Bill Dembski has drawn my attention to the Darwinists who vote up negative reviews at Amazon of Design of Life, his textbook supplement with Jonathan Wells, on whose behalf I blog at Design of Life blog. He writes,
The Design of Life has 13 five-star reviews and 4 one-star reviews. None of the one-star reviews give evidence of the reviewer having read the book. Yet the three reviews placed front and center by Amazon are the one-star reviews and none of the five-star reviews appear there. That’s because the Darwinists keep voting up the negative reviews and voting down the positive reviews. Please go to the link right now, look at the reviews, and vote on them (toward the bottom of a review are “yes” and “no” buttons for whether a review was helpful).
These naysayers may not be people who have read the book. Any more than the Darwinbots who assailed the showing of The Privileged Planet at the Smithsonian can be presumed to have seen the film. (Had they done so, they would have known that the film was not “anti-evolution”, as a New York Times reporter had incorrectly reported).
The Darwinbot’s duty is not to see or hear or know, but merely to stupidly protest.
That makes sense. In the final assault of Darwinism against mind-based civilization, the Darwinists are revealing that they do not think that they have minds. Their selfish genes have brought them to the point where they mindlessly yay-hoo against books they have never read and never intend to read, as well as films they have never seen and never intend to see.
I am NOT recommending that anyone who has not read The Design of Life should attempt to do battle with Darwinbots who have not read it either. Why add to the number of stupid wars that infest the planet?
But if you think that the information service that Bill Dembski has provided you here for years – out of his own resources – is worthwhile, go to Amazon and vote up the reviews that sound like the person has actually READ the book. Vote the others down.
Like intelligent design? Hate it? No matter. This is a blow for civilization. Everyone who thinks they have a mind will be better off.
well you can’t really blame the darwinists since they don’t believe in free will. Actually you can, because they have the free will to deny their own free will.
PLEASE, release this soon in an audio version… I don’t have the time to read a physical book.
“I don’t have the time to read a physical book.”
I know it. It’s pretty bad when you find yourself scheduling time to eat.
Dembski’s genius is validated again and again – when we look at general relativity with relative time to Godel’s incompleteness of mathematics- to all of the great questions of SC (which can be empirically seen if not translated into bits of information) to the experience of conciseness to the questions of ultimate causation and purpose vs randomness- Teleology is everywhere.
The reason Darwinists try to redefine intelligence or ignore it is because they desire to grasp the universe as it actually is. They seek to be the creator- to experience everything in terms of the physical- and this desire to control the world and reduce it to a physical explanation that they can dominate reveals their inner struggle against the truth and reality. They demand control because they fear the spirit. They fear themselves and that is why they oppose liberation and demand containment. They seek to limit what things are in hopes that possibilities will eventually dissolve into mere phantoms of the brain and then eventually disappear. They fail to recognize that SC is a description of reality, just like evolution, that justifies certain metaphysical and trans-physical conclusions via inferences through induction-
And the point I am making is that information like evolution is a terminological extraction based on empirical observation. Information or intelligence is no different than mutation. (what is a mutation but merely a physical change?)
Intelligence is not directly or purely quantifiable. The best that we can do is justify rough estimates of it based upon observations of its effects. Hence, the nature of knowledge is not being able know what something is- in it of itself- but being able to negotiate through problems from the position of fertile perspectives.
All things that lie outside of the body are known by description but not by explanation. Thus, the question should be phrased “which theory is more capable of “describing” questions of origins- DE or ID? In the end each person must come to that conclusion for themselves. Only that which we can actually feel from the inside, can we truly come to know.
This is the price and prize of being alive– it is the eternal mystery of the world. And like SC the spirit refuses to go away and dissolve under the pressure of the celestial dictatorship of methodological materialism- no matter how hard MM tries to exterminate it.
Just one comment. Are you asking us to vote for a review without reading the reviews first? That would be lowering ourselves to the same level as the Darwinists who presented a review without reading the book. Maybe it’s better to propose we read all reviews and see for ourselves which review is useful or not? It’s not a proper response to answer a wrong actions with a similarly wrong action.
Dutch-cousin: “Are you asking us to vote for a review without reading the reviews first?”
Of course not.
Denyse wrote: “Vote up the reviews THAT SOUND LIKE THE PERSON HAS ACTUALLY READ THE BOOK. Vote the others down.”
