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 it seeks only natural explanations,
and is therefore atheistic. They believe that the scientific theory of evolution
implies that humans have no spiritual nature, no moral purpose, and no
intrinsic meaning. They seek to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview", 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 2005 Dover, Pennsylvania, 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 (DI) is a religious 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 former program advisor the now deceased Phillip E. Johnson. Johnson was 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 reject
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.
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 (NCSE), 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."
Philosophy
At the 1999 "Reclaiming America for Christ Conference" called by Reverend D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, Phillip E. 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 victory:
To talk of a purposeful or guided
evolution is not to talk about evolution at all. That is "slow
creation." When you understand it that way, you realize that the
Darwinian theory of evolution contradicts not just the book of Genesis,
but every word in the Bible from beginning to end. It contradicts the
idea that we are here because a Creator brought about our existence for a
purpose. That is the first thing I realized, and it carries tremendous
meaning.
I have built an intellectual
movement in the universities and churches that we call "The Wedge,"
which is devoted to scholarship and writing that furthers this program
of questioning the materialistic basis of science. One very famous book
that's come out of The Wedge is biochemist Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box, which has had an enormous impact on the scientific world.
Now, the way that I see the logic
of our movement going is like this. The first thing you understand is
that the Darwinian theory isn't true. It's falsified by all of the
evidence, and the logic is terrible. When you realize that, the next
question that occurs to you is, "Well, where might you get truth?" When I
preach from the Bible, as I often do at churches and on Sundays, I
don't start with Genesis. I start with John 1:1, "In the beginning was
the Word." In the beginning was intelligence, purpose, and wisdom. The
Bible had that right and the materialist scientists are deluding
themselves.
— Johnson, How The Evolution Debate Can Be Won
Darwin's Black Box,
mentioned in the quote above, received harsh criticism from the
scientific community, including negative reviews by evolutionary
scientist Nathan Lents.
History of the movement
The
intelligent design movement grew out of a creationist tradition which
argues against evolutionary theory from a religious standpoint, usually
that of 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.
Origins
The modern use of the words "intelligent design," as a term intended to describe a field of inquiry, began after the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), ruled that creationism is unconstitutional in public school science curricula. A Discovery Institute report says that Charles Thaxton, editor of Of Pandas and People, had picked the phrase up from a NASA scientist, and thought "That's just what I need, it's a good engineering term."
In drafts of the book over one hundred uses of the root word
"creation," such as "creationism" and "creation science," were changed,
almost without exception, to "intelligent design," while "creationists" was changed to "design proponents" or, in one instance, "cdesign proponentsists." [sic] In 1989, Of Pandas and People was published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), with the definition:
"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."
Pandas was followed in 1991 by Darwin on Trial, a neo-creationist polemic by Phillip E. Johnson, that is regarded as a central text of the movement. Darwin on Trial 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 book was reviewed by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould for Scientific American
in July 1992, concluding that the book contains "... no weighing of
evidence, no careful reading of literature on all sides, no full
citation of sources (the book does not even contain a bibliography) and
occasional use of scientific literature only to score rhetorical
points."
Gould's review led to the formation in 1992 or 1993 of an 'Ad Hoc
Origins Committee' of Johnson's supporters, which wrote a letter,
circulated to thousands of university professors, defending the book.
Among the 39 signatories were nine who later became members of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
During the early 1990s Johnson worked to develop a 'big tent'
movement to unify a wide range of creationist viewpoints in opposition
to evolution. In 1992, the first formal meeting devoted to intelligent
design was held in Southern Methodist University. It included a debate between Johnson and Michael Ruse (a key witness in McLean v. Arkansas (1982)) and papers by William A. Dembski, Michael Behe and Stephen C. Meyer. In 1993, Johnson organized a follow-up meeting, including Dembski, Behe, Meyer, Dean H. Kenyon (co-author of Pandas) and Walter Bradley (co-author with Thaxton and Kenyon of The Mystery of Life's Origin (1984)), as well as two graduate students, Paul A. Nelson and Jonathan Wells.
Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture
On December 6, 1993, an article by Meyer was published in The Wall Street Journal,
drawing national attention to the controversy over Dean H. Kenyon's
teaching of creationism. This article also gained the attention of
Discovery Institute co-founder Bruce Chapman.
On discovering that Meyer was developing the idea of starting a
scientific research center in conversations with conservative political
scientist John G. West,
Chapman invited them to create a unit within the Discovery Institute
called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (later renamed
the Center for Science and Culture). This center was dedicated to
overthrowing "scientific materialism" and "fomenting nothing less than a scientific and cultural revolution."
A 1995 conference, "The Death of Materialism and the Renewal of Culture," served as a blueprint for the center. By 1996 they had nearly a million dollars in grants, the largest being from Howard Ahmanson, Jr.,
with smaller but still large contributions coming from the Stewardship
Foundation established by C. Davis Weyerhaeuser and the Maclellan
Foundation, and appointed their first class of research fellows.
The wedge strategy
The wedge strategy was formulated by Phillip E. Johnson to combat the "evil" of methodological naturalism. It first came to the general public's attention when a Discovery Institute internal memo now known as the "Wedge Document"
(believed to have been written in 1998) was leaked to the public in
1999. However it is believed to have been an update of an earlier
document to be implemented between 1996 and 2001.
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:
If we understand our own times, we
will know that we should affirm the reality of God by challenging the
domination of materialism and naturalism in the world of the mind. With
the assistance of many friends I have developed a strategy for doing
this,...We call our strategy the "wedge."
Kansas evolution hearings
The Kansas evolution hearings were a series of hearings held in Topeka, Kansas, from May 5 to May 12, 2005, by the Kansas State Board of Education and its State Board Science Hearing Committee to change how evolution and the origin of life
would be taught in the state's public high school science classes. The
hearings were arranged by the conservative Board with the intent of
introducing intelligent design into science classes via the "Teach the
Controversy" method.
The hearings raised the issues of creation and evolution in public education
and were attended by all the major participants in the intelligent
design movement but were ultimately boycotted by the scientific
community over concern of lending credibility to the claim, made by
proponents of intelligent design, that evolution is purportedly the
subject of wide dispute within the scientific and science education
communities.
The Discovery Institute, hub of the intelligent design movement,
played a central role in starting the hearings by promoting its Critical Analysis of Evolution lesson plan
which the Kansas State Board of Education eventually adopted over
objections of the State Board Science Hearing Committee, and campaigning
on behalf of conservative Republican candidates for the Board.
Local science advocacy group Kansas Citizens for Science organized a boycott of the hearings by mainstream scientists, who accused it of being a kangaroo court and argued that their participation would lend an undeserved air of legitimacy to the hearings.
Board member Kathy Martin declared at the beginning of the hearings
"Evolution has been proven false. ID (Intelligent Design) is
science-based and strong in facts." At their conclusion she proclaimed
that evolution is "an unproven, often disproven" theory.
"ID has theological implications. ID is not strictly Christian, but it is theistic," asserted Martin.
The scientific community rejects teaching intelligent design as
science; a leading example being the National Academy of Sciences, which
issued a policy statement saying "Creationism, intelligent design, and
other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of
species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science."
On February 13, 2007, the Board voted 6 to 4 to reject the amended science standards enacted in 2005.
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005)
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 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 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.
Reception by the public
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.
Jason Rosenhouse
summarized the prevailing attitude of the scientific community:
"Scientists who have responded to ID arguments in print have generally
done so with a tone of sneering contempt. This is understandable: ID
supporters present fallacious arguments, use dishonest rhetoric, and
often present non-contemptuous responses as evidence that their theories
are gaining acceptance."
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 documentaries
that promote their assertion that intelligent design as an increasingly
well-supported line of scientific inquiry have been made for the
Discovery Institute.
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.
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 alternate scientific
theory that challenges the fundamental principles 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 in three national publications (The New York Review of Books, The New Republic and The Weekly Standard),
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 National Center for Science Education 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 article in The New York Times
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 reported 749
signatories; as of May 30, 2014, 1,338 Steves have signed the statement,
while 906 have signed A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism as of April 2014.
