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Intelligent design movement
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The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign that calls for broad social, academic and political changes derived from the concept of "intelligent design." Chief amongst its activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it.
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Encyclopedia
The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign that calls for broad social, academic and political changes derived from the concept of "intelligent design." Chief amongst its activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The movement arose out of the previous Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic creation science movement in the United States, and is driven by a small group of proponents.• "The Discovery Institute is the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country." In:
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• (PDF file from Discovery Institute).
• "The engine behind the ID movement is the Discovery Institute."
The overall goal of the intelligent design movement is to "overthrow materialism" and atheism. Its proponents believe that society has suffered "devastating cultural consequences" from adopting materialism and that science is the cause of the decay into materialism because science seeks only natural explanations. Science is therefore atheistic, the movement's proponents claim. Proponents believe that the theory of evolution implies that humans have no spiritual nature, no moral purpose, and no intrinsic meaning. The movement's proponents seek to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions".
To achieve their goal of defeating a materialistic world view, advocates of intelligent design take a two-pronged approach. Alongside the promotion of intelligent design, proponents also seek to "Teach the Controversy"; discredit evolution by emphasizing perceived flaws in the theory of evolution, or disagreements within the scientific community and encourage teachers and students to explore non-scientific alternatives to evolution, or to critically analyze evolution and the controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution. But the world's largest general scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has stated that "There is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of evolution." and that "Evolution is one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science." The ruling in the Dover trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, where the claims of intelligent design proponents were considered by a United States federal court stated that "evolution, including common descent and natural selection, is 'overwhelmingly accepted' by the scientific community."
The Discovery Institute is a conservative Christian think tank that drives the intelligent design movement. The Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) counts most of the leading intelligent design advocates among its membership, most notably its program advisor Phillip E. Johnson. Johnson is the architect of the movement's key strategies, the "wedge strategy" and the Teach the Controversy campaign.
The Discovery Institute and leading proponents represent intelligent design as a revolutionary scientific theory. The overwhelming majority of the scientific community, as represented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences and nearly all scientific professional organizations, firmly rejects these claims, and insist that intelligent design is not valid science, its proponents having failed to conduct an actual scientific research program. This has led the movement's critics to state that intelligent design is merely a public relations campaign and a political campaign.
Overview
The intelligent design movement primarily campaigns on two fronts: a public relations campaign meant to influence the popular media and sway public opinion; and an aggressive lobbying campaign to cultivate support for the teaching of intelligent design amongst policymakers and the wider educational community. Both these activities are largely funded and directed by the Discovery Institute, from national to grassroots levels. The movement's first goal is to establish an acceptance of intelligent design at the expense of evolution in public school science; its long-term goal is no less than the "renewal" of American culture through the shaping of public policy to reflect conservative Christian values. As the Discovery Institute states, intelligent design is central to this agenda: "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."
The Discovery Institute has also relied on several polls to indicate the acceptance of intelligent design. A 2005 Harris poll identified ten percent of adults in the United States as taking what they called the intelligent design position, that "human beings are so complex that they required a powerful force or intelligent being to help create them". (64% agreed with the creationist view that "human beings were created directly by God" and 22% believed that "human beings evolved from earlier species". However, 49% accepted plant and animal evolution, while 45% did not.) Although some polls commissioned by the Discovery Institute show more support, these polls have been criticized as suffering from considerable flaws, such as having a low response rate (248 out of 16,000), being conducted on behalf of an organization with an expressed interest in the outcome of the poll, and containing leading questions.
Critics of intelligent design and its movement contend that intelligent design is a specific form of creationism, neo-creationism, a viewpoint rejected by intelligent design advocates. It was bolstered by the 2005 ruling in United States federal court that a public school district requirement for science classes to teach that intelligent design is an alternative to evolution was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), United States District Judge John E. Jones III also ruled that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature.
In pursuing the goal of establishing intelligent design at the expense of evolution in public school science, intelligent design groups have threatened and isolated high school science teachers, school board members and parents who opposed their efforts. Responding to the well-organized curricular challenges of intelligent design proponents to local school boards have been disruptive and divisive in the communities where they've taken place. The campaigns run by intelligent design groups place teachers in the difficult position of arguing against their employers while the legal challenges to local school districts are costly and divert scarce funds away from education into court battles. Although these court battles have almost invariably resulted in the defeat of intelligent design proponents, they are draining and divisive to local schools. For example, as a result of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, the Dover Area School District was forced to pay $1,000,011 in legal fees and damages for pursuing a policy of teaching the controversy - presenting intelligent design as an allegedly scientific alternative to evolution.
Litigation on behalf of intelligent design
In the movement's sole major case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District?, it was represented by the Thomas More Law Center, which had been seeking a test-case on the issue for at least five years. However conflicting agendas resulted in the withdrawal of a number of Discovery Institute (DI) Fellows as expert witnesses, at the request of DI director Bruce Chapman, and mutual recriminations with the DI after the case was lost. The Alliance Defense Fund briefly represented the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) in its unsuccessful motion to intervene in this case, and prepared amicus curiae briefs on behalf of the DI and FTE in it. It has also made amicus curiae submissions and offered to pay for litigation, in other (actual and potential) creationism-related cases. On a far smaller scale, Larry Caldwell and his wife operate under the name Quality Science Education for All, and have made a number of lawsuits in furtherance of the movement's anti-evolution agenda. In 2005 they brought at least three separate lawsuits to further the intelligent design movement's agenda. One was later abandoned, two were dismissed.
