Endorsements for Mark Perakh

Endorsements for Mark Perakh's book Unintelligent Design

An expert, book-length dissection of those new creationist pretensions dubbed "intelligent design theory" is long overdue. Mark Perakh has coupled this one with incisive analyses of related fads in which science is perverted to serve the ends of religion. Unintelligent Design is a timely contribution to intellectual honesty.

Paul R. Gross
(University Professor of Life Sciences, emeritus, University of Virginia)

Neocreationists, largely financed by the right-wing Discovery
Institute, want to undermine modern science and replace it with
a kind of Christian theism masquerading under the name
"intelligent design". Although their arguments have no
scientific merit, they have achieved considerable political
success.

Now, into the fray, marches physicist Mark Perakh.

Perakh critically examines the pseudoscientific and
pseudomathematical arguments of neocreationists William
Dembski, Michael Behe, and Phillip Johnson, and others
(including Hugh Ross, Gerald Schroeder, and Lee Spetner) and
dismantles them one by one. His treatment is calm and
level-headed, nearly always right on the mark, and he never
stoops to the kind of ad hominem rhetoric typically used by his
opponents.

If your local school board is considering adding "intelligent
design" to its curriculum, buy them a copy of this book.

Jeffrey Shallit
School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1
Canada

Author of the _Algorithmic Number Theory_ (with Eric Bach, MIT Press,
1996); _Automatic Sequences_ (with Jean-Paul Allouche, Cambridge
University Press, 2003).

There is little doubt in my mind that Mark Perakh’s Unintelligent Design will be a milestone in the ongoing dispute between genuine science based on an objective investigation of nature and the unrelenting attempts by the proponents of the pseudo-scientific theories that use such deceptive labels as Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity and the like. I find especially interesting the convincing refutation by Perakh of inconsistent and often blatantly false notions propagated by William Dembski, Phillip Johnson, and Michael Behe. Perakh’s discourse is marked by a strict logic and adherence to facts. Equally impressing is Perakh’s analysis of the attempts by religious authors, both of a Christian and Judaic persuasions, to prove the complete compatibility of the biblical story with scientific data. The last part of Perakh’s discourse provides a very interesting analysis of what constitutes genuine science and how it actually works. A remarkable book.

Dr. Semen T. Vaiman, Professor of Philosophy of Art; Fellow, Russian Academy of Humanities; Head Scientist, Institute of Arts Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences; author of Non-Euclidian Poetics, The Mysterious Power of Harmony, Twinkling Meanings, and other books.

From Vic Stenger:

An incisive and thorough refutation of intelligent design pseudoscience
and other claims that science supports theistic creation myths.

From Matt Young:

While remaining respectful of legitimate religious beliefs, Perakh skewers those, from young-earth creationists to Bible-code breakers to intelligent-design theorists, who misappropriate science to prop up their preconceived religious notions. Nothing, it seems, is too fatuous to escape Perakh's rapier.

UNINTELLIGENT DESIGN - Mark Perakh

There have always been attempts to reconcile ancient religious dogmas

with the knowledge provided by modern science, but the past decade

has seen an avalanche of such material that was written using jargon

and mathematical notation beyond the reach of the almost all of its

readers. The effect, as intended, has been to not only confuse the

average reader, but to escape from the knives of many of the usual

critics, who simply cannot understand what has been written.

To our rescue comes Mark Perakh, whose long career as an eminent

physicist makes him excellently suited for the role of interpretor.

Perakh jumps enthusiastically into the task and proves convincingly

that the apparent scientific sophistication of the new arguments

is little more than a thin veneer of obfuscation hiding the same

tired arguments in jargonized form. He does this in a systematic

and thorough way, using only language that will not cause difficulty

to most people with an amateur scientific interest. Especially in

Perakh's sights are the new Intelligent Design writers who use

complicated notation to hide the simplicity of their errors,

and the Divine Cosmology writers who stretch the laws of physics

to manufacture phony compatibility with manifestly incompatible

creation myths. Perakh also takes well-aimed swipes at many of the

current pseudo-scientific fads, such as the so-called Bible Codes.

This book is highly recommended to any reader who has encountered the

recent literature of religion dressed up as science and wants to know

what really lurks behind the obscuration.

IDENTIFICATION:

Professor Brendan McKay, Australian National University

Email: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au

CONTACTS:

Department of Computer Science, Australian National

University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.

Phone: +61 2 6125 3845

Fax: +61 2 6125 0010

TO: Steven L. Mitchell, Prometheus Books

FROM: Norman Levitt, Rutgers University

RE: M. Perakh, UNINTELLIGENT DESIGN

Here is my blurb for Perakh’s Book:

Unintelligent Design is an indispensable source for anyone looking for an honest and competent evaluation of the claims made by “Intelligent Design” theorists. Rigorous but accessible, Perakh’s book takes on the claims of William Dembski, Michael Behe and the like and dissects them, layer by layer, with the remorseless skill of an honest and deeply learned scientist. Perakh utterly exposes the smoke-and-mirrors tactics of ID theory; even more, he dispels all the smoke and shatters all the mirrors.

Norman Levitt

Professor of Mathematics, Rutgers University

Author, Prometheus bedeviled: Science and the Contradictions of Contemporary Culture