In a review of several books in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reviewer Ted Hainsworth devoted paragraphs to The Design of Life, describing it as:

... an apology for the concept of intelligent design and a rant against Darwin's theory of evolution. It too is a scientist's playground, where two biologists seek to give some popular context to the meaning of life, in much the same way Stephen Hawking tried to explain the universe in A Brief History of Time.

Interesting. Hawking's book makes a useful comparison in some ways and contrast in others.

As a fan of A Brief History I would say that it is in some ways a deeply ambivalent book. Hawking was clearly uncomfortable with the religious implications of the Big Bang and of the fine tuning of our universe for life. He is even willing to entertain ideas that he himself clearly considers unsatisfactory, such as the "no boundary" condition, as a possible way around the evidence. Dembski and Wells are, by contrast, quite comfortable with the evidence for design.

I am unclear what Hainsworth means by describing The Design of Life as a "rant against evolution" - it simply sets out the evidence for design in life forms that most students will not encounter in their textbooks and most adults will not encounter in popular science books.

The only time the authors become slightly impatient is when they evaluate the mess of contradictory theories around the origin of life - but they are in very good company there because almost everyone agrees that origin of life research is a mess.

Hainsworth's subsequent comments make clear he doesn't really think the book is a rant: "The Design of Life is worth a read because it fosters thought and discussion." I suspect that "rant against evolution" was a phrase he just had to get in there, even though he doesn't quite believe it.

At the opening of a thoughtful (and mainly, I think, sympathetic) review in AntiMatters, Ulrich Mohrhoff observes,

At the time of writing this, Amazon has 74 reviews of The Design of Life. Of these 35 rate five stars, one rates four stars, two rate three stars, and 36 rate one star. This leaves three reviewers worth checking out. One of them is David Springer, who remarks that "any book with such a high sales rank at Amazon that causes this much polarization in the reviews must be worth reading just to see for yourself what's in it that's causing so much controversy."

I assume that Mohrhoff refers here to the two three-star reviews and the one four-star review as worth checking out - because they are probably normal reviews, like his, as opposed to elements in a campaign for or against the book. One finds oneself wondering, given how quickly many of these reviews appear, whether the campaigners had in fact read the book.

 AntiMatters is a publication of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre for Education. Although the Centre seems to be project sympathetic to Hinduism, Mohrhoff notes in the review that he himself does not subscribe to any religion.

Actually, what makes The Design of Life so controversial is this: For many years, the evidence against the conventional story of evolution taught in textbooks and displayed in museums was simply not addressed. Those who insisted on addressing it were Expelled, as the Ben Stein documentary, to be released in April, explains.

Many scientists have a vested interest in public acceptance of the textbook story. As co-author Jonathan Wells shows in his controversial earlier book, Icons of Evolution, they knew about and admitted the problems with the textbook icons - but these problems were discussed only among specialists.

 Museum docents were trained to parry questions from the public.

But the longer we don't address a problem with evidence, the bigger and more painful it becomes. More and more people who question the evidence must be Expelled. Rules must be made to prevent discussion of the quality of the evidence.

Usually this does not work, because everyone who has heard about someone getting Expelled or knows about the rules against doubting the official story  KNOWS that something is wrong. So the establishment's efforts to suppress the controversy merely advertise the problem.

In this atmosphere, The Design of Life was bound to be controversial. It actually shouldn't be. It's a good book and well written, but the fact that it is even remotely controversial shows just how committed the science establishment is to ideas about evolution that do not conform to the current available evidence.