Teach the Controversy
The movement's Teach the Controversy campaign is designed to portray evolution as a theory in crisis and to imply that the scientific establishment attempts to stifle or suppress discoveries that support intelligent design. The movement thereby tries to invoke or promote a distrust of science and scientists, especially where currents of anti-intellectualism are already present. In response to such criticism, campaigners claim they are confronting both the limitations of scientific orthodoxy and naturalism. Whatever the motivation, the intelligent design movement has attracted considerable press attention and pockets of public support, especially among conservative American Christians.
Criticism
According to critics of the intelligent design movement, the movement's purpose is political rather than scientific or educational. They claim the movement's "activities betray an aggressive, systematic agenda for promoting not only intelligent design creationism, but the religious worldview that undergirds it." Intelligent design is an attempt to recast religious dogma in an effort to reintroduce the teaching of biblical creationism to public school science classrooms; the intelligent design movement is an effort to reshape American society into a theocracy, primarily through education. As evidence, critics cite the Discovery Institute's political activities, its "Wedge strategy" and statements made by leading intelligent design proponents.
The scientific community's position, as represented by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education, is that intelligent design is not science, but creationist pseudoscience. Richard Dawkins, a biologist and professor at Oxford University, compares the intelligent design movement's demand to "teach the controversy" with the demand to teach flat earthism; acceptable in terms of history, but not in terms of science. "If you give the idea that there are two schools of thought within science, one that says the earth is round and one that says the earth is flat, you are misleading children."
Origin of the movement
The intelligent design movement grew out of a creationist tradition which argues against evolutionary theory from a religious standpoint, usually an evangelical or fundamentalistic Christianity. Although intelligent design advocates often claim that they are arguing only for the existence of a designer who may or may not be God, all the movement's leading advocates believe that this designer is God. They frequently accompany their arguments with a discussion of religious issues, especially when addressing religious audiences, but elsewhere downplay the religious aspects of their agenda.
The aftermath of Epperson v. Arkansas
In 1987, the United States' Supreme Court decision regarding Edwards v. Aguillard effectively removed the teaching of Creation science creationism in public school science classrooms. As an immediate consequence, the draft of the creation science high school biology textbook Of Pandas and People, which had already been phrased to circumvent the restrictions of the 1968 Epperson v. Arkansas and 1975 Daniel v. Waters rulings by presenting a creationism without reference to the book of Genesis or to Christian tenets, was altered in 1987 so that all references to "creation" or "creationism" were changed to "intelligent design". In 1988, one of its editors, Charles Thaxton, passed the phrase "intelligent design" on to Stephen C. Meyer?.
In 1989 Of Pandas and People was published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics, with the definition that "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc." The publisher got church groups and Christian radio to campaign for school boards to adopt the book, with a petition in Alabama urging that "Intelligent Design" be presented as an alternative to evolution, and their attorney arguing that it did not compel belief in the supernatural and was not a creationist text.
Of Pandas and People and subsequent intelligent design publications present a creationism which argues that "the origin of new organisms [is] in an immaterial cause: in a blueprint, a plan, a pattern, devised by an intelligent agent", but without making explicit reference to the identity of such an agent. In this way, it was hoped that violation of the United States' First Amendment would be avoided.
Founding of the movement
An earlier book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis written by Michael Denton and published in 1985, is cited by Phillip E. Johnson as having convinced him of the problems with the theory of evolution, the scientific method and its epistemological underpinnings. Starting with his 1991 book Darwin on Trial, these have been the themes Johnson pursues in his books, speeches and debates.
Prior to the publication of Darwin on Trial, Johnson met Stephen C. Meyer, now a Director at the Discovery Institute. Through Meyer, Johnson met others who were developing what became the intelligent design movement, including Michael Denton. Johnson became the de facto leader of the group and its campaign. This group formed and continue to operate through the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CSRC, now the Center for Science and Culture, CSC). Johnson says that by the time Darwin on Trial was published (1991), he had mostly worked out the strategy that he thought would win, in time, the intelligent design movement's campaign. He further claims that he was able to convince those creationist educators who had been unseated by the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling, along with young-earth creationists and some old-earth creationists, that his strategy was the best way forward.
According to Johnson, the wedge strategy, if not the term, began in 1992:
The 'big tent' strategy
The movement's strategy as set forth by Johnson states the replacement of "materialist science" with "theistic science" as its primary goal; and, more generally, for intelligent design to become "the dominant perspective in science" and to "permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life." This agenda is now being actively pursued by the Center for Science and Culture (CSC), which plays the leading role in the promotion of intelligent design. Its fellows include most of the leading intelligent design advocates: William A. Dembski, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells and Stephen C. Meyer.
