Water, Water Everywhere and Not A Drop Supports Intelligent Design

The Discovery Institute (DI) announced that they have a new podcast on which Michael Denton tells us "how water is specially equipped to allow life to flourish on our blue planet." from his new book: "The Wonder of Water".

No, I have not read the book, nor listened to the podcast.  Something struck me from this announcement: "specially equipped".  So that being said I looked at a few things, like the Amazon listing for Michael new book and noticed a couple of things:

• The full title on Amazon is: "The Wonder of Water: Water's Profound Fitness for Life on Earth and Mankind (The Privileged Species Series)".  Please note the 'Privileged Species' part of the title.  Yes, we can see where this is going.  It's part of the whole 'Privileged Planet' argument that has never had any scientific support.
• It was published by The Discovery Institute Press, that vanity press that the DI created because their publications cannot stand the light of scientific scrutiny.
• They say this is part of the 'Privileged Species Series', but they forget to mention that the 'series' has only one book in it, this book.  There is a DVD by that title, also put out by the DI, but it isn't clear if that also belongs to this 'series'.
• Unlike most of the DI's self-published foolishness, there are no reviews, not even editorial reviews.  Remember when 'Darwin's Doubt' came out?  There were over a dozen editorial reviews for it before it was published -- all written by fellow members of the DI or other already well-known ID proponents.  But nothing yet for Michael?  I find it hard to believe they read anything that  they comment on, so it's not like they have to put much effort in saying nice things.

So I guess this means we are going to be inundated with more titles all saying the same basic thing:

"This, that, or the other thing" is real, therefore Intelligent  Design [ID] is true!  

Of course they will put anything in the placeholder of 'this, that, or the other thing' and say what they want because they still offer no support other than conjecture and wishful thinking.  Look at some of their recent publications:

• Undeniable -- people have intuition and intuition is always better than rational thought, therefore design is true.
• Signature in the Cell -- Cells are complicated and that means no one understands them, therefore design is true.
• Darwin's Doubt -- Real paleontologists are idiots because we didn't even need one to write this book which is about Paleontology, therefore design is true.
• Debating Darwin's Doubt -- We wrote this book to deal with the critics of the first one, only we forgot to deal with the criticisms -- and we still didn't need a paleontologist, therefore design is true. 

That's just a few, but you get the idea.  Anything and everything they can think of supports design -- well except for any actual scientific work.  In the announcement for the book itself, the writer of the announcement quotes Denton:

"Whether the remarkable instances in which various properties of water work together to serve a vital end — such as the suite of properties involved in eroding rocks, or the suite of thermal properties involved in temperature regulation — are actually the result of design or not, there is no doubt that they convey a compelling impression of design."

Well, whether or not the impression of design is compelling or not is a matter of opinion, it is still only an impression.  I am sure his book, and the podcast, boil down to the same point -- that design proponents see the appearance of design and declare it to have been designed -- all without offering one shred of evidence supporting design.  I doubt Michael's stuff with add anything to the argument.  If I see it in the Christian section of my local library, I will take a look.  It's only 200 pages so it's not like he had a lot to say about water.  If I do read it, I will write a review -- but I won't pay for a copy.  I have so many other books that actually offer thought provoking ideas to read, Denton's doesn't look like one of them.

What I expect is a re-hash of many of the connections between water and life -- which have been documented in many books and papers.  For example something I learned in junior high science class.  It is entirely probable that one of the reasons life exists on Earth is because water expands when it freezes.  Think of a small body of water, when ice forms, it floats and even when the entire surface freezes, it expands and has a surprising amount of air trapped between it and the water.  If water froze from the bottom-up, there is a good possibility that life would have died before making it through one winter.  Remember this is junior-high science and it was a long time ago, but that was something that stuck.

I agree, water, and it's physical properties has had a lot of impact on life as we know it.  However, does that mean it was designed?  No!  You cannot just point to something and claim design, you have to offer more support than your opinion.  Yes water is incredible, yes our blood is mostly water, yes our cells are mostly water, yes we would die without water . . . but since we evolved in the presence of water, why do we need to insert design as part of the explanation?  The only reason has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with religion!

The DI, including their vanity press, is a religious ministry after all.