Includes bibliographical references (p. 326-331) and index.
Contents
Pt. 1. Basic distinctions. Intelligent design -- Creation -- Scientific creationism -- Disguised theology -- Religious motivation -- Optimal design -- The design argument -- pt. 2. Detecting design. The design inference -- Chance and necessity -- Specified complexity -- The explanatory filter -- Reliability of the criterion -- Objectivity and subjectivity -- Assertibility -- The chance of the gaps -- pt. 3. Information and matter -- Information theory -- Biology's information problem -- Information ex Nihilo --Nature's receptivity -- The law of conservation of information -- pt. 4. Issues arising from naturalism. Varieties of naturalism -- Interventionism -- Miracles and counterfactual substitution -- The supernatural -- Embodies and unembodied designers -- The designer regress -- Selective skepticism -- The progress of science --
pt. 5. Theoretical challenges to intelligent design. Argument from ignorance -- Eliminative induction -- Hume, Reid and signs of intelligence -- Design by elimination versus design by comparison -- The demand for details : Darwinism's Tu quoque -- Displacement and the no free lunch principle -- The only games in town -- pt. 6. A new kind of science. Aspirations -- Mechanism -- Testability -- The significance of Michael Behe -- Peer review -- The "wedge" -- Research times -- Making intelligent design a disciplined science.