Intelligent design has been described by its proponents as a "big tent" belief, one in which all theists united by a having some kind of creationist belief (but of differing opinions as regards details) can support. If successfully promoted, it would reinstate creationism in the teaching of science, after which debates regarding details could resume. In his 2002 article Big Tent: Traditional Creationism and the Intelligent Design Community, Discovery Institute fellow Paul A. Nelson credits Johnson for the "big tent" approach and for reviving creationist debate since the Edwards v. Aguillard decision. According to Nelson, "The promise of the big tent of ID is to provide a setting where Christians and others may disagree amicably and fruitfully about how best to understand the natural world as well as scripture."
In his presentation to the 1999 Reclaiming America for Christ Conference, How the Evolution Debate can be Won, Johnson affirmed this "big tent" role for "The Wedge" (without using the term intelligent design):
The Discovery Institute consistently denies allegations that its intelligent design agenda has religious foundations, and downplays the religious source of much of its funding. In an interview of Stephen C. Meyer when ABC News'asked about the Discovery Institute's many evangelical Christian donors the institute's public relations representative stopped the interview saying "I don't think we want to go down that path."
Reception by the scientific community
Intelligent design advocates realize that their arguments have little chance of acceptance within the mainstream scientific community, so they direct them toward politicians, philosophers and the general public. What prima facie "scientific" material they have produced has been attacked by critics as containing factual misrepresentation and misleading, rhetorical and equivocal terminology. A number of pseudoscientific documentaries that present intelligent design as an increasingly well-supported line of scientific inquiry have been made. The bulk of the material produced by the intelligent design movement, however, is not intended to be scientific but rather to promote its social and political aims. Polls indicate that intelligent design's main appeal to citizens comes from its link to religious concepts.
An August 2005 poll from The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life showed 64% of Americans favoring the teaching of creationism along with evolution in science classrooms, though only 38% favored teaching it instead of evolution, with the results varying deeply by education level and religiosity. The poll showed the educated were far less attached to intelligent design than the less educated. Evangelicals and fundamentalists showed high rates of affiliation with intelligent design while other religious persons and the secular were much lower.
Scientists responding to a poll overwhelmingly said intelligent design is about religion, not science. A 2002 sampling of 460 Ohio science professors had 91% say it's primarily religion, 93% say there is not "any scientifically valid evidence or an alternative scientific theory that challenges the fundamental principle of the theory of evolution," and 97% say that they did not use intelligent design concepts in their own research.
In October and November 2001 the Discovery Institute advertised A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism listing what they claimed were "100 scientific dissenters" who had signed a statement that "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." Shortly afterwards the NCSE described the wording as misleading, noting that a minority of the signatories were biologists and some of the others were engineers, mathematicians and philosophers, and that some signatories did not fully support the Discovery Institute's claims. The list was further criticized in a February 2006 New York Times article which pointed out that only 25% of the signatories by then were biologists and that signatories' "doubts about evolution grew out of their religious beliefs." In 2003 as a humorous parody of such listings the NCSE produced the pro-evolution Project Steve list of signatories, all with variations of the name Steve and most of whom are trained biologists. As of July 31, 2006, the Discovery Institute lists "over 600 scientists", while Project Steve reports 749 signatories.
Intelligent design as a movement
Some view the publication of Of Pandas and People in 1989, and the public campaigning and pressure on school boards and teachers to introduce "intelligent design" into public schools as the beginning of the movement. Phillip E. Johnson's book Darwin on Trial in 1991 mentioned Pandas as "'creationist' only in the sense that it juxtaposes a paradigm of 'intelligent design' with the dominant paradigm of (naturalistic) evolution", but his use of the term as a focus for his wedge strategy promoting "theistic realism" came later. The intelligent design movement began to take its present shape and course in 1996 with the forming of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), now known as the "Center for Science and Culture" (CSC). Johnson, a law professor whose religious conversion catalyzed his anti-evolution efforts, assembled a group of like-minded supporters who promote intelligent design through their writings, financed by CSC fellowships. According to its early mission statement, the CRSC sought "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its damning cultural legacies."
Principal intelligent design proponents have stated a unified goal of greatly undermining or eliminating altogether the teaching of evolution in public school science and to also secure recognition of creationists claims of scientific legitimacy by opening the door to supernatural explanations. Implicit in this goal and stated explicitly in many policy statements is a redefinition of science, which categorically rejects explanations that are not verifiable. By necessity this entails the elimination of the teaching of evolution, which is also central to the larger agenda by Christian conservatives to gradually alter the legal and social landscape in the United States. The method by which this goal is to be achieved advocated by leading intelligent design proponents is the discrediting and removal of what they term "methodological naturalism" as a tenet of science. The movement's governing goals, as stated in the opening paragraph of the Wedge strategy, are to defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies; and to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.
Phillip E. Johnson, largely regarded as the leader of the movement, positions himself as a "theistic realist" against "methodological naturalism" and intelligent design as the method through which God created life. Johnson explicitly calls for intelligent design proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having intelligent design recognized "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message." Hence intelligent design arguments are carefully formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid positing the identity of the designer. Johnson has stated that cultivating ambiguity by employing secular language in arguments which are carefully crafted to avoid overtones of theistic creationism is a necessary first step for ultimately introducing the Christian concept of God as the designer. Johnson emphasizes "the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion" and that "after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact." only then can "biblical issues" be discussed. In the foreword to Creation, Evolution, & Modern Science (2000) Johnson writes "The intelligent design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word." and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message."
