After reading Fazale Rana's The Cell's Design, the sequel to Origins of Life (Rana and Ross 2004; reviewed in RNCSE 2007 May–Aug; 27 [3–4]: 45–8), I was reminded of John Conlee's 1979 lyrics, "These rose colored glasses, that I'm looking through / Show only the beauty, 'cause they hide all the truth." This country music classic sums up Rana's book, which starts with the foregone conclusion that the cell is designed, by explaining the principles (with reference to Dembski and Behe) of "intelligent design" (in chapter 1).

Mark Perakh was born in 1924 in Kiev, Ukraine. In 1941 he volunteered to fight the German invasion of the USSR. Later he studied at the Odessa Institute of Technology, earning a Diploma in Engineering Physics, and later an equivalent of a PhD degree from the Odessa Polytechnic Institute. In the 1950s he was arrested by the KGB on the charge of engaging in "anti-Soviet propaganda" and spent several years in a Siberian prison camp. Subsequently, he conducted research and taught physics in several universities in the USSR.

The great merit of this book is its authors' recognition of historical contingency as key to the battle over "intelligent design". They argue that every natural and social science originated in a materialist (in the sense of naturalist) critique of some version of "intelligent design" and its accompanying teleological explanation. Proponents of "intelligent design" throughout the ages, in turn, have attacked materialism for its rejection of design and teleology, resulting in a 2500-year dialectic between scientific materialists and their theological and philosophical opponents.

Since the 1960s, creationism has evolved, with the pressure of "judicial selection" giving rise to new species. The most prominent 1960s program — young-earth creationism or YEC — was based explicitly on the Book of Genesis. It aimed at teaching K–12 science students that God created the universe in six days by a series of fiats and that nearly all of geology could be explained in terms of the action of Noah's Flood.