Intelligent design

Note: This is only a very rough draft, with notes. Please do not edit this article until the actual article is complete — i.e., when this notice is removed. You may add comments on what you would like to see included. Rick Swarts 01:29, 24 Oct 2005 (UTC)

This article is about the concept of Intelligent Design. See also the teleological argument. For the associated social movement see ID as a movement. For the book, see Intelligent Design (book).

Template:Creationism2

Intelligent Design (or ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, not an unguided process such as natural selection. Though publicly ID advocates state that their focus is on detecting evidence of design in nature without regard to who or what the designer might be, in statements to their constituents and supporters, nearly all state explicitly that they believe the designer to be the Christian God.

Adherents of ID claim it stands on equal footing with the current scientific theories regarding the origin of life and the origin of the universe. ^[1] This claim has not been accepted by the scientific community and ID does not constitute serious research in biology. Despite ID sometimes being referred to popularly and in the media as "Intelligent Design Theory," it is not a scientific theory and it is regarded by the mainstream scientific community as creationist pseudoscience or junk science^[2]. The National Academy of Sciences has said that ID "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because their claims cannot be tested by experiment and propose no new hypotheses of their own. ^[3] Critics argue that ID proponents try to find gaps within current evolutionary theory and fill them in with speculative beliefs, and that ID in this context may ultimately amount to the "God of the gaps." ^[4]

Both the Intelligent Design concept and the associated movement have come under considerable criticism. ^[5] This criticism is regarded by advocates of ID as a natural consequence of philosophical naturalism which precludes by definition the possibility of supernatural causes as rational scientific explanations. As has been argued before in the context of the creation-evolution controversy, proponents of ID make the claim that there is a systemic bias within the scientific community against proponents' ideas and research based on the naturalistic assumption that science can only make reference to natural causes.

Media organizations often focus on other qualities that the designer(s) in "Intelligent Design Theory" might have in addition to intelligence, e.g., "higher power"^[6], "unseen force"^[7], etc.

Intelligent Design in summary

Intelligent Design is presented as an alternative to purely naturalistic forms of the theory of evolution. Its putative main purpose is to investigate whether or not the empirical evidence necessarily implies that life on Earth must have been designed by an intelligent agent or agents. For example, William Dembski, one of ID's leading proponents, has stated that the fundamental claim of ID is that "there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."

Proponents of ID claim that they look for evidence of what they call signs of intelligence — physical properties of an object that necessitate "design". The most common cited signs being considered include irreducible complexity, information mechanisms, and specified complexity. Many design proponents believe that living systems show one or more of these, from which they infer that life is designed. This stands in opposition to mainstream explanations of systems, which attempt to explain the natural world exclusively through impersonal physical processes such as random mutations and natural selection. ID proponents claim that while evidence pointing to the nature of an "Intelligent Designer" may not be observable, its effects on nature can be detected. Dembski, in Signs of Intelligence claims "Proponents of Intelligent Design regard it as a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes. Note that Intelligent Design studies the effects of intelligent causes and not intelligent causes per se." In his view, questions concerning the identity of a designer fall outside the realm of the idea.

Critics call ID religious dogma repackaged in an effort to return creationism into public school science classrooms and note that ID features notably as part of the campaign known as Teach the Controversy. While the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection has observable and repeatable facts to support it such as the process of mutations, gene flow, genetic drift, adaptation and speciation through natural selection, the "Intelligent Designer" in ID is neither observable nor repeatable. Critics argue this violates the scientific requirement of falsifiability. Indeed, ID proponent Behe concedes "You can't prove Intelligent Design by experiment". ^[8]

Critics say ID is attempting to redefine natural science.^[9] They cite books and statements of principal ID proponents calling for the elimination of "methodological naturalism" from science^[10] and its replacement with what Johnson calls "theistic realism"^[11], and what critics call "methodological supernaturalism", which means belief in a transcendent, non-natural dimension of reality inhabited by a transcendent, non-natural deity. Natural science uses the scientific method to create a posteriori knowledge based on observation alone (sometimes called empirical science). Critics of ID consider the idea that some outside intelligence created life on Earth to be a priori (without observation) knowledge. ID proponents cite some complexity in nature that cannot yet be fully explained by the scientific method. (For instance, abiogenesis, the generation of life from non-living matter, is not yet understood scientifically, although the first stages have been reproduced in the Miller-Urey experiment.) ID proponents infer that an intelligent designer is behind the part of the process that is not understood scientifically. Since the designer cannot be observed, critics continue, it is a priori knowledge.

This allegedly a priori inference that an intelligent designer (a god or an alien life force^[12]) created life on Earth has been compared to the a priori claim that aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the pyramids^[13] ^[14]. In both cases, the effect of this outside intelligence is not repeatable, observable, or falsifiable, and it violates Occam's Razor as well. From a strictly empirical standpoint, one may list what is known about Egyptian construction techniques, but must admit ignorance about exactly how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

Origins of the concept

For millennia, philosophers have argued that the complexity of nature's "design" that operates for complex purposes indicates the existence of a purposeful natural or supernatural designer/creator. The first recorded arguments for a natural designer come from Greek philosophy. The philosophical concept of the 'Logos' is typically credited to Heraclitus (c. 535 - c. 475 B.C.E.), a Pre-Socratic philosopher, and is briefly explained in his extant fragments. Plato (c. 427 - c. 347 B.C.E.) posited a natural 'demiurge' of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the formator of the cosmos in his work Timaeus. Aristotle (c. 384 – 322 B.C.E.) also develops the idea of a natural formator of the cosmos, often referred to as the 'Prime Mover' in his work Metaphysics. Cicero (c. 106 - c. 43 B.C.E.) stated, "The divine power is to be found in a principle of reason which pervades the whole of nature," in de Natura Deorum.

The use of this line of reasoning as applied to a supernatural designer has come to be known as the teleological argument for the existence of God. The most notable forms of this argument were expressed by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica^[15] (thirteenth century), design being the fifth of Aquinas' five proofs for God's existence, and William Paley in his book Natural Theology (nineteenth century) where he makes his watchmaker analogy. The modern concept of Intelligent Design is distinguished from the teleological argument in that ID does not identify the agent of creation, and its proponents seek to take the debate into the realm of science rather than just philosophy.

The phrase "intelligent design" can be found in an 1847 issue of Scientific American and in an 1868 book. It was coined in its present sense in Humanism, a 1903 book by Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller: "It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design."

The phrase then lay unused for nearly a century. "The term intelligent design came up in 1988 at a conference in Tacoma, Wash., called Sources of Information Content in DNA," claims Stephen C. Meyer, co-founder of the Discovery Institute and vice president of the Center for Science and Culture, who was present at the phrase's re-creation, which he attributes to Of Pandas and People editor Charles Thaxton. The phrase appeared in the first edition Of Pandas and People in 1989, which is considered the first modern Intelligent Design book. The term was promoted more broadly by the retired legal scholar Phillip E. Johnson following his 1991 book Darwin on Trial. Johnson went on to work with Meyers, becoming the program advisor of the Center for Science and Culture and is considered the "father" of the Intelligent Design movement.

Religion and leading ID proponents

Intelligent design arguments are carefully formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid positing the identity of the designer. Phillip E. 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 reintroducing 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."^[16] Johnson explicitly calls for ID proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having ID identified "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message."^[17] Though not all ID proponents are motivated by religious fervor, the majority of the principal ID advocates (including Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, and Stephen C. Meyer) are Christians and have stated that in their view the designer of life is God. The preponderance of leading ID proponents are evangelical Protestants.

The conflicting claims made by leading ID advocates as to whether or not ID is rooted in religious conviction are the result of their strategy. For example, William Dembski in his book The Design Inference ^[18] lists a god or an "alien life force" as two possible options for the identity of the designer. However, in his book Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology Dembski states that "Christ is indispensable to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ. But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." ^[19] Dembski also stated "ID is part of God's general revelation..." "Not only does Intelligent Design rid us of this ideology (materialism), which suffocates the human spirit, but, in my personal experience, I've found that it opens the path for people to come to Christ." ^[20].

Phillip Johnson states the foundation of intelligent design is the Bible's Book of John, specifically, John 1:1: "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 the 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." ^[21]

Defining Intelligent Design as science

Intelligent design proponents often claim that their position is not only scientific, but that it is even more scientific than evolution. This presents a demarcation problem, which in the philosophy of science, is about how and where to draw the lines around science. For a theory to qualify as scientific it must be:

Consistent (internally and externally)
Parsimonious (sparing in proposed entities or explanations, see Occam's Razor)
Useful (describes and explains observed phenomena)
Empirically testable & falsifiable (see Falsifiability)
Based upon controlled, repeated experiments
Correctable & dynamic (changes are made as new data is discovered)
Progressive (achieves all that previous theories have and more)
Tentative (admits that it might not be correct rather than asserting certainty)

For any theory, hypothesis or conjecture to be considered scientific, it must meet at least most, but ideally all, of the above criteria. The fewer which are matched, the less scientific it is; and if it meets only a couple or none at all, then it cannot be treated as scientific in any meaningful sense of the word.

Typical objections to defining Intelligent Design as science are:

Intelligent design lacks consistency.^[22]
Intelligent design is not falsifiable.^[23]
Intelligent design violates the principle of parsimony.^[24]
Intelligent design is not empirically testable.^[25]
Intelligent design is not correctable, dynamic, tentative or progressive.^[26]

In light of its adherence to the standards of the scientific method, Intelligent Design can not be said to follow the scientific method. There is no way to test its conjectures, and the underlying assumptions of Intelligent Design are not open to change.