Though not all intelligent design proponents are theistic or motivated by religious fervor, the majority of the principal intelligent design advocates (including Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, and Stephen C. Meyer) are Christians and have stated that in their view the intelligent designer is clearly God. The response of intelligent design proponents to critics and media who discuss their religious motivations has been to cite it as proof of bias and part of a hostile agenda. The Discovery Institute provided the conservative Accuracy in Media a file of complaints about the way their representatives have been treated by the media, especially by National Public Radio.
In his keynote address at the "Research and Progress in intelligent design" (RAPID) conference held in 2002 at Biola University, William A. Dembski described intelligent design's "dual role as a constructive scientific project and as a means for cultural renaissance." In a similar vein, the movement's hub, the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture had until 2002 been the "Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture". Explaining the name change, a spokesperson for the CSC insisted that the old name was simply too long. However, the change followed accusations that the center's real interest was not science but reforming culture along lines favored by conservative Christians.
Critics of movement cite the Wedge Document as confirmation of this criticism and assert that the movement's leaders, particularly Phillip E. Johnson, view the subject as a culture war: "Darwinian evolution is not primarily important as a scientific theory but as a culturally dominant creation story ... When there is radical disagreement in a commonwealth about the creation story, the stage is set for intense conflict, the kind ... known as 'culture war.' "
At the 1999 "Reclaiming America for Christ Conference" called by Reverend D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, Johnson gave a speech called How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won. In it he sums up the theological and epistemological underpinnings of intelligent design and its strategy for winning the battle:
Johnson cites the foundation of intelligent design is the Bible's Book of John, specifically, John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
The main battlefield for this culture war has been U.S. regional and state school boards. Courts have also become involved as those campaigns to include intelligent design or weaken the teaching of evolution in public school science curricula are challenged on First Amendment grounds. In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District the plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Despite being primarily based in the United States, there have been efforts to introduce pro Intelligent Design teaching material into educational facilities in other countries. In the United Kingdom, the group 'Truth in Science' has used material from the Discovery Institute to create free teaching packs which have been mass-mailed to all UK schools. Shortly after this emerged, government ministers announced that they regarded intelligent design to be creationism and unsuitable for teaching in the classroom. They also announced that the teaching of the material in science classes was to be prohibited.
Underscoring claims that the intelligent design movement is more a religious and political enterprise than a scientific one, intelligent design has been in the center of a number of controversial political campaigns and legal challenges. These have largely been attempts to introduce intelligent design into public school science classrooms while concurrently portraying evolutionary theory as a theory largely disputed by science; as a "theory in crisis". The claim that evolution is a "theory in crisis" is the centerpiece of the movement's Teach the Controversy campaign.
Often cited as proof that evolution is indeed a "theory in crisis" is the Discovery Institute's petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. Since 2001 this petition has collected 500 signatures from scientists around the world, of which 73 are biologists. An unfunded project, , "A Scientific Support For Darwinism And For Public Schools Not to Teach Intelligent Design as Science" ran from September to October 2005, and collected 8040 verified scientists' signatures. This represents a 1,200% increase over the Discovery Institute's petition at a rate 640,000% faster than that achieved by the Discovery Institute. A more amusing effort, , received over 500 signatures from scientists named Steve in favor of evolution.
In August 2005, during a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, President George W. Bush said that he believes schools should discuss intelligent design alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life. Bush, a conservative Christian, declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life, but advocated the Teach the Controversy approach: "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought, you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." Christian conservatives, a substantial part of Bush's voting base, have promoted the Teach the Controversy campaign for the teaching of intelligent design in public schools and a weakening of the teaching of evolution. Though intelligent design has been discussed at the weekly White House Bible study group, Bush's science adviser, John Marburger, sought to play down the President's remarks the following day. Marburger stated that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and that "intelligent design is not a scientific concept." Marburger also said that Bush's remarks should be interpreted to mean that the President believes that intelligent design should be discussed as part of the "social context" in science classes.
The National Center for Science Education has stated that Bush's comment that "both sides" should be taught is the most troubling aspect of his remarks. "It sounds like you're being fair, but creationism is a sectarian religious viewpoint, and intelligent design is a sectarian religious viewpoint ... It's not fair to privilege one religious viewpoint by calling it the other side of evolution."
Prominent organizations
The Center for Science and Culture
The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is a division of the Discovery Institute. The Center consists of a tightly knit core of people who have worked together for almost a decade to advance intelligent design as both a concept and a movement as necessary adjuncts of its wedge strategy policy. This cadre includes Phillip E. Johnson, Michael Behe, William A. Dembski and Stephen C. Meyer. They are united by a religious vision which, although it varies among the members in its particulars and is seldom acknowledged outside of the Christian press, is predicated on the shared conviction that America is in need of "renewal" which can be accomplished only by unseating "Godless" materialism and instituting religion as its cultural foundation.
