The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not

The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not by Abby Hafer“The Not-So-Intelligent Designer” is a delightful contribution that provides compelling information of how the human body is badly “designed”. Dr. Hafer provides the public with an accessible reference on evolution while exposing the Intelligent Design (ID) movement as a political pressure group of science denialism. This enlightening and fun 266-page book includes thirty-five short chapters covering a wide-range of topics on evolution and creationism.Positives:1. An engaging well-written book with a touch of humor.2. The fascinating topic of evolution and exposing the Intelligent Design (ID) as the political science denial movement that it is.3. Dr. Hafer has a doctorate in zoology who teaches human anatomy and physiology at Curry College. She has mastery of the topic and uses her wit and knowledge to enlighten the public.4. This book focuses on the many quirks of the human body and convincingly shows how the human body evolved versus being created. “Human bodies are just too badly put together to stand up to even reasonable design specifications, much less infallible ones.”5. Succeeds in clearly showing how the ID controversy is not a scientific issue, but a political one. “ID is the idea that biological organisms have come about due to the deliberate work of an intelligent Creator. It further argues that new species cannot come about through evolution by natural selection, and must be the work of a Designer.”6. Goes over the classic debunked examples of the ID movement. “The usual examples given for irreducible complexity are the human blood clotting sequence, the bacterial flagellum, and the human eye.”7. Clearly shows that the ID movement is a Christian religious lobby. “This case was called Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. In it, Judge John E. Jones III found that ID and creationism are fundamentally the same thing, and that therefore since creationism is religion, then ID is too.”8. Exposes the Discovery Institute and its infamous Wedge Strategy. “So the Discovery Institute intends to defeat science by doing politics.”9. My favorite example on how denying evolution can hurt society. “The last major political group to oppose Darwin’s theory of evolution on ideological grounds was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin.”10. Some quotes are truly memorable. “In fact, ID is just a form of ‘political correctness’ for the Christian Right.”11. Explains what science is versus what it’s not. “ID proponents simply refuse to make testable hypotheses about the material world, and they certainly do not test them. So without predictions, experiments, or quantifiable results, ID cannot realistically claim to be science.” Bonus, “Scientists still haven’t found anything in a controlled experimental setting that supports claims of anything supernatural.”12. The book is loaded with many examples of bad design: testes, birth canal, the eye, etc… to name a few. “One would think that a benevolent Creator would not make childbirth into such a problem in the first place. In fact there are simple things that could have been done better, if only we had been designed rather than evolved.”13. In support of the facts and science. “All the evidence in biology supports evolution by natural selection, but questions about specific organisms or questions about the rate of change during evolution always occur.”14. Examples of unusual animals, like the mudskipper. “Animals that no rational Creator would have come up with exist perfectly well in our evolved world because they work well enough, and survive from generation to generation.”15. An interesting look at the poorly “designed” human throat. “A better-designed system would keep the tubes for air and food separate, to avoid unnecessary fatalities. If we were designed, why did the Designer do this job so badly?”16. Challenges the “Almighty”. “More than 90 percent of all the species that have ever lived on earth are extinct. Why did the Designer make so many forms during the Cambrian period, for instance, only to have them go extinct?”17. A look at irreducible complexity and the human eye. “In fact, it is clear that vision has evolved separately many times in the animal kingdom, and it is clear that some animals have eyes that are actually better put together than ours.”18. A look at scurvy. “Here’s why our biochemical pathways are a case of bad design: we have the pathway for making vitamin C, but it isn’t finished. Having an incomplete pathway for making a vital nutrient is bad design.”19. Putting the Cambrian Explosion in perspective. “Mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles are all post-Cambrian. Meanwhile, most Cambrian organisms are extinct. So what was the Designer doing with all those Cambrian animals—rehearsing?”20. Linked to notes and provides an appendix of supporting material.Negatives:1. There are more substantive books out there but fewer as interesting, particularly for the layperson.2. The book provides some helpful illustrations but lacks tables that would have summarized some of Dr. Hafer’s finding in a more elegant manner.3. A bit uneven. I don’t mind short chapters but the book’s flow was a little off.4. No formal bibliography.In summary, this book succeeds in capturing the interest of the public by providing quirky facts about evolution while simultaneously exposing the Intelligent Design movement as a political movement with dangerous ramifications. This is an excellent book for the layperson but perhaps on the too light side for evolution-minded groupies. Accessible and fun, I recommend it!Further recommendations: “Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation” by Bill Nye, “Evolution vs Creationism” by Eugenie C. Scott, “Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails)” by Matt Young, “The Greatest Shown On Earth” by Richard Dawkins, “Evolving Out of Eden” by Robert M. Price, “Your Inner Fish” by Neil Shubin, “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves” by Dennis Littrell, “Why Evolution Is True” by Jerry A. Coyne, “The Rocks Don’t Lie” by David R. Montgomery, “What Evolution Is” by Ernst Mayr, “Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters” by Donald R. Prothero, and “The Making of the Fittest” by Sean B. Carroll.