Intelligent design critics further point out that intelligent design does not meet the criteria for scientific evidence used by United States federal courts and most state courts as set forth in a decision by the United States Supreme Court. In its 1993 Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals opinion, the United States Supreme Court articulated a set of criteria for the admissibility of scientific expert testimony, in effect developing their own demarcation criteria. The four Daubert criteria are:

The theoretical underpinnings of the methods must yield testable predictions by means of which the theory could be falsified.
The methods should preferably be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
There should be a known rate of error that can be used in evaluating the results.
The methods should be generally accepted within the relevant scientific community.

Intelligent design also fails to meet the legal definition of science on each of the four criteria.

ID as a movement

The Intelligent design movement is an organized campaign to promote ID arguments in the public sphere, primarily in the United States. The movement claims ID exposes the limitations of scientific orthodoxy, and of the secular philosophy of Naturalism. ID movement proponents allege that science, by relying upon naturalism, demands an adoption of a naturalistic philosophy that dismisses out of hand any explanation that contains a supernatural cause.

Phillip E. Johnson, considered the father of the Intelligent Design movement and its unofficial spokesman stated that the goal of Intelligent Design is to cast creationism as a scientific concept:

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of Intelligent Design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."^[27]
"This isn't really, and never has been a debate about science. It's about religion and philosophy."^[28]
"So the question is: "How to win?" That’s when I began to develop what you now see full-fledged in the "wedge" strategy: "Stick with the most important thing" —the mechanism and the building up of information. Get the Bible and the Book of Genesis out of the debate because you do not want to raise the so-called Bible-science dichotomy. Phrase the argument in such a way that you can get it heard in the secular academy and in a way that tends to unify the religious dissenters. That means concentrating on, "Do you need a Creator to do the creating, or can nature do it on its own?" and refusing to get sidetracked onto other issues, which people are always trying to do."^[29]

At the 1999 "Reclaiming America for Christ Conference" Johnson described the movement thusly: "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." ..."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 the truth?" ..."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." ^[30]

The Intelligent Design movement is largely the result of efforts by the conservative Christian think tank the Discovery Institute, and its Center for Science and Culture. The Discovery Institute's wedge strategy and its adjunct, the Teach the Controversy campaign, are campaigns intended to sway the opinion of the public and policymakers. They target public school administrators and state and federal elected representatives to introduce Intelligent Design into the public school science curricula and marginalize mainstream science. The Discovery Institute operates on a $4,000,000 budget ^[31] and receives financial support from 22 foundations, at least two-thirds of which state explicitly religious missions. The institute's CSC was founded largely with funds provided by Howard Ahmanson Jr., who has stated a goal of "the total integration of biblical law into our lives."^[32] A CSC mission statement proclaimed its goal is to "unseat not just Darwinism, but also Darwinism's cultural legacy".

Critics note that instead of producing original scientific data to support ID’s claims, the Discovery Institute has promoted ID politically to the public, education officials and public policymakers. Also oft mentioned is that there is a conflict between what leading ID proponents tell the public through the media and what they say before their conservative Christian audiences, and that the Discovery Institute as a matter of policy obfuscates its agenda. This they claim is proof that the movement's "activities betray an aggressive, systematic agenda for promoting not only Intelligent Design creationism, but the religious worldview that undergirds it.^[33]

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, compares "Teach the controversy" with teaching flat earthism, perfectly fine in a history class but not in 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." ^[34]

Underscoring claims that the ID movement is more social 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 scientifically disputed; a "theory in crisis." The most often cited example of this "theory in crisis" is the Discovery Institutes petition "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism."^[35] Since 2001 this petition has generated signatures from 400 scientists from around the world, which unfortunately only contains 73 biologists. An unfunded project, The Four Day Petition, "A Scientific Support For Darwinism"^[36] was organized in September and October of 2005. That petition generated 8040 verified scientists signatures, representing a 1,200% increase over the Discovery Institutes at a rate 640,000% faster. A more amusing effort, Project_Steve, received over 500 signatures from scientists named Steve. Despite a consensus in the scientific community that ID lacks merit and ID proponents have yet to propose an actual scientific hypothesis. These campaigns and cases are discussed in depth in the Intelligent design movement article.

Intelligent design debate

Template:Intelligent Design The Intelligent Design debate centers on three issues:

whether the definition of science is broad enough to allow for theories of human origins which incorporate the acts of an intelligent designer
whether the evidence supports such theories
whether the teaching of such theories is appropriate in public education.

ID supporters generally hold that science must allow for both natural and supernatural explanations of phenomena. Excluding supernatural explanations limits the realm of possibilities, particularly where naturalistic explanations utterly fail to explain certain phenomena. Supernatural explanations provide a very simple and parsimonious explanation for the origins of life and the universe. Proponents claim that the evidence strongly supports such explanations, as instances of so-called irreducible complexity and specified complexity appear to make it highly unreasonable that the full complexity and diversity of life came about solely through natural means. Finally, they hold that religious neutrality requires the teaching of both evolution and Intelligent Design in schools, because teaching only evolution unfairly discriminates against those holding the Creationist beliefs. Teaching both, ID supporters argue, allows for a scientific basis for religious belief, without causing the state to actually promote a religious belief.

According to critics of ID, not only has ID failed to establish reasonable doubt in its proposed shortcomings of accepted scientific theories, but it has not even presented a case worth taking seriously. Critics of ID argue that ID has not presented a credible case for the public policy utility of presenting Intelligent Design in education. More broadly, critics maintain that it has not met the minimum legal standard of not being a "clear" attempt to establish religion, which in the United States is constitutionally forbidden. Scientists argue that those advocating "scientific" treatment of "supernatural" phenomena are grossly misunderstanding the issue, and indeed misunderstand the nature and purpose of science itself. Furthermore, if one were to take the proponents of "equal time for all theories" at their word, there would be no logical limit to the number of potential "theories" to be taught in the public school system. While Christian fundamentalists imagine their God to be the only deity to be referenced, a cursory examination of mankind's belief systems reveals that there is a very large number of potential supernatural "explanations" for the emergence and organization of life on earth, none of which have any empirical support and all of which therefore are equally deserving of promotion as Intelligent Design. Proponents of ID, however, rarely if ever appear to note such alternative theological/supernatural possibilities, defaulting invariably to their particular interpretation of the Christian God.

Between these two positions there is a large body of opinion that does not condone the teaching of what is considered unscientific or questionable material, but is generally sympathetic to the position of Deism/Theism and therefore desires some compromise between the two. The nominal points of contention are seen as being proxies for other issues. Many ID followers are quite open about their view that "Scientism" is itself a religion that promotes secularism and materialism in an attempt to erase religion from public life and view their work in the promotion of ID as a way to return religion to a central role in education and other public spheres. Some allege that this larger debate is often the subtext for arguments made over Intelligent Design, though others note that ID serves as an effective proxy for the religious beliefs of prominent ID proponents in their efforts to advance their religious point of view within society. ^[37]^[38]^[39]

ID concepts

The following are summaries of key concepts of Intelligent Design, followed by summaries of criticisms. Counterarguments against such criticisms are often proffered by ID proponents, as are counter-counterarguments by critics, etc.

Irreducible complexity

The term comes from Ludwig von Bertalanffy, a German biologist who believed that complex systems must be examined as complete, irreducible systems in order to understand how they worked. He extended his biological work into a general theory of systems in a book by the same title, General Systems Theory. After Watson and Crick published the structure of DNA in the early 1950s, GST lost many of its adherents in the physical and biological sciences. Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity provides a good discussion of the "triumph" of the mechanistic view in biochemistry. Systems theory remained popular among social sciences long after its demise in the physical and biological sciences. Apparently, it fell so far out of favor in mainstream science that its new form, a thinly disguised version of creationism, is touted as being "totally new." Michael Behe, in his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box, does not recount the history of his irreducible complexity argument but rather, gives the impression that there is something new when he posits that evolutionary mechanisms cannot account for the emergence of some complex biochemical cellular systems. ID advocates argue that the systems must therefore have been deliberately engineered by some form of intelligence. Irreducible complexity is defined by Behe as:

"...a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."—(Behe, Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design Inference).

According to the theory of evolution, genetic variations occur without specific design or intent. The environment 'selects' variants that have the highest fitness, which are then passed on to the next generation of organisms. Change occurs by the gradual operation of natural forces over time, perhaps slowly, perhaps more quickly (see punctuated equilibrium). This process is able to 'create' complex structures from simpler beginnings, or convert complex structures from one function to another (see spandrel). Most ID advocates accept that evolution occurs through mutation and natural selection at the 'micro level' such as changing the relative frequency of various beak lengths in finches, but assert that it cannot account for irreducible complexity, because none of the parts of an irreducible system would be functional or advantageous until the entire system is in place.

Behe uses the mousetrap as an illustrative example of this concept. A mousetrap consists of several interacting pieces—the base, the catch, the spring, the hammer—all of which must be in place for the mousetrap to work. The removal of any one piece destroys the function of the mousetrap. Likewise, biological systems require multiple parts working together in order to function. ID advocates claim that natural selection could not create from scratch those systems for which science is currently not able to find a viable evolutionary pathway of successive, slight modifications, because the selectable function is only present when all parts are assembled. Behe's original examples of irreducibly complex mechanisms included the bacterial flagellum of E. coli, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system.

Criticism

The IC (irreducible complexity) argument also assumes that the necessary parts of a system have always been necessary, and therefore could not have been added sequentially. But something which is at first merely advantageous can later become necessary. For example, one of the clotting factors that Behe listed as a part of the IC clotting cascade was later found to be absent in whales^[40], demonstrating that it isn't essential for a clotting system. Many purported IC structures can be found in other organisms as simpler systems that utilize fewer parts. These systems may have had even simpler precursors that are now extinct.

Perhaps most importantly, potentially viable evolutionary pathways have been proposed for allegedly irreducibly complex systems such as blood clotting, the immune system^[41] and the flagellum^[42], which were the three examples Behe used. Even his example of a mousetrap was shown to be reducible by John H. McDonald^[43]. If IC is an insurmountable obstacle to evolution, it should not be possible to conceive of such pathways—Behe has remarked that such plausible pathways would defeat his argument.

Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin have shown that systems satisfying Behe's characterization of irreducible biochemical complexity can arise naturally and spontaneously as the result of self-organizing chemical processes^[44]. They also assert that what evolved biochemical and molecular systems actually exhibit is redundant complexity — a kind of complexity that is the product of an evolved biochemical process. They claim that Behe overestimated the significance of irreducible complexity because his simple, linear view of biochemical reactions results in his taking snapshots of selective features of biological systems, structures and processes, while ignoring the redundant complexity of the context in which those features are naturally embedded and an over-reliance of overly-simplistic metaphors such as his mousetrap. In addition, it has been claimed that computer simulations of evolution demonstrate that it is possible for irreducible complexity to evolve naturally^[45].

Specified complexity

The ID concept of specified complexity was developed by mathematician, philosopher, and theologian William Dembski. Dembski claims that when something exhibits specified complexity (i.e., is both complex and specified, simultaneously) one can infer that it was produced by an intelligent cause (i.e., that it was designed), rather than being the result of natural processes. He provides the following examples: "A single letter of the alphabet is specified without being complex. A long sentence of random letters is complex without being specified. A Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified." (Intelligent Design, p. 47) He states that details of living things can be similarly characterized, especially the "patterns" of molecular sequences in functional biological molecules such as DNA.

Dembski defines a probability of 1 in 10¹⁵⁰ as the "universal probability bound". Its value corresponds to the inverse of the upper limit of "the total number of [possible] specified events throughout cosmic history," as calculated by Dembski. (The Design Revolution, p. 85) He defines complex specified information (CSI) as specified information with a probability less than this limit. (The terms "specified complexity" and "complex specified information" are used interchangeably.) He argues that CSI cannot be generated by the only known natural mechanisms of physical law and chance, or by their combination. He argues that this is so because laws can only shift around or lose information, but do not produce it, and chance can produce complex unspecified information, or non-complex specified information, but not CSI; he provides a mathematical analysis that he claims demonstrates that law and chance working together cannot generate CSI, either. Dembski and other proponents of ID argue that CSI is best explained as being due to an intelligent cause and is therefore a reliable indicator of design.

Criticism

The conceptual soundness of Dembski's specified complexity/CSI argument is strongly disputed by critics of ID. First, critics maintain that Dembski confuses the issue by using "complex" as most people would use "improbable". He defines CSI as anything with a less than 1 in 10¹⁵⁰ chance of occurring by (natural) chance. Critics claim that this renders the argument a tautology: CSI cannot occur naturally because Dembski has defined it thus, so the real question becomes whether or not CSI actually exists in nature. They claim that Dembski does not attempt to demonstrate this, but instead simply takes the existence of CSI as a given, and then proceeds to argue that it is a reliable indicator of design.

Another criticism of specified complexity refers to the problem of "arbitrary but specific outcomes". For example, it is unlikely that any given person will win a lottery, but, eventually, a lottery will have a winner; to argue that it is very unlikely that any one player would win is not the same as proving that there is the same chance that no one will win. Similarly, it has been argued that "a space of possibilities is merely being explored, and we, as pattern-seeking animals, are merely imposing patterns, and therefore targets, after the fact."^[46] Critics also note that there is much redundant information in the genome, which makes its content much lower than the number of base pairs used.

Furthermore, it is not sound to assume that various biological processes and structure arose all together in their current form by chance, instead, one must understand that any biological system is made up of numerous smaller and more basic systems working symbiotically to create a larger structure. On this scale it is easier to assume that simpler and thus more likely reactions occurred that would procure the material needed for larger and more complex structures The theory also ignores the actual relative chance in terms of the universe, for example there is an estimated 125 billion or more galaxies in the universe with roughly 100 billion stars in each. Stars then have a chance for the presence of terrestrial planets and given the scope of a planet and the various elements existent in the universe, multiplied by the previous statement concerning the amount of stars, it is easy to assume that, the chance of a set of circumstances leading to life is perceivable. One must also take into account all the possible and by-chance chemical reactions that have occurred over the history of the universe.

Martin Nowak, a Harvard professor of mathematics and evolutionary biology argues that "We cannot calculate the probability that an eye came about. We don't have the information to make the calculation."^[47]

Fine-tuned universe

ID proponents use the argument that we live in a fine-tuned universe. They propose that the natural emergence of a universe with all the features necessary for life is wildly improbable. Thus, an intelligent designer of life was needed to ensure that the requisite features were present to achieve that particular outcome. Opinion within the scientific community is still divided on the "finely-tuned universe" issue, but this particular explanation and assessment of probabilities is rejected by most scientists and statisticians.

Within mainstream physics this is related to the question of the anthropic principle, whose weak form is based on the observation that the laws of physics must allow for life, since we observe there is life. The strong form, however, is the assertion that the laws of physics must have made it possible for life to arise. The strong form is a distinctly minority position and is highly controversial.

Criticism

Critics of both ID and the weak form of anthropic principle argue that they are essentially a tautology; life as we know it may not exist if things were different, but a different sort of life might exist in its place. The claim of the improbability of a life-supporting universe has also been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination for assuming no other forms of life are possible.

Based on the unproven idea that some of the universe's initial conditions might have been different, Stephen Hawking and James Hartle have shown that from the initial conditions of the universe, that is, the moment immediately after the Big Bang, a large number of types of universe could have formed. The type of universe that we live in is called a Hartle-Hawking type universe. According to their calculations, the chance that a Hartle-Hawking universe forms is over 90%. Thus, the chance that our particular universe formed may be small, but the chance that a universe of the same type, with stars, planets and the other elements required to create life as we know it would come out of the Big Bang is over 90%, not improbable at all.

Recent work in cosmology has put forth the mathematical possiblity of a multiverse. This would allow many types of universes to simultaneously arise, of which ours is one possibility. Although multiverse theories currently lack verified predictions, some astronomers believe that gravity may leak into other dimensions in braneworld scenarios, potentially providing the first observable data to support these theories.

Additional criticisms of ID

Scientific peer review

Dembski has written that "Perhaps the best reason [to be skeptical of his theory] is that Intelligent Design has yet to establish itself as a thriving scientific research program."^[48] Critics argue that ID proponents either do not submit articles to peer reviewed journals, or set up "peer review" that consists entirely of ID supporters. Proponents of ID explain the reason for their absence in peer-reviewed literature is that papers explaining the findings and concepts in support of ID are consistently excluded from the mainstream scientific discourse. They claim this is because ID arguments challenge the principles of philosophical naturalism and uniformitarianism that are accepted as fundamental by the mainstream scientific community. Thus, ID supporters believe that research that points toward an intelligent designer is often rejected simply because it deviates from these "dogmatically held beliefs", without regard to the merits of their specific claims.

According to their critics, this is an ad hominem attack, designed to cover over the lack of success in creating scientifically testable or verifiable data or theory, by claiming that there is a conspiracy against them. Critics of ID point out that this is an argument commonly used by advocates of pseudoscientific views (most notably by UFO enthusiasts), and that the perceived bias is simply the result of ID being unscientific and inadequately supported. A notable exception to this explanation for lack of published, peer-reviewed writings is William Dembski, who claims in a 2001 interview that he stopped submitting to peer-reviewed journals due to their slow time-to-print and that he makes more money from publishing books.^[49]

To date, the Intelligent Design movement has yet to publish an article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. On 4 August 2004, an article by Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture appeared in the peer-reviewed journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.^[50]

A critical review of the article found it to contain poor scholarship, in that it failed to cite and specifically rebut the actual data supporting evolution, and [constructed] "a rhetorical edifice out of omission of relevant facts, selective quoting, bad analogies, knocking down strawmen, and tendentious interpretations." ^[51]

On 7 September, the publisher of the journal, the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, released a statement repudiating the article as not meeting its scientific standards and not peer reviewed.^[52] The same statement vowed that proper review procedures would be followed in the future and endorsed a resolution published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID.^[53] The journal's reasons for disavowing the article was denied by Richard Sternberg, who was managing editor at the time the article was submitted and subsequently left the editorial board at its time of publication.^[54]

Critics of Meyer's paper believe that Sternberg himself was biased in the matter, since he is a member of the editorial board of the Baraminology Study Group, an organization with a creationist agenda. The Baraminology Study Group's official position is that Sternberg is not a creationist and acts primarily as a skeptical reviewer.^[55] As part of a subsequent labor claim, Sternberg claims that he was "targeted for retaliation and harassment" and cites a letter by the United States Office of Special Counsel as supporting his version of events.^[56] Critics have called into question this claim, asserting that the Office of Special Counsel lacked jurisdiction over the matter, that the Smithsonian was never given a chance to respond, and that no official findings or conclusions were made by the Office of Special Counsel.^[57]

ID proponents have also claimed as proof of peer review an article by Michael Behe and David W. Snoke was published in the journal Protein Science. But the paper has been critiqued by qualified scientists, who point out that "it contains no 'design theory,' makes no attempt to model an 'Intelligent Design' process, and proposes no alternative to evolution."

The vast majority of practicing biologists do not support or otherwise endorse Intelligent Design. The scientific community does not regard the argument over ID to be of the same kind as, for example, differing theories on how particular traits evolved, or even in the realm of scientific speculation, the way, a hypothesis of exogenesis might be considered as a plausible scientific speculation. The failure to follow the procedures of scientific discourse, and the failure to submit work to the scientific community which withstands scrutiny is regarded by the critics of ID as a strong argument against Intelligent Design being considered as "science" at all.