Structure
The 'big tent' strategy
The
movement's strategy as set forth by Phillip E. 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, 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 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 in Christian Research Journal,
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):
To talk of a purposeful or guided
evolution is not to talk about evolution at all. That is "slow
creation." When you understand it that way, you realize that the
Darwinian theory of evolution contradicts not just the book of Genesis,
but every word in the Bible from beginning to end. It contradicts the
idea that we are here because a Creator brought about our existence for a
purpose. That is the first thing I realized, and it carries tremendous
meaning.
...
So did God create us? Or did we create God? That's an issue that
unites people across the theistic world. Even religious, God-believing
Jewish people will say, "That's an issue we really have a stake in, so
let's debate that question first. Let us settle that question first.
There are plenty of other important questions on which we may not agree,
and we'll have a wonderful time discussing those questions after we've
settled the first one. We will approach those questions in a better
spirit because we have worked together for this important common end."
...
[The Wedge is] inherently an ecumenical movement. Michael Behe is a
Roman Catholic. The next book that is coming out from Cambridge
University Press by one of my close associates is by an evangelical
convert to Greek Orthodoxy. We have a lot of Protestants, too. The point
is that we have this broad-based intellectual movement that is enabling
us to get a foothold in the scientific and academic journals and in the
journals of the various religious faiths.
— Johnson, How The Evolution Debate Can Be Won
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 World News Tonight
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."
Obfuscation of religious motivation
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."
Organizations
The Center for Science and Culture
The Center for Science and Culture, formerly known as the Center for
the Renewal of Science and Culture, 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.
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 the 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 of conflict that is known as a
'culture war.'"
Recently the Center for Science and Culture has moderated its previous overtly theistic mission statements
to appeal to a broader, 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."
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 the 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 US "under the control of biblical law." Until 1995, Ahmanson sat on the board of the Christian Reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation.
Other organizations
- The Access Research Network
(ARN) has become a comprehensive clearinghouse for ID resources,
including news releases, publications, multimedia products and an
elementary school science curriculum. Its stated mission is "providing
accessible information on science, technology and society issues from an
intelligent design perspective." Its directors are Dennis Wagner and CSC Fellows Mark Hartwig, Stephen C. Meyer and Paul A. Nelson. Its 'Friends of ARN' is also dominated by CSC Fellows.
- The Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) is a Christian non-profit organization based in Richardson, Texas, that publishes textbooks and articles promoting intelligent design, abstinence, and Christian nationism. CSC Fellows Charles Thaxton and William A. Dembski have served as academic editors for the Foundation.
The FTE has close associations with the Discovery Institute, hub of the
intelligent design movement and other religious Christian groups.
- The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA Center) is a Christian nonprofit organization formed originally as a student club promoting intelligent design at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). There are about 25 active chapters of the organization in the United States, Kenya, Canada, Ukraine, and the Philippines.
There have been 35 active chapters formed and several others are
currently pending. Six out of the listed 32 chapters in the United
States are located at high schools. In December 2008, biologist Allen MacNeill stated, on the basis of analysis of the webpages of the national organization and local chapters, that it appeared that the organization is moribund.
- The Intelligent Design Network (IDnet) is a nonprofit organization formed in Kansas to promote intelligent design. It is based in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. The Intelligent Design Network was founded by John Calvert, a corporate finance lawyer with a bachelor's degree in geology and nutritionist William S. Harris. Together, Calvert and Harris have published the article in The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. Calvert also has written a play about intelligent design in a high school biology class with Daniel Schwabauer.
Activism
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." 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, 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.
Leading members of the intelligent design movement are also associated with denialism, both Phillip E. Johnson and Jonathan Wells have signed an AIDS denialism petition.
Campaigns
The Discovery Institute, through its Center for Science and Culture,
has formulated a number of campaigns to promote intelligent design,
while discrediting evolutionary biology, which the Institute terms "Darwinism."