Recently the Center for Science and Culture's has moderated its previous overtly theistic mission statements to appeal to a broader, a more secular audience. It hopes to accomplish this by using less overtly theistic messages and language. Despite this, the Center for Science and Culture still states as a goal a redefinition of science, and the philosophy on which it is based, particularly the exclusion of what it calls the "unscientific principle of materialism", and in particular the acceptance of what it calls "the scientific theory of intelligent design".
According to Reason magazine, promotional materials from the Discovery Institute acknowledge that the Ahmanson family donated $1.5 million to the Center for Science and Culture, then known as the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, for a research and publicity program to "unseat not just Darwinism but also Darwinism's cultural legacy". Mr. Ahmanson funds many causes important to the Christian religious right, including Christian Reconstructionism, whose goal is to place the U.S. "under the control of biblical law." Until 1995, Ahmanson sat on the board of the Christian reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation.
Campaigns
The Wedge strategy
The Wedge strategy first came to the general public's attention when a Discovery Institute internal memo now known as the "Wedge Document" was leaked to the public. The document begins with "the proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built." and then goes on to outline the movement's goal to exploit perceived discrepancies within evolutionary theory in order to discredit evolution and scientific materialism in general. Much of the strategy is directed toward the broader public, as opposed to the professional scientific community. The stated "governing goals" of the CSC's wedge strategy are:
- 1. To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies
- 2. To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.
Critics of intelligent design movement argue that the wedge document and strategy demonstrate that the intelligent design movement is motivated purely by religion and political ideology and that the Discovery Institute as a matter of policy obfuscates its agenda. The Discovery Institute's official response was to characterize the criticism and concern as "irrelevant," "paranoid," and "near-panic" while portraying the wedge document as a "fund-raising document."
Johnson in his 1997 book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds confirmed some of the concerns voiced by the movement's gainsayers:
Teach the Controversy
Teach the Controversy is a controversial political-action campaign originating from the Discovery Institute that seeks to advance an education policy for US public schools that introduces intelligent design to public school science curricula and seeks to redefine science to allow for supernatural explanations. Teach the Controversy proponents portray evolution as a "theory in crisis."
The Teach the Controversy strategy arose because of the intelligent design movement's initial success. Enthusiastic grassroots proponents began to act on their own, often without the awareness of the movement's leadership. That, according to Discovery Institute officials, is what happened in 1999, when a new conservative majority on the Kansas Board of Education caught their potential allies at the institute off-guard by dropping all references to evolution from the state's science standards.
"When there are all these legitimate scientific controversies, this was silly, outlandish, counterproductive," said John G. West, associate director of the CSC, said after he and his colleagues learned of that 1999 move in Kansas from newspaper accounts. "We began to think, 'Look, we're going to be stigmatized with what everyone does if we don't make our position clear.' "
Out of this the Discovery Institute developed the "Teach the Controversy" approach, which endorses evolution as a staple of any biology curriculum — so long as criticism of Darwin is also in the lesson plan. This satisfied Christian conservatives but also appealed to Republican moderates and, under the First Amendment banner, much of the public (71 percent according to a Discovery Institute-commissioned Zogby poll in 2001).
The strategy of the Teach the Controversy campaign is to move from standards battles, to curriculum writing, to textbook adoption, while undermining the central positions of evolution in biology and methodological naturalism in science. The Discovery Institute is the primary organizer and promoter of the Teach the Controversy campaign, though it has recently adopted the tactic of remaining behind the scenes and orchestrating, underwriting and otherwise supporting local campaigns, intelligent design groups, and proponents to act on its behalf in lobbying state and local politicians and schoolboards. The Teach the Controversy campaign is identified by the Discovery Institute principals as a central and necessary element in its Wedge strategy.
Critics contend that the controversy is manufactured. They note the strategy of intelligent design proponents appears to be to knowingly misuse or mis-describe a scientist's work, which prompts an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, they cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a "controversy" to teach. Such a controversy is then self-fulfilling and self-sustaining, though completely without any legitimate basis in the academic world and without having to put forth a viable hypothesis as an alternative. In using this strategy, intelligent design proponents exploit the very technicality of the issues to their own advantage, counting on the public to miss the point in all the complex and difficult details.
As an example of the tactic in action, William Dembski, one of the most vocal supporters of intelligent design, notes that he provoked Thomas Schneider, a biologist, into a response that Dembski characterizes as "some hair-splitting that could only look ridiculous to outsider observers." What looks to scientists to be a very compelling rebuttal to Dembski's arguments made by Dr. Schneider is portrayed to non-scientists, and especially the public, as "ridiculous hair-splitting."
Intelligent design's supporters and critics often portray the debate as between science and faith. These advocates imply that to support intelligent design is to support belief in higher power or powers, while to oppose intelligent design is to oppose belief in higher power or powers. One example is a statement from
an article in the magazine Focus on the Family, which holds that "Secularists have dismissed Christianity as an acceptable intellectual option" and that "intelligent design" advocates promote their views on Christianity.