Hypotheses about the designer or designers

ID arguments are formulated in secular terms and intentionally avoid identifying the intelligent agent they posit. They do not state that God is the designer, but the designer is often implicitly hypothesized to have intervened in a way that only an omnipotent being, God, could be capable of performing. ID proponents, such as Dembski, have implied that an alien culture could fulfill these requirements. But since the authoritative description of Intelligent Design^[58] explicitly states that the universe displays features of having been designed, critics point out that anything requiring the prior existence of the universe, such as aliens, can not logically be its "intelligent cause"; that only supernatural entities can satisfy the authoritative definition of Intelligent Design.

Each hypothesized design poses a new challenge for ID. Is the new design a product of the same designer(s) as any other design, based on external evidence, or evidence internal to the design? Each design, based on the evidence for the original time and place of the appearance of that design, hypotheses that the same or different designers must have been present at that place and time. Since the places and times are often only known imprecisely, there is the possibility that they may coincide with those of some other designs.

The key arguments in favor of the different variants of ID are so broad that they can be adopted by any number of communities that seek an alternative to evolutionary thought, including those that support non-theistic models of creation although the designers might be different. For example, the notion of an "intelligent designer" is compatible with the materialistic hypotheses that life on Earth was introduced by an alien species (as taught by the Raëlian movement), or that it emerged as a result of panspermia, but would not be with the designer(s) of the "fine-tuned" universe. Likewise, ID claims can support a variety of theistic notions. Some proponents of creationism and Intelligent Design reject the Christian concept of omnipotence and omniscience on the part of God, and subscribe to Open Theism or Process theology. It has been suggested by opponents that ID researchers must explain why organisms were designed as they were, and argue that existing evidence makes the design hypothesis appear unlikely. For example, Jerry Coyne, of the University of Chicago, asks:

Would an intelligent designer create millions of species and then make them go extinct, only to replace them with other species, repeating this process over and over again? ... Why did the designer give tiny, non-functional wings to kiwi birds? Or useless eyes to cave animals? Or a transitory coat of hair to a human fetus?... Why would the designer give us a pathway for making vitamin C, but then destroy it by disabling one of its enzymes? Why didn't the intelligent designer stock oceanic islands with reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and freshwater fish, despite the suitability of such islands for these species? And why would he make the flora and fauna on those islands resemble that of the nearest mainland, even when the environments are very different?^[59]

Some ID proponents argue that we are simply incapable of understanding the designer's motives. For example Behe argued in Darwin's Black Box that

Features that strike us as odd in a design might have been placed there by the designer for a reason—for artistic reasons, to show off, for some as-yet undetectable practical purpose, or for some unguessable reason

Additionally, they may argue that the creator's benevolence does not imply the need for physical perfection in Creation. Critics like Coyne respond that the possibility of mutually contradictory and "unguessable" motives for the designer mean that ID is not falsifiable and therefore not scientific.

"What (or who) designed the designer?"

By raising the question of the need for a designer for objects with irreducible complexity, ID also raises the question, "what designed the designer?" By ID's own arguments, a designer capable of creating irreducible complexity must also be irreducibly complex. Unlike with religious creationism, where the question "what created God?" can be answered with theological arguments, this creates a logical paradox in ID, as the chain of designers can be followed back indefinitely, leaving the question of the creation of the first designer dangling. The sort of logic required in sustaining such reasoning is known as circular reasoning, a form of logical fallacy.

One ID counter-argument to this problem invokes an uncaused causer - in other words, a deity - to resolve this problem, in which case ID reduces to religious creationism. At the same time, the postulation of the existence of even a single uncaused causer in the Universe contradicts the fundamental assumption of ID that every complex object requires a designer. Another possible counter-argument might be an infinite regression of designers. However, admitting infinite numbers of objects also allows any arbritarily improbable event to occur, such as an object with "irreducible" complexity assembling itself by chance. Again, this contradicts the fundamental assumption of ID that a designer is needed for every complex object, producing a logical contradiction.

Thus, according to opponents, either attempt to patch the ID hypothesis appears to either result in logical contradiction, or reduces it to a belief in religious creationism. ID then ceases to be a falsifiable theory and loses its ability to claim to be a scientific theory.

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, argues that Intelligent Design simply takes the complexity required for life to have evolved and moves it to the "designer" instead. According to Dawkins, ID doesn't explain how the complexity happened in the first place, it just moves it. ^[60]

Argument from ignorance

Some critics have argued that many points raised by Intelligent Design proponents strongly resemble arguments from ignorance. In the argument from ignorance, one claims that the lack of evidence for one view is evidence for another view (e.g. "Science cannot explain this, therefore God did it"). Particularly, Michael Behe's demands for ever more detailed explanations of the historical evolution of molecular systems seem to assume a dichotomy where either evolution or design is the proper explanation, and any perceived failure of evolution becomes a victory for design. In scientific terms, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" for naturalistic explanations of observed traits of living organisms.

Intelligence, as an observable quality, is poorly defined

The phrase Intelligent Design makes use of an assumption of the quality of an observable intelligence, a concept that has no scientific consensus definition. William Dembski, for example, has claimed that "Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature." Such characteristics of intelligent agency are assumed to be observable without ID offering what the criteria for the measurement of intelligence should be. Dembski, instead, makes the claim that "in special sciences ranging from forensics to archaeology to SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), appeal to a designing intelligence is indispensable." ^[61] How this appeal is made and what this implies as to the definition of intelligence are topics left largely unaddressed.

As a means of criticism, certain skeptics have pointed to a challenge of ID derived from the study of artificial intelligence. The criticism is a counter to ID claims about what makes a design intelligent, namely that "no pre-programmed device can be truly intelligent, that intelligence is irreducible to natural processes." ^[62] In particular, while there is an implicit assumption that supposed "intelligence" or creativity of a computer program was determined by the capabilities given to it by the computer programmer, artificial intelligence need not be bound to an inflexible system of rules. Rather, if a computer program can access randomness as a function, this effectively allows for a flexible, creative, and adaptive intelligence. Forrays into such areas as quantum computing seem to indicate that real probabilistic functions may be available in the future. Intelligence derived from randomness is essentially indistinguishable from the "innate" intelligence associated with biological organisms and poses a challenge to the ID conception of where intelligence itself is derived (namely from a designer). Cognitive science continues to investigate the nature of intelligence to that end, but the ID community for the most part seems to be content to rely on the assumption that intelligence is readily apparent as a fundamental and basic property of complex systems.

External links

Discovery Institute (Largest promoter of Intelligent Design)
- Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Design Arguments for the Existence of God
Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences Second Edition (1999)
National Center for Science Education articles and other resources about ID
Resolution from the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Talk Origins Archive (Archive of a UseNet discussion group)
Design Inference: The website of William A. Dembski
ID Network
Origins.org
International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)
Access Research Network