Hafer tells us that the scientific community largely ignores the rants of religious people trying to mute the voice of science. Scientists tend to spend their time and effort writing scientific papers. Hafer is a zoologist from Oxford University. She knows that most people do not read scientific papers or journals – especially the creationists and proponents of Intelligent Design. Hafer thus set out to write a book that people who are not in the scientific community will read. This is it. It disabuses the falsehood that is spread by the ID people against science generally, and evolution specifically. ID and Creationism are different, she explains. But both are religious views, contrary to what their proponents would like the public to believe. ID has its ‘headquarters’ in the Discovery Institute, a place that they try to pass off as a scientific institution, but as Hafer points out, it does not even own a single microscope. It has published no scientific paper. From data gleaned from all its publications, its most often used words begin with the root ‘arg_’. The word ‘data’ hardly appeared and when it does it was attributed to others. There is only one time that it had a paper appearing in a scientific journal. That was in 2004. It was a paper by Stephen Meyer, ‘a big ID promoter’. His article, ‘The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories’ was published in a genuine biological journal, “Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington’. Within months, it was revealed that the article did not pass through the normal peer review. It was accepted by the then editor, Richard Von Sternberg. On further investigation, they found that the Discovery Institute paid Sternberg $77,375 and another $16,581 in expenses. For getting his article published, Meyer received $102,500 and $33,761 in expenses. The journal discredited the article and Sternberg left. William Dembski, a director of the Discovery Institute wrote a book, ‘The Design Revolution’ trying to pass off ID as science by claiming that ‘information theory’ has proven that the human genome is so complex that it has to be designed. Hafer exposes this claim by pointing out that ‘information theory’ is a branch of mathematics that ‘relies on equations, formulas, theorems, and lemmas’. Dembski uses no equation, formula, theorem, or lemma to prove his claim. She says that this ‘is like claiming there’s a forest when there aren’t any trees’. The big lie, however, is that 'after he says he’s going to do information theory, he doesn't do information theory'. In fact, according to Hafer, Dembski does not even use the human genome notwithstanding that the entire human genome had been published since 1991. The Discovery Institute, Hafer says, has no microscopes, no scientific publications, and has discovered nothing. It is, she says, just a political lobby group that is pushing to have religious teachings taught as if it were a science. To that end, the Discovery Institute hatched a plot called the ‘Wedge Strategy’ in order ‘to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by god’. Hafer discusses this strategy in detail in chapter 7 of her book. This ‘Top Secret’ plan was leaked to the Web in 1999. In this book, Hafer discusses the many aspects of the human body which she says is ample proof that if the human body was designed by a super being, that being cannot be very intelligent because the human body is very poorly designed. Among the many parts that Hafer examines and explains, is the fact that human throat lets in air and food through the same channel. No wonder people choke to death. Whales have separate pathways for food and air. They don’t choke to death. Does God love whales more than man, Hafer asks. Our teeth attracts bacteria which decay them and can cause septic death. We have only 2 sets of teeth in our life time. Sharks, which can live to 100 years replace all their teeth every 280 days. God loves them more than man? The human testicles cannot be inside the human body because sperms can’t take the heat. Why, Hafer asks, put such a valuable and vulnerable organ in such a vulnerable place, Hafer asks. Frogs have their testicles soundly protected inside their bodies. The list goes on. The story of the immortal jellyfish with eternal youth is fascinating and something to think about. In the end, Hafer says, ‘evolution is the greatest indisputably true story ever told’.

