Intelligent Design Theory: The Latest Version of Creationism
"ID" theory is the latest version of creationism to appear at the end of the 20th century. This theory holds that complex, information-rich biological structures cannot emerge by means of natural forces, but can only be manifested through the mediation of some supernatural intelligent force. The use of the term "intelligent" design here is intended to avoid high-profile terminology used by traditional creationism—such as "God," "Deity," or "Creation"—in order to bypass legal obstacles regarding entry into the field of public education. The ID movement was initiated in the 1990s by Philip Johnson, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley; its research hub is the unofficial "Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture" (shortened to CRSC) of the Discovery Institute, located in Seattle, Washington. ID theory attempts to unite various forms of creationism, demanding that internal differences be set aside to oppose their common enemy—evolution—under the single slogan of "Creation" or "Design." As human history entered the 1990s, the ID movement became the representative of creationism and began to lead the struggle against evolution.
I. The ID Movement and its "Wedge" Strategy
(1) The Origins of the ID Movement
According to Barbara Forrest [1], an American philosopher and one of the primary leaders opposing the ID movement, this movement did not arise from a scientific dilemma, but rather from Johnson's personal confusion following his divorce. This failed marriage led Johnson to embrace the religious conviction of being a "born-again" Christian. Therefore, in a certain sense, the Wedge movement is an adjunct to a religious conversion in Johnson’s life. In Johnson's own explanation, he stated:
Marriage and family life had shattered for me, and despite achieving a degree of academic success, I had gained a meaningless life, leading me... at the energetic age of 38, to surrender myself to Christ. This awakened a particular level of intellectual interest in researching why the world of knowledge is always dominated by the ideas of naturalism and agnosticism. [2]
Nancy Pearcey, a colleague of Johnson, also remarked:
Phillip Johnson has politically led and molded this movement, proposing what he calls the "ID" movement. Johnson is a law professor at UC Berkeley who did this because, stimulated by his failed marriage, he converted to Christianity in mid-life. [3]
Johnson published his work Darwin on Trial in 1991, raising the curtain on the ID movement. In 1999, the CRSC published its manifesto:
The consequences of the cultural success of this materialism have been destructive. Materialism denies the existence of objective moral standards, claiming that environment determines our behavior and beliefs. This moral relativism has been uncritically adopted by many social sciences and remains the basis of much of modern economics, political science, psychology, and sociology. By asserting that human thought and behavior are controlled by our biology and environment, materialism similarly undermines individual responsibility. The results are evident in modern criminal trials, product liability regulation, and welfare. Within the materialistic framework of these social matters, all people are perpetual victims; no one can be held properly responsible for his or her actions. The goal of the CRSC is nothing less than to strive to overthrow this materialism and its legacy. Its research center seeks to show how new developments in biology, physics, and cognitive science challenge scientific materialism and have reopened the doors to a broad theistic understanding of nature. The center awards its members for conducting original research, holding conferences, and becoming the "belief-makers" for the prospect of life after materialism. [4]
(2) The "Wedge" Strategy of the ID Movement
For a long time, creationism was disseminated primarily through word of mouth or pamphlets within limited localities (such as churches). However, since the 1990s, the ID movement has used means of communication such as television, radio, video tapes, and the Internet to engage in grand-scale hype. One could confidently say that creationism's influence in institutions of higher education was once negligible, as it was primarily taught by pastors in churches; now, however, certain members of the ID movement have secured important positions in universities or colleges and are leading the work of attacking evolution. Their academic credentials and social resources allow them easy access to broad public forums. Entry into higher education institutions is seen as the mark of their new starting point; this is the "Wedge" strategy by which creationism intervenes in mainstream academia.