Notes and references

^ Stephen C. Meyer, 2005. The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design: The Methodological Equivalence of Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Origins Theories. Ignatius Press.
^ Devolution - Why intelligent design isn’t. H. Allen Orr. Annals of Science. New York Times May 2005
^ "Creationism, Intelligent Design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science" In Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition National Academy of Sciences, 1999
^ Niall Shanks, 2004.God, the Devil, and Darwin: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory, Oxford University Press.
^ The Economist Magazine, July 30 thru August 5 2005, "Intelligent design rears its head", page 30 thru 31
^ [63] AP, August 2 2005
^ [64] Peter Baker and Peter Slevin, Washington Post Staff Writers, Wednesday, August 3 2005;
^ Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32 [65]
^ Barbara Forrest, 2000. "Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection." In Philo, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall-Winter 2000), pp. 7-29.
^ Phillip E. Johnson in his book "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education" (InterVarsity Press, 1995), positions himself as a "theistic realist" against "methodological naturalism."
^ "My colleagues and I speak of 'theistic realism'— or sometimes, 'mere creation' — as the defining concept of our [the ID] movement. This means that we affirm that God is objectively real as Creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology." Phillip Johnson. Starting a Conversation about Evolution
^ William Dembski in The Design Inference" (see further reading) cited extraterrestrials as a possible designer [66].
^ Michael J. Murray, n.d. "Natural Providence (or Design Trouble)" (PDF)
^ William Dembski defends ID from "silly claim" that "ancient technologies could not have built the pyramids, so goblins must have done it." [67]
^ Thomas Aquinas, 1265-1272. Summa Theologica. "Thomas Aquinas' 'Five Ways'" In faithnet.org.uk
^ "...the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion. ...This is not to say that the biblical issues are unimportant; the point is rather that the time to address them will be after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact." Phillip Johnson. "The Wedge", Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. July/August 1999.
^ "Intelligent Design is an intellectual movement, and the Wedge strategy stops working when we are seen as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message. ... The evangelists do what they do very well, and I hope our work opens up for them some doors that have been closed." Phillip Johnson. "Keeping the Darwinists Honest", an interview with Phillip Johnson. In Citizen Magazine. April 1999.
^ William Dembski, 1998. The Design Inference. Cambridge University Press
^ Dembski. 1999. Intelligent Design; the Bridge Between Science and Theology. "Christ is indispensible to any scientific theory, even if its practitioners don't have a clue about him. The pragmatics of a scientific theory can, to be sure, be pursued without recourse to Christ. But the conceptual soundness of the theory can in the end only be located in Christ." p. 210
^ Dembski. 2005. Intelligent Design's Contribution to the Debate Over Evolution: A Reply to Henry Morris.[68]
^ "Reclaiming America for Christ Conference" 1999. Phillip E. Johnson. How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won [69] at ReclaimAmerica.org
^ Intelligent design is generally only internally consistent and logical within the framework in which it operates. Criticisms are that this framework has at its foundation an unsupported, unjustified assumption: That complexity and improbability must entail design, but the identity and characteristics of the designer is not identified or quantified, nor need they be. The framework of Intelligent Design, because it rests on a unquantifiable and unverifiable assertion, has no defined boundaries except that complexity and improbability require design, and the designer need not be constrained by the laws of physics.
^ The designer is not falsifiable, since its existence is typically asserted without sufficient conditions to allow a falsifying observation. The designer being beyond the realm of the observable, claims about its existence can neither be supported nor undermined by observation, hence making Intelligent Design and the argument from design analytic a posteriori arguments.
^ Intelligent design fails to pass Occam's razor. Adding entities (an intelligent agent, a designer) to the equation is not strictly necessary to explain events.
^ That Intelligent Design is not empirically testable stems from the fact that Intelligent Design violates a basic premise of science, naturalism.
^ Intelligent design professes to offer an answer that does not need to be defined or explained, the intelligent agent, designer. By asserting a conclusion that need not be accounted for, the designer, no further explanation is necessary to sustain it, and objections raised to those who accept it make little headway. Thus Intelligent Design is not a provisional assessment of data which can change when new information is discovered. Once it is claimed that a conclusion that need not be accounted for has been established, there is simply no possibility of future correction. The idea of the progressive growth of scientific ideas is required to explain previous data and any previously unexplainable data as well as any future data. This is often given as a justification for the naturalistic basis of science.
^ Elizabeth Nickson, 2004. "Let's Be Intelligent About Darwin." In Christianity.ca.
^ Joel Belz, 1996. "Witnesses For The Prosecution." In World Magazine.
^ Phillip E. Johnson quoted. November 2000. Touchstone magazine. Berkeley’s Radical An Interview with Phillip E. Johnson
^ "Reclaiming America for Christ Conference" 1999. Phillip E. Johnson. How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won [70] at ReclaimAmerica.org
^ BaptistToBaptist.com, May 15, 2001 [71]
^ Max Blumenthal, 2004 "Avenging angel of the religious right." In Salon.com.
^ Barbara Forrest, 2001. "The Wedge at Work." from Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics. MIT Press.
^ Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32 [72]
^ Petition, A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism [73]
^ Petition, "A Scientific Support For Darwinism" [74]
^ Joel Belz, 1996. "Witnesses For The Prosecution." In World Magazine.
^ "Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of Intelligent Design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools." Phillip E. Johnson. January 10 2003 on American Family Radio [75] In www.christianity.ca
^ Jon Buell & Virginia Hearn (eds), 1992. "Proceedings of a Symposium entitled: Darwinism: Scientific Inference of Philosophical Preference?" (PDF)
^ Semba U, Shibuya Y, Okabe H, Yamamoto T., 1998. "Whale Hageman factor (factor XII): prevented production due to pseudogene conversion." Thromb Res. 1998 1 April;90(1):31-7.
^ Matt Inlay, 2002. "Evolving Immunity." In TalkDesign.org.
^ Nic J. Matzke, 2003. "Evolution in (Brownian) space: a model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum." In TalkDesign.org.
^ John H. McDonald A reducibly complex mousetrap.
^ Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin. Redundant Complexity:A Critical Analysis of Intelligent Design in Biochemistry. East Tennessee State University. [76]
^ Lenski RE, Ofria C, Pennock RT, Adami C., 2003. "The evolutionary origin of complex features." Nature. May 8 2003;423(6936):139-44.
^ William A. Dembski, 2005. ""Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress (356k PDF)", pp. 15-16, describing an argument made by Michael Shermer in How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God, 2nd ed. (2003).
^ Nowak quoted. Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32 [77]
^ Willam A. Dembksi . Is Intelligent Design a Form of Natural Theology? From Dembski's designinference.com
^ Beth McMurtrie, 2001. "Darwinism Under Attack." The Chronicle Of Higher Education.
^ The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories. Stephen C. Meyer. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239. August, 2004. [78]
^ Wesley R. Elsberry, 2004. "Meyer's Hopeless Monster." In The Panda's Thumb.
^ Statement from the Council of the Biological Society of Washington. September, 2004.[79]
^ AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory. American Association for the Advancement of Science. [80]
^ Richard Sternberg, 2004. "Procedures for the publication of the Meyer paper."
^ "Clarifications Regarding the BSG, Bryan College, and Richard Sternberg."
^ Richard Sternberg, 2004. Alleged Office of the Special Counsel letter to Sternberg
^ Pim Van Meurs. October 2005. Panda's Thumb: "The statement based on the OSC letter to Sternberg presents the ‘findings’ in an incorrect light. No official findings or conclusions were presented as far as I can tell. The OSC lacked jurisdiction and the museum was never given a chance to respond." [81]
^ "The theory of Intelligent Design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Discovery Institute. What is Intelligent Design? [82]
^ Jerry Coyne, "The Case Against Intelligent Design," The New Republic, August 22 2005.[83]
^ Claudia Wallis. Evolution Wars. Time Magazine, 15 August 2005 edition, page 32 [84]
^ William Dembski. Intelligent Design? a special report reprinted from Natural History magazine April 2002. [85]
^ Taner Edis. Darwin in Mind: Intelligent Design Meets Artificial Intelligence. Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, March/April 2001 issue. [86]

ID in Fiction

Aspects of Intelligent Design are explored in:

The movie Mission to Mars
The Doctor Who episode Image of the Fendahl
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Chase

da:Intelligent design es:Diseño inteligente fi:Älykäs suunnittelu fr:Dessein intelligent nl:Intelligent design pl:Teoria inteligentnego projektu sv:Intelligent design

Adding Intelligent Design as a Movement, which is a main article in Wikipedia, beyond "ID as a Movement in the original ID article

Main article: Intelligent design

Template:Creationism2 The Intelligent Design movement, which began in the early 1990s, is an organized campaign promoting a religious agenda calling for broad social, academic and political changes centering around intelligent design in the public sphere, primarily in the United States. Intelligent design is the controversial conjecture that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a naturalistic process such as natural selection. The overall goal of the movement is "to defeat materialism" and the "materialist world view" as represented by evolution, and replace it with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." ^[87]

The ID movement's hub is the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank^[88], and its Center for Science and Culture (CSC). The CSC counts most of the leading ID advocates and authors among its fellows or officers, notably, Phillip E. Johnson, its program advisor. As one of the most prolific authors in the ID movement, Johnson is the architect of the movement's Wedge strategy and the Teach the Controversy campaign.

The movement's legal arm is the Thomas More Law Center, which has played a central role in defending against legal obections to intelligent design being taught in public school science classes, which are generally brought on First Amendment grounds. The center has also participated as a plaintiff to remove legal barriers to the teaching of ID as science. A similar legal foundation, Quality Science Education for All (QSEA), has litigated on behalf of the movement. Though much smaller in scale than the Thomas More Law Center, QSEA has in its first year of existence brought no fewer than 3 separate lawsuits to further the movement's agenda. Critics have suggested that QSEA, were it to continue its pattern of litigation, could be considered a vexatious litigant.

The ID movement consists primarily of a public relations campaign meant to sway the opinion of the public and that of the popular media, and an aggressive lobbying campaign directed at policymakers and the educational community which seeks to undermine public support for teaching evolution while cultivating support for what the movement terms "intelligent design theory." These are both largely funded and directed by the Discovery Institute and conducted across a wide spectrum, from the national to the grassroots levels. The movement's near-term goal is greatly undermining or eliminating altogether the teaching of evolution in public school science, and with the long-term goal of to "renew" American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian values. Intelligent design is central and necessary for this agenda as described by the Discovery Institute: "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."

Template:Intelligent Design The movement's Teach the Controversy campaign is designed to portray evolution as "a theory in crisis" and leave the scientific establishment looking close-minded, that it is attempting to stifle and suppress new discoveries supporting ID that challenge the scientific status quo. This is made with the knowledge that it's unlikely many in the public can or will consult the current scientific literature or contact major scientific organizations to verify Discovery Institute claims and plays on undercurrents of anti-intellectualism and distrust of science and scientists that can be found in particular segments of American society. In doing this, the movement claims that it is confronting the limitations of scientific orthodoxy, and a secular, atheistic philosophy of Naturalism. The ID movement has attracted considerable press attention and pockets of public support, especially among conservative Christians in the US.

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" [89] and call intelligent design an attempt to recast religious dogma in an effort to reintroduce the teaching of biblical creationism to public school science classrooms and the movement as an effort to reshape American society into a theocracy starting with education and science. As evidence they cite the Discovery Institute's political activities, its' Wedge strategy, and statements made by leading ID proponents.

The mainstream scientific community's position, as represented by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education, is that ID is not science, but creationist pseudoscience.

Richard Dawkins, biologist and professor at Oxford University, compares "Teach the controversy" with teaching flat earthism, perfectly fine in a history class but not in 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."[90]

Origin of the movement

The ID movement grew out of a creationist tradition which argues against evolutionary theory from a religious (usually Evangelical Christian and Fundamentalist Christian) standpoint. Although ID advocates often claim that they are only arguing for the existence of a "designer," who may or may not be God, all the leading advocates do believe that the designer is God, and frequently accompany their allegedly scientific arguments with discussion of religious issues, especially when addressing religious audiences. In front of other audiences, they downplay the religious aspects of their agenda.

With the 1987 US Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard effectively removing creationism from public school science classrooms, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics in 1989 published the high school-level biology textbook Of Pandas and People that sought to circumvent the prohibition by presenting a version of creationism [91] that leaves out references to Genesis and other tenets of Christian creationism while proffering a version creationism that argues "the origin of new organisms [can be located] in an immaterial cause: in a blueprint, a plan, a pattern, devised by an intelligent agent." It does this without making reference to the identity of the intelligent designer, or God in any form, in the belief that doing so allows a version of creationism back into the science classroom without violating First Amendment. Of Pandas and People is considered to be the first modern intelligent design book and it presaged much of the subsequent arguments and strategy of the later intelligent design movement.

Another early book was Michael Denton’s 1985 Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. It is cited by Phillip E. Johnson, usually credited with having founded the Intelligent Design movement, as having convinced him of what he believes to be problems with the theory of evolution, the scientific method and it's epistemological underpinnings, specifically, philosophical naturalism. These were themes Johnson expanded on in his 1991 book, Darwin on Trial and in subsequent books, speeches and debates.

