Mark Perakh (1924–2013)

This book challenges the idea of intelligent design. The author specifically addresses William Dembski, Michael Behe, and Philip Johnson, then turns his attention to various works arguing for the compatibility of religion and science. Unlike most books on the topic, he addresses Judaic works as well as Christian, successfully demolishing the argument that creationism is a uniquely Christian phenomenon. This book should have been better. The author writes with clarity, and only brings in show more equations for the purpose of demonstrating the incoherence of the intelligent design argument, showing how their use of equations is often window dressing that adds nothing but the feeling of "science" to the book. Major problems: the book would have been several pages shorter if the author had been more judicious in his constant refrain of "of course, people are entitled to believe anything they wish". Since most people know this, saying it once would have been adequate, and shortened a too long book. Also, the chapter on probability should have been moved to the front of the book; then, instead of telling readers they would understand what he was talking about once they'd read that chapter (which he did about four or five times in every chapter), people would understand as they read it. For those of us who have a background in statistics, this was annoying. I can only imagine how annoying it is for someone who doesn't have the slightest clue about probability. All in all, this book has a purpose, but most of it has been done before, and better, with the exception of the rebuttal of the Judaic apologists. show less