For checking if a review “SOUNDs LIKE…” one must necessarily read the review. Thus the prerequisite of reading is logically implicit in the Denyse’s proposition.
Ms O’Leary:
In re:
What a telling indictment of contemporary Western culture and the rising incivility that manifests the utter moral and intellectual bankruptcy of evolutionary materialism-driven secularist humanism!
But also, plainly, Amazon needs to fix its reviews and comments sections on books, especially books that are controversial. [This is the second time in a few weeks at most that his problem has come up for mention here at UD.]
In the meanwhile, while we wait on Amazon to fix its problems, we need to maintain a hall of shame that will publicly identify and censure those who are responsible for this sort of incivility, or who actively promote it. And, the tacticvs being used should be identified and exposed so that the public can easily see just what is being done, by whom. Also, as the clear pattern of singing off the same tatty hymn sheet becomes obvious, a few light bulbs will go off about the decrepit and shoddy agendas and tactics being routinely resorted to by evo mat advocates, in their campaign to suppress the truth on their favourite scientific theory.
Otherwise agenda driven twisters of truth who have no compunction about deception or slander — and this is slander, folks — will conspire together and play games with the minds of those who are open to influence from the appeal to “jump on the bandwagon.”
I took time to sample those 1-star reviews. Here are my quick and dirty findings, i.e. my review of the “reviews”:
BTW, these “reviews” reveal an inadvertent admission of defeat on the merits!
For shame!
GEM of TKI
When I went to the site last, all the first page reviews were 5 star. This may vary with the time you access the page or it may be driven by something else. I am not familiar with how Amazon list it’s reviews.
PS:
It is worth looking on the other side of the reviews, too.
If you want to see a more informed examination of the book, read Casey Luskin’s review, which will give you a synopsis of the situation and the evidence Kwok et al don’t want you to see.
Eugenio’s appreciation on the role of information in biology is also interesting. Gordon gives a model structured review. Ewert states the issue well: “In Design of Life Dembski and Wells provide the rationale for a paradigm shift in biology.” BarryA’s run-through is great too. Stephen highlights the significance of the fossil evidence review in Ch 3 of DOL.
Russell Carlson gives a great balanced view, from the perspective of those who might want to use this book in a bio course or a phil of sci course or a worldiews course that will fairly teach the controversy.
Ralph Seelke gives a great prognosis for the probable contributionthat DOL will make tot he scientific and general controversy:
I also loved Denyse’s short and sharp, to the point pro-grade summary.
Enough to reproduce it here in toto (with apologies to my favourite word-processor totin’ gran’ma from Toronto : -> ) ):
Well done, Ms O’Leary! There is hope for Journalism yet!
Our very own IDNet Au puts the challenge to Ken Miller on this professor’s astoundingly factually-challenged claim “The whole idea of intelligent design is a confession on the part of its advocates that they actually can’t get any evidence at all in favor of a designer. Not a single observation, not a single experimental result, has ever emerged in 150 years that contradicts the general outlines of the theory of evolution.”
Verdict on the battle of the reviews: darwinbots knoclked out of the ring. Victory to the positive reviews, by a knockout.
Dear Santa, you KNOW what I want for Christmas . . .
GEM of TKI
PPS: Dear Santa, is Rudolph’s red nose irreducibly complex, or is there a technically detailed darwinian pathway to a glowing red nose . . .?
KF write:
They ought to be turned over to Galapagos Finch for his special brand of censure.
Poachy:
Now, THAT’S an idea! (Along with the folks over at Wikipedia on ID . . .)
Over to you, Galapagos Finch!
GEM of TKI
Actually, not only do I expect people to read the reviews before voting on them, I made a point of not asking that you vote up the favourable reviews and vote down the unfavourable ones. Use your own good judgement. Did the review tell you something about the book that was worth knowing?
But DEFINITELY vote down any review that sounds suspiciously like the author has not read the book or really wants to talk about something other than the book.
My primary concern is to expose Darwinbots and chase them off the scene.
These people’s silly tricks deface the marketplace of ideas by impeding the ability of others to make a reasonable choice of reading material. Wading through all that sludge would tempt anyone to give up on book reviews as a useful source of information. Yet reviews CAN Be a useful source.
Don’t let the ‘bots spoil it for everyone.
Here, here! It must get tiring having the same small band of suspects following you around ginning up a controversy with the sole intent of confusing the public.