Prior to publishing 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, and became the de facto leader of the group and its campaign. [92] This group formed and continue to operate through the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CSRC, now Center for Science and Culture, CSC), the nucleus of the movement. Johnson says that by the time Darwin on Trial was published (1991), he had pretty well worked out the strategy he thought would, in time, win the intelligent design movement's campaign. He further claims that he was able to convince those prior creationists who worked to return creationism to science and the science classroom and who were unseated by Edwards v. Aguillard, young-earth creationists and some old-earth creationists, that his strategy was the right way to proceed.

According to Johnson, the Wedge movement, if not the term, began in 1992: "The movement we now call the wedge made its public debut at a conference of scientists and philosophers held at Southern Methodist University in March 1992, following the publication of my book Darwin on Trial (1991). The conference brought together as speakers some key wedge figures, particularly Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, and myself." [93]

The movement's strategy as set forth by Johnson states as the its goal the overthrowing of "materialist science" and replacing it with "theistic science." This agenda is now being actively pursued by the Center for Science and Culture (CSC). The CSC now plays the leading role in the promotion of ID, and its fellows include most of the leading ID advocates: William A. Dembski, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, and Stephen C. Meyer among others. The goal of their campaign, as described in their Wedge Strategy, is for ID to become "the dominant perspective in science" and to "permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."

Intelligent design has been described by its proponents as a "Big Tent" strategy; one in which all theists, united in the belief that life is the result of creation, but of differing opinions as to the details of that creation, can get behind one unifying plan that, if properly implemented, would return a form of creationism to science education. Once firmly established in school curricula again, the debate as to which forms of creationism are best supported by evidence could resume. Discovery Institute Fellow Paul A. Nelson, in a 2002 article Big Tent: Traditional Creationism and the Intelligent Design Community [94] (PDF) published in the Christian Research Journal of the Christian Research Institute, (self-described as the home of "Bible Answer Man, Hank Hanegraaff") credits Johnson for coming up with with the "Big Tent" strategy and reviving the debate since the Edwards v. Aguillard decision. And under the heading of "God's Freedom and the Logic of Design," Nelson describes ID as that "tent": "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."

Johnson in his "How the Evolution Debate can be Won" presentation to the 1999 Reclaiming America for Christ Conference confirms ID's 'big tent' status: "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."" ... "It's [ID] 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." [95]

Realizing that their "scientific" arguments have little chance of acceptance within the mainstream scientific community, ID advocates address their arguments primarily to the general public, politicians, philosophers, and other non-scientists. The allegedly scientific material which they produce is accused by the movement's critics of containing misleading rhetoric, equivocal terminology, and misrepresentations of the facts. The movement also produces much material which does not aspire to be scientific, but which is created and distributed for the purpose of promoting the social and political aims of the cause. Among these are a number of pseudoscientific documentary films casting ID as a increasingly well-supported line of scientific inquiry and evolution as a likewise increasingly dubious one.

ID as a movement

The movement was nominally launched by Phillip E. Johnson's book Darwin on Trial in 1991. 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 ID 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 ID 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; 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 ID as the method through which God created life.^[96] Johnson explicitly calls for ID proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having ID recognized "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message."^[97] 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.^[98] Writes Johnson in the foreward to Creation, Evolution, & Modern Science (2000) "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 ID proponents are theistic or motivated by religious fervor, the majority of the principal ID 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.

At the "Research and Progress in Intelligent Design" (RAPID) conference held in 2002, at Biola, William A. Dembski in his keynote address, 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 been the "Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture" until 2002. 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 confirms this criticism and 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" [99] called by Reverend D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries Johson gave a speach called How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won [100]. In it he sums up the theological and epistelogical underpinnings of intelligent design and its strategy for winning the battle: "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." He goes on to state: "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 the 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 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 regional and state schoolboards, and consequently the courts when those campaigns to include ID or weaken evolution in the science curricula of public schools are challenged on First Amendment grounds. Intelligent design proponents currently are defending the constitutionality of presenting intelligent design as a scientific alternative to evolution in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

On 1 August 2005, during a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, President 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 "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "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."

Participants and themes central to the movement

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 [101] to appeal to a broader, a more secular audience. It hopes to accomplish this by using less overtly theistic messages and language [102]. 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." [103][104] Until 1995, Ahmanson sat on the board of the Christian reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation [105].

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 inadvertently 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 ID movement argue that the wedge document and strategy demonstrate that the ID 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." [106]

In 1992 Johnson commented:

"The objective (of the Wedge Strategy) is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'" [107] "Darwinism: Science or Philosophy"

Phillip E. 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." pg. 91-92, "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds" Phillip Johnson, 1997

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 ID 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, ID 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, ID 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" [108].

Faith versus science

Intelligent design's supporters and critics often portray the debate as between science and faith. These advocates imply that to support ID is to support belief in higher power(s), while to oppose ID is to oppose belief in higher power(s). One example is a statement from Focus on the Family, which, holds that "Secularists have dismissed Christianity as an acceptable intellectual option." [109] and that "Intelligent Design" 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 ID have not only questioned whether ID is good science, but also whether it is good theology. The Pope John Paul II issued the following statement [110] in an address entitled "Truth cannot contradict Truth":

"The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again of aesthetic and religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator's plans."

Here, Pope John Paul II suggests that science, philosophy and theology are not at odds, merely responsible for different sections of human knowledge.

Intelligent design movement in the political arena

Intelligent design proponents have employed a number of specific strategies and tactics in their furtherance of their goals. These range from attempts at the state level to undermine or remove altogether the presence of evolutionary theory from the public school classroom, to having the federal government mandate the teaching of intelligent design, to 'stacking' municipal, county and state school boards with ID proponents. The Discovery Institute has been a significant player in many of these cases, providing a range of support from material assistance to federal, state and regional elected representatives in the drafting of bills to supporting and advising individual parents confronting their school boards, to lobbying for its Teach the Controversy campaign. According to the Center for Science and Culture's weblog [111], at least 10 state legislatures are now considering legislation regarding how evolution is taught.

1999 & 2005 Kansas Board of Education

In 1999 the Kansas Board of Education voted to delete references to evolution from Kansas science standards. This had the net effect of removing the teaching of evolution from the state's science curriculum. The move angered the mainstream science community who predicted a resulting loss of rigor and quality in science education. The Board's decision was in part influenced by the presence of recently elected conservative Christians to the board and heavy lobbying by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, then known as the "Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture" (CRSC). Subsequent elections altered the membership of the school board and led to renewed backing for evolution instruction in 2001.

Elections in 2004 gave religious conservatives a 6-4 majority and the board in 2005 was finalizing new science standards which will guide teachers about how and what to teach students. A proposal being pushed by conservatives and ID proponents and supported by the Center for Science and Culture is similar to that it lobbied for to the Ohio Board of Education in 2002. It would not eliminate evolution entirely from instruction, nor would it require creationism be taught, but it would encourage teachers to discuss various viewpoints and eliminate core evolution claims as required curriculum.

2000 Congressional briefing

In 2000, the leading ID proponents operating through the Discovery Institute held a congressional briefing in Washington, D.C., to promote ID to lawmakers. Sen. Rick Santorum was (and continues to be) one of ID's most vocal supporters. One result of this briefing was that Sen. Santorum inserted pro-ID language into the No Child Left Behind bill calling for students to be taught why evolution "generates so much continuing controversy," an assertion heavily promoted by the Discovery Institute.

2001 Santorum Amendment

One of the initial successes for the movement was the inclusion of the favorable language known as the Santorum Amendment in the Conference Report of the federal No Child Left Behind education act passed in 2001. The inclusion of the amendment in the Act was heavily lobbied for by the Discovery Institute, which also participated in the drafting of the original language of the amendment. Although only a modified form of the amendment appeared in the conference report, the amendment itself was not included in the legislation that President George W. Bush signed.

It was not the full victory intelligent design proponents had hoped for because conference reports do not carry the weight of law and are merely explanatory in nature [112]. Nonetheless, an email newsletter by the Discovery Institute contained the sentence "Undoubtedly this will change the face of the debate over the theories of evolution and intelligent design in America...It also seems that the Darwinian monopoly on public science education, and perhaps the biological sciences in general, is ending" and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas cited the amendment as vindicating the 1999 Kansas school board decision (since overturned) to eliminate evolution questions from State tests. Consistent with the Wedge strategy its inclusion in the conference report is constantly cited by the Discovery Institute and other ID supporters as providing federal sanction for intelligent design. Reps. John Boehner and Steve Chabot of Ohio and Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, along with Santorum, have signed letters supporting the Discovery Institute's interpretation of the Santorum amendment. One of those letters was sent to the president and vice-president of the Ohio Board of Education in 2002; the other was sent to the Texas Board of Education in 2003, see below.

2001 Louisiana, House Bill 1286

This bill directs that the state shall not print or distribute any material containing claims known to be false or fraudulent. It also specifically provides for any citizen to be able to sue the state using the provisions of this bill. Text of LA HB1286 (PDF)

2001 Michigan, House Bill 4382

A bill proposed by Rep. Gosselin (House Bill 4382) which sought to amend 1976 PA 451, "The revised school code". The bill directed that In the science standards, all references to "evolution" and "how species change through time" would be modified to indicate that this is an unproven theory, by adding the phrase "all students will explain the competing theories of evolution and natural selection based on random mutation and the theory that life is the result of the purposeful, intelligent design of a creator." The bill also directed that in the science standards for middle and high school, all references to "evolution" and "natural selection" would be modified to indicate that these are unproven theories, by adding the phrase "describe how life may be the result of the purposeful, intelligent design of a creator." And in the science standards for middle and high school, the bill directed all references to "evolution" and "natural selection" would be modified to indicate that these are unproven theories, by adding the phrase "explain the competing theories of evolution and natural selection based on random mutation and the theory that life is the result of the purposeful, intelligent design of a creator." The bill also would have required that the recommended model core academic curriculum content standards that are developed and periodically updated by the state board comply with these provisions. Also under the bill the State Board would have been required to make these revisions as soon as practicable after the effective date of the bill, if it had been enacted. Text of of HB4382 (PDF)

2001 Georgia, House Bill 391

This bill directed teachers to distinguish between "philosophical materialism" and "authentic science", and extended to teachers the "right" to present and critique any scientific theory of the origins or life or species. Failed in committee. Text of [113]

2001 West Virginia, House Bill 2554

An "equal-time" bill, described in its title as "Providing for the teaching of creation science and evolution science on an equal basis in the public schools." HB2554 was introduced in the state legislature in February 2001, and died in committee.

