis D. Gridley Professor in the History and Philosophy of Science at Wichita State University.

[A] cogent and well-argued alarum...Shanks deftly skewers the scientific pretensions of intelligent design creationists.
Science

Type
BOOK
Keyword Index
Intelligent design (Teleology)
Country of Publication
England
Number of Pages
273

FREE Delivery on all Orders!