I'm Reading: Doubting Darwin? by Sahotra Sarkar

“Sahotra Sarkar lucidly and comprehensively dismantles Intelligent Design creationism in the most powerful way: by explaining the biology. This book summarizes the theory and philosophy of evolution with depth and insight, and in a way that sharply refutes the objections of creationism.”
–P. Z. Myers, PhD, University of Minnesota, Morris, and author of Pharyngula Blog

PZ Myers' quote appears on the back cover of Doubting Darwin. This is a concise, somewhat technical book. I recommend it for readers who have at least a little knowledge of science already. Sarkar cogently and fearlessly wades into controversial waters, taking Behe, Dembski and their ID colleagues to task for their dishonesty, inconsistency, and bad science.

In the first half of the book Sarkar explains and illuminates the theory of evolution and how is has been challenged since Darwin and Wallace first introduced it. Sarkar explains how several serious scientific objections to evolution have been raised in the past and have been given their fair airing. In some cases the criticism was ultimately disproven and rejected, but in others the criticism has helped shape and expand the theory. The theory of evolution today differs in many important respects from Darwin's original idea, so much so that to call it "Darwinism" may be little more than a distracting and pejorative term when used in certain contexts. For example Darwin knew nothing about the work of his contemporary Gregor Mendel whose work on pea plants laid the foundation for modern genetics.

The second half of the book takes on specific arguments that have emerged from the ID movement. The arguments from irreducible complexity, teleology, information theory and others are confronted and shown to be no serious threat to evolutionary theory. Sarkar also discusses the anthropic principle and methodological and metaphysical naturalism.

Intelligent Design is little more than old-fashioned Creationism, dressed up in a lab coat and goggles. It attempts to revive the argument from teleology but has less force and honesty today than it did when Paley made the argument originally. What Darwin's theory did was essentially to dispense with the design argument. The ID proponents seem to be trying to call for a do-over by introducing more modern examples into the argument (like the bacterial flagellum), but these new examples do little to rescue the argument.

This week I'm lecturing my students on evolution. I will probably not talk very extensively about the ID arguments, but I will bring them up as an example of how scientists take new proposals seriously, and toss them out when they have no merit.