Prominent Institute campaigns have been to "Teach the
Controversy" and, more recently, to allow Critical Analysis of
Evolution. Other prominent campaigns have claimed that intelligent
design advocates (most notably Richard Sternberg) have been discriminated against, and thus that Academic Freedom bills
are needed to protect academics' and teachers' ability to criticise
evolution, and that there is a link from evolution to ideologies such as
Nazism and eugenics. These three claims are all publicised in the pro-ID movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008). Other campaigns have included petitions, most notably A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.
The response of the scientific community has been to reiterate
that the theory of evolution is overwhelmingly accepted as a matter of scientific consensus whereas intelligent design has been rejected by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community (see list of scientific societies explicitly rejecting intelligent design).
Politics and public education
The main battlefield for this culture war has been US 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.
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.
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 co-founder and first director, Stephen C.
Meyer, and David K. DeWolf, a CSC Fellow, 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."
Higher education
In 1999, William A. Dembski was invited by Baylor University president Robert B. Sloan to form the Michael Polanyi Center,
described by Dembski as "the first Intelligent Design think tank at a
research university." Its creation was controversial with Baylor
faculty, and in 2000 it was merged with the Institute for Faith and
Learning. Dembski, although remaining as a research professor until
2005, was given no courses to teach.
Two universities have offered courses in intelligent design: Oklahoma Baptist University, where ID advocate Michael Newton Keas taught 'Unified Studies: Introduction to Biology,' and Biola University, host of the Mere Creation conference. Additionally, numerous Christian evangelical institutions have faculty with interests in intelligent design. These include Oral Roberts University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Patrick Henry College teaches creationism but also exposes its students to both Darwinian evolution and intelligent design.
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 deploring requirements "to make students aware of an
'intelligent-design hypothesis' to account for the origins of life." It
said that such requirements are "inimical to principles of academic
freedom."
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. The movement lacks any verifiable scientific research program and concomitant debates in academic circles.
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 Evolution News & Views
blog, Discovery Institute staffer Casey Luskin published a post
entitled "Putting Wikipedia On Notice About Their Biased Anti-ID
Intelligent Design Entries." In the post, Luskin reprinted a letter from
a reader complaining that 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 contact Wikipedia to express
your feelings about the biased nature of the entries on intelligent
design."
International
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.
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 T. 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. Theologian and molecular biophysicist Alister McGrath
has a number of criticisms of the Intelligent design movement, stating
that "those who adopt this approach make Christianity deeply...
vulnerable to scientific progress" and defining it as just another "god-of-the-gaps"
theory. He went on to criticize the movement on theological grounds as
well, stating "It is not an approach I accept, either on scientific or
theological grounds."
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, respectively, where they earned their degrees, rather than their current affiliations: Probe Ministries for Bohlin, 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, III, a CSC 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 A. 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,
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, have 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:
"When testifying before the Texas
State Board of Education in 2003 (in a battle over textbook adoption
that we won hands down), I claimed that my work had been maliciously
misused by members of the Discovery Institute. ... The trouble is that
it says nothing of the sort that Meyer claims. I don't mention Dembski,
ID, or "intelligent" information whatever that may be. I don't talk
about assembly instructions. In fact what the paper essentially does is
question the value of informational notions altogether, which made many
molecular biologists unhappy, but which is also diametrically opposed to
the "complex specified information" project of the ID creationists. ...
Notice how my work is being presented as being in concordance with ID
when Meyer knows very well where I stand on this issue. If Meyer were an
academic, this kind of malfeasance would rightly earn him professional
censure. Unfortunately he's not. He's only the Director of the Discovery
Institute's Center for Science and Culture."
— Sahotra Sarkar, Fraud from the Discovery Institute
An October 2005 conference called "When Christians and Cultures Clash" was held in Christ Hall at Evangelical School of Theology in Myerstown, Pennsylvania.
Attorney Randall L. 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."
Critics state about the wedge strategy that its "ultimate goal is to create a theocratic state".
Legacy
In 2017, theoretical physicist Mano Singham wrote that since the ruling of
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District,
"little" has been "heard from" the intelligent design movement, adding
"Whereas before one heard of ID all over the place, now one has to seek
them out by visiting the Discovery Institute which has become kind of a
refuge for the last holdouts."