2001 Kanawha County, West Virginia

In February 2001 a parent filed a complaint with the Kanawha County Board of Education claiming that science textbooks used there contain "false and fraudulent" information about evolution. The parent and 30 cosigners opposed to evolution asserted that the textbooks are in violation of state law because they are outdated or inaccurate. As evidence that textbooks which include evolution are flawed, they cited Jonathan Well's of the Discovery Institute book Icons of Evolution. The board rejected the claim.

2001 Arkansas, House Bill 2548

In 2001 Representative Jim Holt proposed a bill in the Arkansas legislature that would make it illegal for the state or any of its agencies to use state funds to purchase materials that contained false or fraudulent claims. A list of such claims was provided in the text of House Bill 2548 (HB2548). Much of the text of the examples given was either quoted verbatim from anti-evolutionary sources or was a close paraphrase of such materials. The sources cited in the bill included the cartoon tract, "Big Daddy?"[114] published by Jack Chick. Critics of the bill alleged that many of the "examples" selected were themselves either false or misleading. March 21, 2001, Representative Holt invited his friend and controversial anti-evolutionist Kent Hovind to testify before a committee of the Arkansas Legislature in support of the bill. In April 2001 a motion was passed to postpone HB 2548 indefinitely for study during the interim by the Joint Interim Committee on Education. Text of HB2548 (PDF)

2001 Montana, House Bill 588

House Bill 588 by Rep. Joe Balyeat, R-Bozeman, was presented as an "objectivity in science education" measure, and would have directed the approval of evolution and creationism materials by an appointed six-member committee. The bill failed in committee.

2001 Pennsylvania Board of Education

In July 2001 the Pennsylvania Board of Education gave final approval to revised science standards. Language in early versions of the standards sought to raise questions about the status of evolution as science and a theory. Science educators and other Pennsylvania citizens expressed concern that the proposed standards might open the way to teaching creationism in science classes because of ambiguous or unclear wording. However, the final standards do not contain the contested language and the standards were approved by the legislature.

2002 Ohio Board of Education

In March 2002 Ohio held hearings on revising the state science standards. The Discovery Institute's Stephen C. Meyer proposed to the Ohio Board of Education a set of standards that included intelligent design and a model lesson plan that featured intelligent design prominently in its curricula [115] [116]. Concurrently, a factitious redefinition of science to include God was proposed to the Ohio legislature, so that the legislature would then be able to get behind the set of standards that included intelligent design. The Discovery Institute's model lesson plan was adopted in part by the state for Ohio science teachers in October 2002, though the Board advised that the science standards do "not mandate the teaching or testing of intelligent design" [117]. This was touted as a significant victory by the Discovery Institute [118].

2002 Cobb County, Georgia

In 2002 the Cobb County school board required stickers placed in a science textbook. Stating that evolution was "a theory, not a fact," the sticker was placed in the ninth-grade biology text after parents complained to the Cobb County school board that alternative ideas about the origin of life were not presented. A group of parents represented by the American Civil Liberties Union sued the school board, claiming the stickers violate the separation of church and state. The trial was resolved in January 2005 when U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled the sticker was unconstitutional. In the verdict he wrote, "By denigrating evolution, the school board appears to be endorsing the well-known prevailing alternative theory, creationism or variations thereof, even though the sticker does not specifically reference any alternative theories."

2003 Texas State Board of Education, textbook controversy

In 2003 The Texas State Board of Education was considering 11 different textbooks for inclusion in the 2004-2005 school year. Fellows of the Discovery Institute testified to the Board that whatever textbooks are adopted should introduce statements on the "weaknesses of the theory of evolution" and include "competing theories, such as intelligent design." The DI had strong interest in the Texas debate because the state is the second largest purchaser of textbooks in the country. Thus any changes publishers make to cater to the state would likely be seen elsewhere.

2005 Pennsylvania, House Bill 1007

On March 16, 2005, a bill, HB 1007, promoting "intelligent design" creationism was introduced in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and referred to the Education Committee. If enacted, HB 1007 would add a section ("Teaching Theories on the Origin of Man and Earth") to the Public School Code of 1949. That new section would allow school boards to add "intelligent design" to any curriculum containing evolution and allow teachers to use, subject to the approval of the board, "supporting evidence deemed necessary for instruction on the theory of intelligent design." The term "intelligent design" is not defined in the bill. Presumably attempting to prevent a challenge to its constitutionality, HB 1007 explicitly states, "When providing supporting evidence on the theory of intelligent design, no teacher in a public school may stress any particular denominational, sectarian or religious belief." Text of HB 1007

June 2005 John G. West and Seth Cooper of the Discovery Institute wrote a letter to Pennsylvania Representative Jess M. Stairs urging Stairs and the Pennsylvania legislature not to pass HB1007. This reflects a shift in the strategy of the ID proponents. Anticipating legal challenges to the constitutionality of laws that mandate teaching of intelligent design, proponents feel including ID content in science curricula under the guise of "scientific criticisms" or "evidence against evolution," within the pretense of "teaching the controversy" is a more defensible strategy.

2005/2004 Dover, Pennsylvania Board of Education

In 2004 the Dover, Pennsylvania Board of Education passed a resolution requiring 9th grade biology teachers to read a statement that the Pennsylvania Academic Standards require the teaching of evolution, but then the statement proceeds to seed doubts about evolution's validity and directs students to study ID and the ID textbook Of Pandas and People as an alternative. Three of the school board members in the minority of the vote resigned in protest, and science teachers in the district refused to read the statement to their ninth-grade students, citing the Pennsylvania code of education, which states that teachers cannot present information they believe to be false. Instead, the statement was read to students by a school administrator.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of eleven parents contending that the school board policy violates the First Amendment. A hearing (Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District) in Federal District Court was scheduled for September 2005.

The school board claims there are "gaps" in evolution, which it emphasizes is a theory rather than established fact, and that students have a right to consider other views on the origins of life. The school board claims it does not teach intelligent design but simply makes students aware of its existence as an alternative to evolution. It denies intelligent design is "religion in disguise," despite being represented in court by the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian nonprofit which says it uses litigation to promote "the religious freedom of Christians and time-honored family values."

The Discovery Institute's John West said the case displayed the ACLU's "Orwellian" effort to stifle scientific discourse and objected to the issue being decided in court. "It's a disturbing prospect that the outcome of this lawsuit could be that the court will try to tell scientists what is legitimate scientific inquiry and what is not," West said. "That is a flagrant assault on free speech." Opponents, represented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Association of Biology Teachers contend that his statement is not just ironic, but hypocritical, considering that the Discovery Institute not only tries to tell scientists and academics what is legitimate scientific inquiry and what is not (in disputing philosophical naturalism), but as a matter of policy seeks to redefine what constitutes legitimate science.

In May, 2005, the publisher of Of Pandas and People, the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), filed a motion seeking to intervene in the case. FTE argued that a ruling that "intelligent design" was religious would have severe financial consequences, citing possible losses in the neighborhood of half a million dollars. By intervening, FTE would have become a co-defendant with the Dover Area School Board, and able to bring its own lawyers and expert witnesses to the case. FTE's president Jon Buell implied that if allowed to intervene, FTE would bring William A. Dembski and Stephen C. Meyer as expert witnesses. In his decision on the motion, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that FTE was not entitled to intervene in the case because its motion to intervene was not timely, describing FTE's excuses for not trying to become involved earlier as "both unavailing and disingenuous." Judge Jones also held that FTE failed to demonstrate that it has "a significantly protectable interest in the litigation warranting intervention as a party" and that its interests will not be adequately represented by the defendants.

Intelligent design movement in the public arena

ID in higher education

The cultivation of support for ID and its social and political agenda in higher education is a very active part of Discovery Institute's strategy. The Discovery Institute claims to have 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, Henry Schaefer III of the University of Georgia, Robert Koons and J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas at Austin, and Guillermo Gonzalez of Iowa State. Prominent academics who, although not officially associated with the Discovery Institute, sympathize with its aims, include Alvin Plantinga at Notre Dame and Frank Tipler at Tulane University.

Discovery Institute-recommended curricula benefits from special status at number of religious schools. Biola University and Oklahoma Baptist University are listed on the Access Research Network website as "ID Colleges." In addition, the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center, which began as a student organization at the University of California, San Diego, helps establish student IDEA clubs on university and high school campuses. 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 ID to university campuses through lectures by ID leaders Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe and others. This activity takes place outside university science departments.

Several public universities, including the University of California at Berkeley and the University of New Mexico have had ID courses slipped past academic scrutiny by sympathetic faculty, often as freshman seminars, honors courses and other courses outside required curricula in which instructors have wider latitude regarding course content. Critics of the movement allege this subverts the purpose of academic standards and raises the question of professional competence of the instructors; students should not pay the price for the negligence of instructors who are either not qualified to teach classes purporting to be about science or have subordinated scientific integrity to personal religious loyalties.