While science, faith and religion have been at odds to varying degrees throughout history, prominent scientists and religious leaders have tried to bridge that gap. Furthermore, critics of intelligent design have not only questioned whether intelligent design is good science, but also whether it is good theology. Pope John Paul II issued the following statement:
Here, Pope John Paul II, affirming the teaching of the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes 36:1, suggests that science, philosophy and theology are not at odds, merely responsible for different sections of human knowledge.
Denialism
Leading members of the intelligent design movement are also associated with denialism, both Phillip Johnson and Jonathan Wells have signed an AIDS denialism petition.
Intelligent design, politics and education
Intelligent design is an integral part of a political campaign by cultural conservatives, largely from evangelical religious convictions, that seek to redefine science to suit their own ideological agenda. Though numerically a minority of Americans,. the politics of intelligent design is based less on numbers than on intensive mobilization of ideologically committed followers and savvy public relations campaigns. Political repercussions from the culturally conservative sponsorship of the issue has been divisive and costly to the effected communities, polarizing and dividing not only those directly charged with educating young people but entire local communities.
With a doctrine that calls itself science among non-scientists but is rejected by the vast majority of the real practitioners, an amicable coexistence and collaboration between intelligent design advocates and upholders of mainstream science education standards is rare. With mainstream scientific and educational organizations saying the theory of evolution is not "in crisis" or a subject doubted by scientists, nor intelligent design the emergent scientific paradigm or rival theory its proponents proclaim, "teaching the controversy" is suitable for classes on politics, history, culture, or theology they say, but not science. By attempting to force the issue into science classrooms, intelligent design proponents create a charged environment that forces participants and bystanders alike to declare their positions, which has resulted in intelligent design groups threatening and isolating high school science teachers, school board members and parents who opposed their efforts.
The December 2005 ruling of U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, striking down the school board's policy requiring a statement be read endorsing intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology classes, stated: "The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources." (page 137-138). As a result of Dover trial, the Dover Area School District was forced to pay $1,000,011 in legal fees and damages for pursuing a policy of teaching the controversy.
Notable instances of intelligent design political actions include:
Intelligent design movement in the public arena
Intelligent design in higher education
The battle to bring intelligent design and its social and political agenda the high school science classroom is well established. Bringing intelligent design to higher education is also an active part of Discovery Institute's strategy, though it has not taken the normal path of emergent scientific paradigms, through graduate schools and leading professional journals of science. It has been out of the question for intelligent design to be successfully introduced to the public via higher education venues and gain standing in such scientific courts as long as the evidence for evolution continues to grow in the view of the scientific community. The Discovery Institute acknowledges that if intelligent design is to become part of college and university science curricula, it will come to campus via students, their parents, sympathetic faculty, and the impositions of consumer-conscious college administrators. To that end the institute has supported 'IDEA' intelligent design student groups at various campuses, and reports having faculty supporters on every university campus in this country including the Ivy League schools. Academics who are Discovery Institute fellows include Robert Kaita of Princeton University, Henry F. Schaefer of the University of Georgia, Robert Koons and J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas at Austin, and Guillermo Gonzalez of Iowa State University. Prominent academics who, although not officially associated with the Discovery Institute, sympathize with its aims, include Alvin Plantinga at Notre Dame, Jed Macosko at Wake Forest University, and Frank Tipler at Tulane University.
A number of religious schools offer Discovery Institute-recommended curricula. Biola University and Oklahoma Baptist University are listed on the Access Research Network website as "ID Colleges." The intelligent design and Undergraduate Research Center, ARN’s student division, also recruits and supports followers at universities. Campus youth ministries play an active role in bringing intelligent design to university campuses through lectures by intelligent design leaders Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe and others. This activity takes place outside university science departments.
The few university presses (such as Cambridge and Michigan State) that have published intelligent design books classify them as philosophy, rhetoric, or public affairs, not science. There are no peer-reviewed studies supporting intelligent design in the scientific research literature. With the scientific community as a whole unmoved or unconvinced by proponents' works and rhetoric and the absence of intelligent design scientific research programs, Dembski conceded that "the scientific research part" of intelligent design is now "lagging behind" its success in influencing popular opinion.
In 2005 the American Association of University Professors issued a strongly worded statement asserting that the theory of evolution is nearly universally accepted in the community of scholars and critical of the intelligent design movement's attempts to weaken or undermine the teaching of evolution as "inimical to principles of academic freedom."
The Discovery Institute organizes on-campus intelligent design conferences across the US for students. In the beginning, these were generally held at Christian universities and often sponsored by the administration or other faculty as an official university function. Lateron, Yale and the University of San Francisco have seen proponents of intelligent design speak on their campuses. Not only did these succeed in reaching out to a more secular group of students, but the backdrop of prestigious universities achieved a goal set forth in the Wedge strategy; to lend an aura of academic legitimacy to the proceedings and by extension, the intelligent design movement. Commenting on the Yale conference, for example, a student auxiliary of the Access Research Network stated, "Basically, the conference, beside being a statement (after all we were meeting at Yale University), proved to be very promising." These conferences were not sponsored by the universities at which they were held. They were sponsored by associated religious organizations — at Yale, the Rivendell Institute for Christian Thought and Learning.
