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Intelligent Design: the Latest Creationist Pseudo-Science

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Intelligent Design: the Latest Creationist Pseudo-Science © 2009, Dustin J. Penn III. Intelligent Design: The Latest Creationist Pseudo-Science "The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism… ID's backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID." - U.S. District Judge Jones, 20061 Summary Evolution is not only problematic for religious fundamentalists, it is also unpopular among many who dislike its implications that God is distant and even unnecessary. The rise of a new form of creationism, called "intelligent design" (ID), has been popular because it retains a belief in a divine creation of humans, while abandoning fundamentalists' notions that the universe was created in six days and the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.2 ID's central claim is that life is too complex to explain by chance, and can only be explained by an "intelligent designer." This is merely a restatement of the Teleological argument for the existence of God, popular during the 18th and 19th centuries and the basis for Natural Theology (see Section V.). In other words, ID advocates are creationists who have substituted the word "God" with "intelligent designer". Nevertheless, ID triggered a popular resurgence of creationism in the USA, and it has become a global movement. Creationists around the world have adopted the ID language in their efforts to introduce creationism into science classes. ID is a central part of more ambitious efforts to replace secular materialism with religious values.3 ID has recently collapsed as a viable strategy for creationists in the USA, however, because it has been tried in court and shown to be a non-scientific claim with religious objectives. This section provides an overview of the debates and controversies surrounding ID, which provide many revealing insights into creationists' opposition to evolution.3-6 Outline 1. The "Teach the Controversy" Strategy 2. The Dover Trial 3. ID: A Textbook Case of Repackaging Creationism as Science 4. Irreducible Complexity 5. The Design Inference 6. The Wedge Strategy: ID is a Trojan Horse Attack on Secularism 1. The "Teach the Controversy" Strategy One of the reasons that ID became so popular is that rather than trying to ban evolution, its advocates argue that ID and evolution should both be taught in schools (and let the students decide for themselves). In fact, the main slogan for promoting ID is "Teach the Controversy". The Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think-tank in Seattle, Washington, and the hub of the ID movement, first promoted this slogan. The proposal to teach both evolution and ID seems reasonable to many, Figure 1. Teaching intelli- including the former U.S. President, G.W. Bush. The "Teach the gent design. Controversy" campaign exploited the fact that most people do not realize that ID is religion rather than science, and do not understand why religion or other supernatural claims should not be taught as science (Figure 1). The following sections explain why ID is a religion and not science. 2. The Dover Trial In 2004, the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, required teachers to use an ID textbook in biology classes, called Of Pandas and People (see below). However, the teachers protested, and the students' parents filed a federal lawsuit against the school board (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District)7. After a lengthy trial in 2006, U.S. District Judge Jones ruled that the Dover school board's mandate was unconstitutional and "ID is not science" for the following reasons (which are explained below in more detail): ID violates the ground rules of science by relying upon supernatural rather than natural explanations. The central claim of ID, the argument for "irreducible complexity", is "a negative argument against evolution, not proof of intelligent design", and it is no different from the flawed arguments of so-called "creation science", which were shown to be religious in the 1980's. ID does not employ scientific research, and the expert testimony used to support ID has been refuted in many scientific, peer-reviewed studies. During the Dover trial, the school board's own witnesses testified that ID is inherently religious, and admitted that accepting ID as science requires changing the definition of science to include supernatural explanations. Furthermore, it was shown that the religious objectives of ID advocates are explicit in their popular books. Judge Jones concluded that ID is just re-labeled creationism with religious rather than scientific objectives, and he also pointed out that it is a deceptive tactic to introduce religion into public school science classrooms - and resulted in a waste of taxpayer's money.5 As a consequence of the Dover trial, ID has collapsed as a viable strategy in the USA. The trial also revealed some very interesting points about ID, and the following sections highlight some of the reasons that Judge Jones (as well as scientists and educators) conclude that ID is religious creationism and not science. 3. ID: A Textbook Case of Repackaging Creationism as Science The ID movement has been an attempt to masquerade religious creationism as science from its very conception. The ID movement began in the 1980's at a Christian think tank called the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) in Richardson, Texas. The president and founder of FTE, an ordained minister named Jon Buell, and his colleagues realized that using engineering terms rather than religious ones should help make creationism more sound scientific and respectable and help get it taught in public schools. FTE published a book called The Mystery of Life's Origins (1984; by C. Thaxton, W. Bradley, and R. Olsen) that argued that the origin of life cannot be explained by natural causes and requires a designer or intelligent agency. FTE then published another book, entitled Of Pandas and People (1989; by P. Davis and D. Kenyon, edited by C. Thaxton),8 as a textbook to be marketed to schools. Of Pandas and People was the first book to use the phrase "intelligent design" in its modern form, and by systematically changing the word "creationism" to "intelligent design" in the title and the text, FTE was able to market the book to public schools (Figure 2). Figure 2. Of Pandas The book Of Pandas and People originally began as an unpublished and People manuscript entitled "Creation Biology" (1983), which was changed to "Biology of Creation" (1986) and then "Of Pandas and People" (1987), which was published in 1989. The most recent edition is called "The Design of Life." "Creation" was dropped from the title, and suddenly in 1987, there were other interesting changes made in the text. Figure 3 shows how the words "creationism" and "creationist" (red) in the book were replaced with "intelligent design" (blue). A word processor was used to search and replace "creation" and "creationism" with "intelligent design"; "intelligent creator" was changed to "intelligent agency", and "creationists" was changed to "design proponents". In one case, the word "design proponent" was inserted into the middle of the original word "creationists," which Figure 3. Deception exposed became "design proponentists." It has been pointed out that this mistake provides evidence for the "missing link" connecting creationism to intelligent design. Amazingly, these changes in the text were made in 1987 - precisely after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that "creation science" is a religious doctrine that cannot be taught in public school science classes (Edwards v. Aguillard). Thus, ID was invented as an intentional strategy to re-label creationism so that creationists' textbooks could be marketed to public schools.9 4. Irreducible Complexity "Thus the creationist's favourite question 'What is the use of half an eye?' Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye…" - Richard Dawkins The central idea behind ID is the claim that many features of life show "irreducible complexity" that cannot be explained by natural selection. In one of the main books promoting ID, Darwin's Black Box (1996), Michael Behe argues that some molecular structures of organisms will not function without a minimal number of interacting components, and natural selection is incapable of explaining such complexity, and we must therefore seek an "intelligent" (divine) explanation.10 He points to several complex mechanisms, such as the flagella of bacteria, blood clotting mechanisms, and the immune system, as examples. After examining the evidence, and hearing testimony from expert witnesses from both sides, Judge Jones concluded that the argument for irreducible complexity is just a criticism of evolution rather than providing supporting evidence for intelligent design. Moreover, the argument for irreducible complexity can be ruled out by a massive amount of evidence, which ID advocates simply ignore (Figure 4). Figure 4 (a). Figure 4 (b). 5. The Design Inference ID is also based on the argument that life is too highly improbable to explain by chance, and therefore it provides evidence for intelligent design. William Dembski and other ID advocates call this argument the the Design Inference (see his 1998 book by this title). The "Design Inference" and "Irreducible Complexity" arguments, however, are both just reformulations of the age-old argument for the existence of God, called the "Argument of Design" (see Section V.A. Myth 6). ID advocates fail to understand that Darwin's theory of natural selection solved the Argument of Design as it provides an explanation for how the design-like properties of life can arise without an intelligent designer.
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