The latest and most bitterly contested battle in the culture war is the controversy over Darwin and Intelligent Design. And yet much of what you've heard on these subjects is wrong. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (which you can get for free), Jonathan Wells, Ph.D., reveals that today's Darwinists are unable to fend off growing challenges from scientists or to compete with rival theories better adapted to the latest evidence. Darwinism, like Marxism and Freudianism before it, is simply unfit to survive. Dr. Wells, a biologist and senior fellow at the respected Discovery Institute, begins by explaining the basic tenets of Darwinism, and the evidence both for and against it. He reveals, for instance, that the fossil record, which according to Darwin should be teeming with "transitional" fossils showing the development of one species to the next, so far hasn't produced a single incontestable example. On the other hand, certain well-documented aspects of the fossil record -- such as the "Cambrian Explosion," in which innumerable new species suddenly appeared fully formed -- directly contradict Darwin's theory. Wells also shows how most of the other "evidence" for evolution -- including textbook "icons" such as Peppered Moths, Darwin's Finches, Haeckel's Embryos, and the Tree of Life -- has been exaggerated, distorted . . . or even faked. The collapsing case for Darwinism and the mounting case for Intelligent Design: Though Darwin is often credited with citing "overwhelming evidence" for his theory of natural selection, all he actually provided was "one or two imaginary illustrations" of how the process might work. Despite centuries of artificial breeding and decades of experiments, no one has ever observed one species turn into another ("speciation"). Darwin vs. Darwin: he conceded that his theory was contradicted by known evidence (or lack thereof), though he hoped later findings would vindicate him -- which still hasn't happened after 150 years. Darwin's "strongest single class of facts" -- the early vertebrate embryos -- shows the opposite of what he thought it showed. The Cambrian Explosion -- a/k/a biology's "Big Bang" actually contradicts Darwin's branching "Tree of Life". Word games Darwinists play (example: exploiting the diverse meanings of "evolution" to distract critics): Science textbooks continue to feature "evidence" for Darwinism that has long since been proven fraudulent; The clinical practice of medicine has no use for Darwinism, despite claims that it is impossible to practice medicine without applying its principles. Says an evolutionary biologist: "Perhaps it would be easier, and in the long run more productive, to abandon the attempt to force the data . . . into the mold provided by Darwin". A modern microbiologist adds: "Throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another." The most common definition of Intelligent Design in the news media is completely incorrect. Design can be inferred not only from living things but also from various features of the cosmos, such as gravity. Darwinism is widely used in public education to discredit traditional Christianity and promote atheism. Intelligent Design -- it's not what you think Wells also explores the theory of Intelligent Design, (ID) the idea that some features of the natural world, such as the internal machinery of cells, are too "irreducibly complex" to have resulted from unguided natural processes alone. In clear-cut layman's language, he reveals the growing evidence in support of ID that is coming out of scientific specialties from microbiology to astrophysics. And he explains why, since ID is not based on the Bible or religious doctrines, and doesn't draw any conclusions about who (or what) is the cause of design in nature, it is not a form of Biblical creationism or natural theology. But religion does play a role in the debate over Darwin -- though not the way evolutionists claim. Wells (who holds doctorates in biology and theology) shows how Darwin reasoned that evolution is true because divine Creation "must" be false -- a theological assumption oddly out of place in a scientific debate. In other words, Darwinists' materialistic, atheistic assumptions rule out any theories but their own, and account for their willingness to explain away the evidence -- or lack of it. This hostility to religion may also explain the appeal of Darwinism, which from Darwin's day down to our own has been used to justify radical changes in moral norms in areas such as eugenics, abortion, and -- in the case of Nazi Germany -- even racial extermination. Finally, Wells details how Darwinists have succeeded in imposing a government-supported monopoly on the biological sciences in this country -- and how opponents of Darwinism are being driven from their careers by Darwinist heresy-hunters.