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 abscence of intelligent design scientific research programs, Dembski recently 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 ID movement's attempts to weaken or undermine the teaching of evolution as "inimical to principles of academic freedom." [119]

The issue of David Horowitz's proposed academic bill of rights has been accepted by the Discovery Institute as a means to integrating ID into the academy.

The authors of some college biology textbooks (with major mainstream textbook publishers) may find that someone at the publisher has linked the evolution chapters of a book's website to antievolution websites, so that the authors appear to support this point of view. Despite repeated requests from the authors to remove the links, this may continue, or new links may appear after a few months.

The Discovery Institute organizes a number of on-campus intelligent design conferences across the country for students. In the past, these were generally held at Christian universities and often sponsored by the administration or other faculty as an official university function. Recently though, Yale and the University of San Francisco have seen intelligent design 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 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, a ministry calling itself the Rivendell Institute for Christian Thought and Learning.

2005 Discovery Institute/Bryan Leonard doctoral thesis controversy

In 2005 Bryan Leonard was a graduate student at Ohio State University, hoping to receive his PhD in Science Education. He is currently a high school biology teacher at Hilliard Davidson High School in a Columbus suburb. His doctoral dissertation is about using intelligent design as a tool for teaching evolution. Leonard, a well-known intelligent design movement proponent, had testified in favor of teaching intelligent design in the 2005 Kansas evolution hearings and was an appointee to the Ohio State Board of Education's model curriculum-writing committee, where, in 2004 he worked with the Discovery Institute staff to author the intelligent design-oriented model lesson plan adopted by the Ohio State Board of Education that year.

The controversy has revolved around two issues: One involves violations of OSU policies concerning the make-up of a thesis committee in order to avoid a serious evaluation of Leonard's dissertation, the other involves possible violations of the guidelines for using human subjects in research.

Ohio State University allows students to particpate in selecting the make-up of their thesis committees. It is alleged that Leonard tried to hand pick two Ohio State University faculty members who are intelligent design proponents and activists but outside of the required area of expertise, science education. In doing so, he seems to have violated OSU's clearly stated guidelines for the make-up of a thesis committee [120]. The two senior tenured members of the committee, DiSilvestro and Needham, have both publicly associated themselves with the intelligent design movement in Ohio and elsewhere. DiSilvestro was contact person for the Ohio Intelligent Design Movement’s 52 Ohio Scientists Call for Academic Freedom on Darwin’s Theory petition, and Needham was a signer. Additionally, DiSilvestro was an original signer of the Discovery Institute’s A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism statement and testified for the Intelligent Design Network at the 2005 Kansas evolution hearings, as did Leonard[121]. Needham has testified in support of IDC proposals before the Ohio State Board of Education.

The Discovery Institute's defense and support of Leonard in the form of counsel and public relations has itself raised some controversy. The Institute has been accused of gaming the system and misrepresenting the issues and facts of the controversy.

2003 PBS video controversy

The Discovery Institute succeeded in marketing through PBS the creationist video Unlocking the Mystery of Life as a science film in its online store for two years. The video, which the Discovery Institutes describes as "a science program exploring what DNA reveals about the origin of life" and claims shows that "In almost every scientific discipline there is new found evidence that supports the theory of intelligent design" takes a pro-ID slant. Critics alleged the video contained poor scholarship and misrepresented and omitted key scientific evidence, and misrepresented the stature and status of the experts and scientists interviewed; only several were bona fide scientists at mainstream universities. Due to complaints by unsuspecting customers of being mislead, PBS has stopped selling the video. This video, along with The Privileged Planet, center of the Smithsonian Smithsonian donation controversy, is also a production of Illustra Media, a front group for the creationist production company Discovery Media.[122] The film was written and directed by Wayne P. Allen, who also directed Prophecies of the Passion, Journeys to the Edge of Creation: The Milky Way & Beyond and Journeys to the Edge of Creation: Our Solar System

2005 Smithsonian donation controversy

In May 2005 the Discovery Institute donated $16,000 to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and by museum policy, this minimum donation allowed them to celebrate their donation inside the museum in a gathering. The Discovery Institute decided to screen a film entitled The Privileged Planet,based on the book The Privileged Planet,written by two senior fellows of the Discovery Institute. Notably, the video was also a production of Illustra Media, which has been identified as front for a creationist production company. Upon further review, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History determined that the content of the video was inconsistent with the scientific research of the institution. They therefore refunded the $16,000, clearly denied any endorsement of the content of the video or of the Discovery Institute, and allowed the film to be shown in the museum as per the original agreement. Recent editorials have decried as naïve and negligent the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's failure to identify the Discovery Institute as a creationist organization, exclude the video with its review process in the first place, and identify the entire incident as an example of the Wedge Strategy in action.

2005 University of California at Berkeley controversy

In October 2005, the University of California at Berkeley was sued for running a website for school teachers called Understanding Evolution. The lawsuit has been brought by Jeanne Caldwell, whose husband, Larry Caldwell, is the founder of an anti-evolution group called Quality Science Education for All. The Caldwells argue that Berkeley was "taking a position on evolution and attempting to persuade minor students to accept that position." Michael R. Smith, the assistant chancellor for legal affairs at Berkeley, said that the university would defend the lawsuit "with vigor and enthusiasm."

Criticisms of the movement

Intellectual dishonesty, in the form of misleading impressions created the use of rhetoric, intentional ambiguity, and misrepresented evidence is one of the most common criticisms of the movement and its leadership. 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 movement leaders, and the Discovery Institute specifically, 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, when 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 a statement reading, "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. During controversies over evolution education in Georgia, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas, similarly confusing lists of local scientists were circulated.

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 refering 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 for only the institute; individual intelligent 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 we 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."

External links

The Wedge at Work: How Intelligent Design Creationism Is Wedging Its Way into the Cultural and Academic Mainstream Chapter 1 of the book Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics by Barbara Forrest, Ph.D. MIT Press, 2001
Does "Intelligent Design" Threaten the Definition of Science? John Roach. National Geographic News. April 27, 2005
The Newest Evolution of Creationism Intelligent design is about politics and religion, not science. Barbara Forrest Ph.D. From Natural History, April, 2002, page 80
"Inferior Design" Chris Mooney, The American Prospect Online, 10 August 2005.
Show Me the Science Daniel C. Dennett. At Tufts University, tufts.edu. An editorial originally published in the New York Times. 28 August 2005
Should Creationism Be Taught in the Public Schools? (PDF) Robert T. Pennock. March 2002
* Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive Jody Wilgoren. Originally published in the The New York Times. 21 August 2005
Intelligent design opponents invoke US constitution. Donald MacLeod, The Guardian, 18 October 2005.
Devolution - Why intelligent design isn’t. H. Allen Orr. Annals of Science. New York Times May 2005

Reference notes

^ From a 1999 Discovery Institute fundraising pamphlet. Cited in Handley P. Evolution or design debate heats up. The Times of Oman, 7 March 2005.
^ Patricia O’Connell Killen, a religion professor at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma whose work centers around the regional religious identity of the Pacific Northwest, recently wrote that "religiously inspired think tanks such as the conservative evangelical Discovery Institute" are part of the "religious landscape" of that area. [123]
^ "A theistic realist assumes that the universe and all its creatures were brought into existence for a purpose by God. Theistic realists expect this "fact" of creation to have empirical, observable consequences that are different from the consequences one would observe if the universe were the product of nonrational causes . . . . God always has the option of working through regular secondary mechanisms, and we observe such mechanisms frequently. On the other hand, many important questions—including the origin of genetic information and human consciousness—may not be explicable in terms of unintelligent causes, just as a computer or a book cannot be explained that way." Phillip Johnson. Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education. 1995. InterVarsity Press pg. 208-209.
^ "...the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion. ...This is not to say that the biblical issues are unimportant; the point is rather that the time to address them will be after we have separated materialist prejudice from scientific fact." Phillip Johnson. "The Wedge", Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. July/August 1999.
^ "Intelligent Design is an intellectual movement, and the Wedge strategy stops working when we are seen as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message. ... The evangelists do what they do very well, and I hope our work opens up for them some doors that have been closed." Phillip Johnson. "Keeping the Darwinists Honest", an interview with Phillip Johnson. In Citizen Magazine. April 1999.

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Intelligent design

Intelligent Design in summary

Origins of the concept

Religion and leading ID proponents

Defining Intelligent Design as science

ID as a movement

Intelligent design debate

ID concepts

Irreducible complexity

Criticism

Specified complexity

Criticism

Fine-tuned universe

Criticism

Additional criticisms of ID

Scientific peer review

Hypotheses about the designer or designers

"What (or who) designed the designer?"

Argument from ignorance

Intelligence, as an observable quality, is poorly defined

See also

Further reading

External links

Notes and references

ID in Fiction

Adding Intelligent Design as a Movement, which is a main article in Wikipedia, beyond "ID as a Movement in the original ID article

Origin of the movement

ID as a movement

Participants and themes central to the movement

The Center for Science and Culture

The Wedge strategy

Teach the Controversy

Faith versus science

Intelligent design movement in the political arena

1999 & 2005 Kansas Board of Education

2000 Congressional briefing

2001 Santorum Amendment

2001 Louisiana, House Bill 1286

2001 Michigan, House Bill 4382

2001 Georgia, House Bill 391

2001 West Virginia, House Bill 2554

2001 Kanawha County, West Virginia

2001 Arkansas, House Bill 2548

2001 Montana, House Bill 588

2001 Pennsylvania Board of Education

2002 Ohio Board of Education

2002 Cobb County, Georgia

2003 Texas State Board of Education, textbook controversy

2005 Pennsylvania, House Bill 1007

2005/2004 Dover, Pennsylvania Board of Education

Intelligent design movement in the public arena

ID in higher education

2005 Discovery Institute/Bryan Leonard doctoral thesis controversy

2003 PBS video controversy

2005 Smithsonian donation controversy

2005 University of California at Berkeley controversy

Criticisms of the movement

External links

Reference notes

Credits