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Uncommon Descent contest List the five books that most helped ID – judged

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Here’s the contest: “Uncommon Descent contest: List the five books that helped ID most – written by non-ID researchers.” It riffs off an earlier contest: “List the ten most significant ID books of the last 25 years,” judged here.

Briefly: Lots of books whose authors are looking for any solution other than ID have actually helped ID, and entrants were asked to pick the five most significant, with explanation.

(Apologies, as usual, for judging delay. In part not all my fault – we just underwent a site redesign. And the management team still likes each other. Therefore, the age of miracles is not over. The age of wonders is not done. Proven.)

First prize, a copy of The Nature of Nature mailed to his door goes to Cannuckian Yankee for this entry.
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Second prize, a free copy of Don Johnson’s valuable Probability’s Nature and the Nature of Probability, mailed to his door, goes to AussieID for this entry.

Both winners need to be in touch with me at denyseoleary@gmail.com to arrange for delivery of prizes.

Incidentally, Cannuckian wondered whether UD News staff get a salary. No, just a bit of cash now and then, if donations allow. UD News is – essentially – a hand to South operation. The United States is possibly the greatest country that ever existed (second to one and one only, of course). It is shameful when obvious stuff like the design of life morphs into political issues dominated by crackpots, so irregularly paid  veterans of foreign wars drop in to help.
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Among the books Cannuckian notes are

– 1. Creationism’s Trojan Horse – Barbara Forrest, Paul R. Gross

Forrest’s insistence that ID is “creationism in a cheap tuxedo” will go down as the anti-ID blunder of the century. Answered in “Signature in the Cell,” particularly in Chapter 18.

The thing to see here, Cannuckian, is that she believes it. The Synthese disaster (where she falsely accused Frank Beckwith of being an ID supporter and paid accordingly in academic reputation for her incompetence) has most likely taught her nothing – except that conspirators run the world. But she “knew” that already? Otherwise … ?

Also, Cannuckian’s 3: The Grand Design – Stephen Hawking:

I don’t know – putting “grand design” in the title while incoherently arguing the opposite seems to garner some weight to the design argument from cosmology.

But that’s just it. All these fancy new cosmologies are just living off the capital of consistent, logical thought – and playing games with it. Bill Dembski and I are writing a book that will include that problem.

AussieID suggested Hunter’s Civic Biology, the text at the heart of the Scopes Trial, and quite appropriately condemned, by the way. You know you are listening to legacy media bilge when you hear how evil William Jennings Bryan was because he objected to stuff like this in textbooks:

Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites …

Yeah, right. You really want your kid learning this in school. That’s what the Scopes trial was really about, but the legacy media will be in a museum somewhere before they tell anyone.

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Comments
Thanks AussieID I initially thought after I had submitted my response that I had made a category error in positing books that are necessarily anti-ID. I thought maybe she wanted books that actually supported ID, but were not by ID supporters themselves. I wasn't quite clear on this. I believe that critical readers of the anti-ID books can learn something particularly about the agendas that go against ID, which may cause them to be a bit more curious as to exactly what ID defenders state about ID. Therefore, in a round-about sort of way, they are helping the ID cause for better science; whether those critical readers end up agreeing with ID theory or not. I've always believed that theory is strengthened by its detractors. Detractors force theorists to think more critically.CannuckianYankee
August 17, 2011
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Well done CY! A worthy winner! Dick, I too thought about that book (after the contest's closing) and how it really ended up with a shoulder shrug. Certainly a consideration for a membership of this elite group of books.AussieID
August 17, 2011
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Denyse, Thanks. Could you kindly fix your first link?CannuckianYankee
August 16, 2011
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Did anyone think Paul Davies' Goldilocks Enigma qualified for consideration? Davies strives in the book to come up with an explanation for fine-tuning that doesn't involve intelligent agency, but can't find anything that makes much sense either to him or, presumably, his readers.Dick
August 16, 2011
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