You can believe in a perfect creation and creator or you can believe science.

Abby Hafer's book on the fallacies and illogical dilemma's of "Intelligent Design" is a much needed book in our time. Being raised in a fundamentalist home, I did not have access to this information, nor likely would have been allowed. But if I had, it most certainly would have propelled me much quicker to the fundamental truths of the theory of evolution also know as natural selection, and a rejection of the obvious errors of the creation myths. Abby writes in an easy to understand approach so even the most scientific illiterate person should be able to grasp her valid points of objection to "Intelligent Design" being taught as an alternative theory in the public schools. I hope that this book is widely distributed and widely read by (especially) young and old with the hopes that the old school of creationist thought be replaced with the more realistic and factual study of evolution, one of the most awe inspiring and correct theories to grace our species since Darwin's genius brought it to us in his book "Origin of the Species" in 1859.

The examples of poor design were clear and well written.However the author took up far too much of the book with ID politics, much of which would be of little interest to people outside the USA. More examples of poor design would have been better.Overall I was disappointed.

This book is for the layman who wants to see how the well-funded proponents of Intelligent Design try to manipulate the media and the educational system in America to accept a clearly religious idea and to promote it so that it becomes mainstream dogma; an idea which has absolutely no scientific basis.I think Hafer does a good job on the whole and rips apart the Discovery Institute and its advocates. It is interesting how she likens the DI to the tobacco lobby and how the same kinds of bogus arguments have been used by both. I think she could have done a better job at demolishing the idea of irreducible complexity as put forward by Michael Behe et.al. Their argument is that parallel evolution of all the components of, say, the flagellum must occur for the whole organelle to work, and that this is unlikely to happen because with even just one component not evolving to the same extent as the others would result in the whole structure not functioning. There is a watertight answer to this argument which I don;t think she provided adequately.I know she is unable to cite every example of dumb design in the animal kingdom but I think I would have included the example of the recurrent laryngeal nerve in the neck of a giraffe which shows so clearly how the process of evolution can only modify what is already there and cannot start from scratch as a normal designer would, resulting in the bizarre situation in the neck of the giraffe of the nerve taking a detour of about 15 feet.Unfortunately she does tend to repeat herself quite a bit which is annoying. She even repeats some of the jokes such as a picture of a cat 'smiling' because it can't get scurvy followed four pages later with another picture of a 'smiling' cat with another caption about not getting scurvy. Also the proofreading has not been brilliant; for example she uses the plural of nucleus as nucleuses in some parts of the book and nuclei in other parts.The structure of the book is a bit random and the chapters don't flow easily from one to the next. For example chapter 12 is entitled The Handy Dandy Intelligent Design Refuter part 1. Then part 2 is picked up again in chapter 16. Bad design and biochemical pathways starts in in chapter 18 which is then dropped before continuing in chapter 25.However the subject matter is so interesting that these observations are quite minor and shouldn't detract too much from what is a comprehensive rebuttal of the whole notion of Intelligent Design.

Not-so-worth-it. Low level of research, ordinary writing - more or less a protest piece without thorough scrutiny of the "intelligent design" propaganda . Many chapters feel like "filler"

This grounded, evidence-based polemic skewers the nonsense that is the fact-free worldview of so-called Intelligent Design.Believers in a sky-pixie creator clearly never look at the state of their own bodies when choosing to favour biblical assertion over evolutionary reality.As you meander through this book, you'll find answers to such questions as why we need dentists; and how God loves you so much you can get scurvy (but your dog can't) and rabbits don't get potentially fatal appendicitis (but we do).Hardcore creationist fanatics, who will hate this book, are the people who probably would benefit most from reading it as they clearly demonstrate such profound ignorance of science.The rational rest of us will be better equipped to rebut their nonsense. We really don't want evolution deniers in charge of antibiotic or environmental policies.

Well written, but does not follow smoothly