Intelligent design and the Web
Much of the actual debate over intelligent design between intelligent design proponents and members of the scientific community has taken place on the Web, primarily blogs and message boards, instead of the scientific journals and symposia where traditionally much science is discussed and settled. In promoting intelligent design the actions of its proponents have been more like a political pressure group than like researchers entering an academic debate as described by movement critic Taner Edis. In the absence of any verifiable scientific research program and concomitant debates in academic circles, the most vibrant venues for intelligent design debate are websites such as Pandas Thumb , Dembski's blogs at UncommonDescent.com and DesignInference.com and the Discovery Institute's Evolutionnews.org , often with discussions and their various responses taking place on two or more sites at a time.
The Web again played an instrumental role in the controversy surrounding intelligent design when the Discovery Institute's strategic memo, the "Wedge Document" was leaked onto the Web in 1999. A broad attack on the foundations of the scientific method, what it terms "scienti?c materialism," the Wedge Document asserts that many of the moral woes in the world are the result of modern science, which has had "devastating" cultural consequences, such as the denial of objective moral standards and the undermining of religious belief. In contrast, the Wedge Document states that intelligent design "promises to reverse the sti?ing dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." In order to achieve this objective, the intelligent design movement will "function as a 'wedge'" that will "split the trunk [of scienti?c materialism] ... at its weakest points."
The leaking of the Wedge Document put intelligent design proponents in an uncomfortable position by laying bare their strategy. At first the Discovery Institute disavowed the Wedge Document, then downplayed its importance, and finally acknowledged its origin with the institute and its role. All of this was played out on the Web against the backdrop of debates over public school textbook disclaimers, Teach the Controversy initiatives and the Dover trial. Discovery Institute representatives continue to balk at being judged on religious grounds and accuse those who probe their motivations of engaging in ad hominem attacks. Critics claim that given the express language of the Wedge Document, the Discovery’s ultimate agenda has far more to do with the renewal of religiously based culture by the overthrow of key tenets of modern science than with the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and that it is hard to see why they shouldn't take them at their own word.
The Web continues to play a central role in the Discovery Institute's strategy of promotion of intelligent design and it adjunct campaigns. On September 6, 2006, on the center's evolutionnews.org blog Discovery Institute staffer Casey Luskin published a post entitled "Putting Wikipedia On Notice About Their Biased Anti-ID Intelligent Design Entries." There Luskin reprinted a letter from a reader complaining that he believed Wikipedia's coverage of ID to be "one sided" and that pro-intelligent design editors were censored and attacked. Along with the letter Luskin published a Wikipedia email address for general information and urged readers to "to contact Wikipedia to express your feelings about the biased nature of the entries on intelligent design."
Dissent within the movement
Under the guidance of the Discovery Institute, the movement made significant inroads in its appeal to members of the public, if not the scientific community. That success manifested itself in grassroots local movements, who, to varying degrees, took up the cause with local politicians, school boards, parent-teacher groups and even individual legal actions to promote intelligent design in public schools. The Thomas More Law Center along with the Discovery Institute has often provided resources for these local and regional efforts. Recently grassroots activity has gone beyond that which is endorsed by the Discovery Institute, which has voiced concern over the ability of mandates to teach intelligent design surviving a challenge on First Amendment grounds and the implications for the movement were the teaching of intelligent design as science in public schools ruled unconstitutional. Such a ruling would have the effect of legally ruling intelligent design a form of religious creationism, and greatly diminish any possibility of the movement ever achieving its goals set forth in the Wedge strategy. Fearing that this was an inevitability, the Discovery Institute repositioned itself for tactical reasons against the teaching of intelligent design favoring a Teach the Controversy strategy.
Just such a case occurred in 2004 in Dover, Pennsylvania (see Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District). The Thomas More Law Center in its vigorous defense of the School District (whose board at that time seated several staunch creationists who are intelligent design proponents), has run afoul of the movement's leadership at the Discovery Institute.
In a round table discussion entitled "Science Wars: Should Schools Teach Intelligent Design?" at the American Enterprise Institute on 21 October 2005 and televised on C-SPAN, the Discovery Institute's Mark Ryland and the Thomas More Law Center's Richard Thompson had a frank disagreement, in which Ryland claimed the Discovery Institute has always cautioned against the teaching of intelligent design, and Thompson responded that the institute's leadership had not only advocated the teaching of intelligent design, but encouraged others to do so, and that the Dover Area School District had merely followed the institute's calls for action. As evidence, Thompson cited the Discovery Institute's guidebook Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula written by the institute's director and co-founder, Stephen C. Meyer and David DeWolf, a fellow of the institute, which stated in its closing paragraphs: "Moreover, as the previous discussion demonstrates, school boards have the authority to permit, and even encourage, teaching about design theory as an alternative to Darwinian evolution -- and this includes the use of textbooks such as Of Pandas and People that present evidence for the theory of intelligent design."
Rifts between factions within the movement's leadership and also between local and regional movement leaders and the national leadership are likely to increase considering the increasing number of pro-intelligent design amendments and proposals coming before state and local school boards, and legal actions brought by local proponents, such as Quality Science Education for All.