Won’t it be a glorious day when their fairy tale is purged from the marketplace?
A bunch of new negative reviews just popped up and in a matter of hours have received hundreds of positive votes. The Darwin propaganda machine is working overtime. The entire thing is such a joke.
Perhaps a review that questions why Darwinists are so afraid that people might actually read the book would be in order.
I just saw. Amazing. Just when you think humans cannot behave any less rationally, they surprise you.
Darwinists, what are you so afraid of? Your fear is showing to the world.
Just wait until the public is made aware of your irrational behavior, it will backfire so badly.
Sending off books to cohorts for positive reviews. Boilerplate reviews of books they’ve never read. Gaming the system by voting up friendly reviews and voting down critical reviews. Such are the tactics that must be employed to prop up their money-making enterprise in the face of an assault from true science.
There comes a time when your opponents cross over from being formidable (even if wrong) to being merely farcical. My suggestion is that we leave Amazon alone and let these guys freely post all the evidence any intelligent person needs to decide whether that line has been crossed. I’ve always found it deeply asinine and comical that such as Kwok consider the Amazon reviews to be so important. I don’t have any deep interest in joining them in any of their nursery school games. Victorious at Amazon? Only a loser would care.
Wow, the voting on the reviews there has changed pretty dramatically in the last 24 hours. Now it’s some huge percentage of the votes are anti-ID. Are the Darwinoids reading this blog, too? Have they no shame?
enough talk..lemme get out my credit card and buy the book
I agree with Matteo. Just sit back and let them make fools of themselves to the public.
At least we know this blog has some Darwinist lurker readership.
Wesley R. Elsberry at Panda’s Thumb appears to be the reason Darwinists are gaming Amazon over The Design of Life. See:
Expelled: “Intelligent Design” Advocates Gaming the System at Amazon
Denyse,
They are also pretty consistent in another way. They generally have poor critical reading skills. It’s is amazing how fast Corey jumped on what he thought you said–not only absent any arguable text–but despite you, yourself having made a conscious effort to avoid that connotation.
I speak from many hundreds of net discussions where I saw the same thing play out again and again. More materialists and “skeptics” are preemptive in telling you want you or somebody else meant, despite any modicum of critical reading skills.
I’ve often thought that this is what attracts them to believe in the universe through the lens of status quo Science. Simple, black and white, no elaborations, no difficulties, no words to steer it or obscure it. (Which is why in speaking of these people and their instant dogma about what was said, I put skeptics in quotes.) Nice clear defined lines, get rid of religion and heal the world, blah, blah, blah…
Hey everyone, my first post here.
It’s disturbing to me when I read the comments of the reviews.
For instance, under James F. Lemire’s review, S. Allen says:
“How in the world can people still be fooled by “irreducible complexity”? EVERY example of a system that Behe or any other creationist has offered up has been shown to be reducible. The flagellum, the cillia, the blood clotting cascade, etc. Plus they continue to ignore all of the scientific data that basically walks you through how a complex system can arise via gradual steps. Behe himself was exposed as a fool when he was presented with this kind of scientific information on the stand in Dover right after claiming it didn’t exist. IC is turning from a bad hypothesis into a group delusion IMO.”
In my limited time to research, I’ve not come across this kind of rebutting “scientific information”. Is this just hand-waving or what?
My concern is for people with even less investment than myself, who see this stuff and take it as gold. (Though I suppose the internet isn’t a very good place if you expect to only read reliable information).
Thanks for responses/reading recommendations.
sbk,
My suggestion is to read widely on both sides of the topic and draw your own conclusions. I would never dissuade anyone from reading the works of the other side with an open mind. I think you’ll find that all of the alleged debunkings of ID arguments simply are nothing of the sort. But you are perfectly free to draw your own conclusions. One of the great asymmetries of this whole debate is that it seems that Darwinists will say or do anything to try to convince people to ignore the real-McCoy ID arguments. My attitude is the exact opposite. Read all the Gould, Mayr, Ayala, Dawkins, Dennet, etc, books you want. ID can easily stand on its own two feet. It’s an eminently sensible and rationally justifiable position. To date, and in my last ten years of following the discussion, the Darwinist response has been by and large, simply an embarrassment. They have failed to even properly represent the position they “argue” so vociferously against, let alone provide satisfactory counterpoints. I’ve recently been reading “The Design Of Life”. It’s an excellent place to start.