Criticisms of the movement
One of the most common criticisms of the movement and its leadership is that of intellectual dishonesty, in the form of misleading impressions created by the use of rhetoric, intentional ambiguity, and misrepresented evidence. It is alleged that its goal is to lead an unwary public to reach certain conclusions, and that many have been deceived as a result. Critics of the movement, such as Eugenie Scott, Robert Pennock and Barbara Forrest, claim that leaders of the Intelligent Design movement, and the Discovery Institute in particular, knowingly misquote scientists and other experts, deceptively omit contextual text through ellipsis, and make unsupported amplifications of relationships and credentials.
Critics claim that the institute uses academic credentials and affiliations opportunistically. In 2001, the Discovery Institute purchased advertisements in three national publications (the New York Review of Books, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard) to proclaim the adherence of approximately 100 scientists to the following statement: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
Such statements commonly note the institutional affiliations of signatories for purposes of identification. But this statement strategically listed either the institution that granted a signatory's PhD or the institutions with which the individual is presently affiliated. Thus the institutions listed for Raymond G. Bohlin, Fazale Rana, and Jonathan Wells, for example, were the University of Texas, Ohio University, and the University of California, Berkeley, where they earned their degrees, rather than their current affiliations: Probe Ministries for Bohlin, The Reasons to Believe Ministry for Rana, and The Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture for Wells. Similarly confusing lists of local scientists were circulated during controversies over evolution education in Georgia, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas. In another instance, the Discovery Institute frequently mentions the Nobel Prize in connection with Henry F. Schaefer, a Discovery Institute fellow, and chemist at the University of Georgia. Critics allege that Discovery Institute is inflating his reputation by constantly referring to him as a "five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize" because Nobel Prize nominations remain confidential for fifty years.
This criticism is not reserved only to the institute; individual intelligent design proponents have been accused of using their own credentials and those of others in a misleading or confusing fashion. For example, critics allege William Dembski gratuitously invokes his laurels by boasting of his correspondence with a Nobel laureate, bragging that one of his books was published in a series whose editors include a Nobel laureate, and exulting that the publisher of the intelligent design book The Mystery of Life's Origin, Philosophical Library Inc., also published books by eight Nobel laureates. Critics claim that Dembski purposefully omits relevant facts which he fails to mention to his audience that in 1986, during the Edwards v. Aguillard hearings, 72 Nobel laureates endorsed an amicus curiae brief that noted that the "evolutionary history of organisms has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as any biological concept."
Another common criticism is that since no intelligent design research has been published in mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific journals, the Discovery Institute often misuses the work of mainstream scientists by putting out lists of articles that allegedly support their arguments for intelligent design drawing from mainstream scientific literature. Often, the original authors respond that their articles cited by the center don't support their arguments at all. Many times, the original authors have publicly refuted them for distorting the meaning of something they've written for their own purposes.
Sahotra Sarkar, a molecular biologist at the University of Texas, has testified that intelligent design advocates, and specifically the Discovery Institute, has misused his work by misrepresenting its conclusions to bolster their own claims, has gone on to allege that the extent of the misrepresentations rises to the level of professional malfeasance:
An October 2005 conference called "When Christians and Cultures Clash" was held at the Pennsylvania Evangelical School of Theology. Attorney Randy Wenger, who is affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund, and a close ally of the Discovery Institute, and one of the presenters at the conference advocated the use of subterfuge for advancing the movement's religious goals: "But even with God’s blessing, it’s helpful to consult a lawyer before joining the battle. For instance, the Dover area school board might have had a better case for the intelligent design disclaimer they inserted into high school biology classes had they not mentioned a religious motivation at their meetings. Give us a call before you do something controversial like that, I think we need to do a better job at being clever as serpents."
See also
External links
- An overview of the origin of the intelligent design movement.
- Breaking the Modernist Monopoly on Science by Phillip E. Johnson. Touchstone, A Journal of Mere Christianity. Volume 12, Issue 4. July/August 1999
- Chapter 1 of the book Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics by Barbara Forrest, Ph.D. MIT Press, 2001
- A brief history of how the Wedge Document fell in the hands of an outsider and found its way on the internet.
- John Roach. National Geographic News. April 27, 2005
- Discovery Institute February 20, 2006
- Gaining a Hearing from Ordinary People by Nancy Pearcey. Touchstone, A Journal of Mere Christianity. Volume 12, Issue 4. July/August 1999
- Intelligent design is about politics and religion, not science. Barbara Forrest Ph.D. From Natural History, April, 2002, page 80
- Chris Mooney, The American Prospect Online, 10 August 2005.
- Daniel C. Dennett. At Tufts University, tufts.edu. An editorial originally published in the New York Times. 28 August 2005
- (PDF) Robert T. Pennock. March 2002
- Jody Wilgoren. Originally published in the New York Times. 21 August 2005
- . Donald MacLeod, The Guardian, 18 October 2005.
- H. Allen Orr. Annals of Science. New Yorker. May 2005
- George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H. New England Journal of Medicine. Volume 354:2277-2281, Number 21 May 25, 2006
- Russell D. Renka, Professor of Political Science, Southeast Missouri State University November, 2005
- debate between paleontologist Peter Ward and Stephen Meyer co-founder of the Discovery Institute
- Islamic creationist site
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