Johnson declared:
Throughout the 20th century, Christianity has played a defensive role... to protect what they have, to protect as much as they could. They have now launched an offensive campaign... We are not asking to turn the tide; what we can do is something entirely different. We are attempting to enter the enemy's territory, their core, and detonate their arsenal. In this metaphor, what is their arsenal? It is their prejudice toward creation. [5]
If we understand our era, we will know that we should acknowledge God's world by challenging the dominance of naturalism and materialism in the world of the mind. Relying on our many friends, I have proposed a strategy for carrying out this work... we call it the "Wedge." [6]
In this passage, Johnson describes the "Wedge" strategy for advancing the ID movement. In his work Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, Johnson speaks openly about the Wedge strategy: use a wedge to open a small hole first, and then split a giant log: "We call our strategy the 'Wedge.' A giant log seems like a solid mass, but a wedge can eventually be inserted into a crack, gradually tearing it open and finally splitting it apart. In this instance, the ideology of scientific materialism (often called naturalism by ID movement members) is clearly that stubborn log." [7]
The plan for ID’s wedge activities includes three steps: The first step is to establish research projects, including: (1) specialized paleontology research projects; (2) specialized molecular biology research projects; and (3) individual research grant programs. The second step is to manufacture public opinion, including (1) book promotion; (2) holding academic exchange conferences; (3) organizing apologetics lectures; (4) teacher training programs; (5) publishing editorials; (6) utilizing PBS or television; and (7) distributing promotional materials and publications. The third step is to engage in cultural confrontation and renewal, including: (1) holding academic and scientific challenge conferences; (2) establishing social science research grant programs to shift into the fields of social sciences and humanities; and (3) removing possible legal obstacles to entering secondary school classrooms.
Three important sponsoring organizations provided the CRSC with substantial research funds. It is estimated that by the year 2000, this center had received related sponsorships exceeding $1 million. Fieldstead & Co. began increasing its funding to the Discovery Institute in the summer of 1988, deciding to provide $300,000 annually thereafter. In 1999, the Maclellan Foundation provided $400,000 in funding, and the Stewardship Foundation agreed to provide the institute with $200,000 annually over the five-year period from 1999 to 2003. [8] According to Larry Witham in the Washington Times, all three of the aforementioned funds have "Christian backgrounds." Bruce Chapman, president of the ID movement, acknowledged this support: "We no longer worry about research funds. We believe certain ideas are destined to change the intellectual world (and future politics); otherwise, Fieldstead & Co., the Maclellan Foundation, and the Stewardship Foundation would not provide us with such substantial funding." [9]
By the year 2000, as its manifesto was elucidated in "Wedge" documents and backed by sufficient financial guarantees, these strategies began to be implemented and gained significant momentum. From having only four researchers at the beginning, the CRSC currently has 41 members, 13 of whom hold senior professional titles. With the October 1999 founding of the Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor University—led by CRSC members William Dembski and Bruce Gordon—the "Wedge" movement’s insertion into science has grown deeper and deeper.
However, Barbara Forrest used statistical methods to study literature in academic journals since 1997 and discovered that papers on ID as a biological theory do not exist. In the BIOSIS [2] and MEDLINE databases, she entered the keyword "intelligent design" and found four articles; only one was about ID, which was an article by Sahotra Sarkar in Philosophy of Science criticizing ID theory. Entering "design theory," 16 articles appeared in BIOSIS, but not one was related to ID creationism. In the online MEDLINE analysis and retrieval system, the keywords "intelligent design" and "design theory" yielded 14 articles, none of which were about ID creationism. Among the 61 articles for "intelligent design" found in SciSearch, all except four were related to industrial technology, engineering, computers, shipbuilding, and the like. Among those four, two were about intelligent design as a biological theory—specifically, the critique by Sahotra Sarkar and the rebuttal by Behe in the aforementioned journal Philosophy of Science. The other two were articles titled "Intelligent Design" in Geotimes and "Intelligent Design Theory Revisited" in Technology Review, neither of which explicitly treated ID as a biological theory.
Therefore, Forrest concluded:
This analysis shows that the ID "Wedge" movement's campaign to enter mainstream science has failed in its most important goal: scientific knowledge of intelligent design creationism and papers published in related scientific journals are notably lacking. Thus... none of the members of the CRSC have researched scientific evidence capable of supporting intelligent design theory. ... In all its activities attempting to strategically "wedge" into mainstream science, the work of the CRSC has completely failed. [10]
Despite the lack of success in the first stage of the "Wedge" strategy—the research stage—ID theorists prematurely began their second stage of "manufacturing public opinion" and third stage of "cultural confrontation and renewal." They sponsor "opinion-making conferences" and apologetics forums, publish books and editorials, and write textbooks for teachers to disseminate their ideas. They have established links with the media, such as the Washington Times, Books & Culture, and other conservative newspapers and magazines that regularly support them, and they lobby at various levels of American legislatures and boards of education.
In November 1996, Johnson and his assistants held a "Mere Creation" conference at Biola University, a Christian university in California. The proceedings of this conference, titled Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design, featured a preface by Henry Schaefer, a chemist at the University of Georgia, who clearly pointed out the goal of the meeting: This conference provided an opportunity for those scientists and scholars who reject materialism as the basis of scientific research to gather together, seeking a unified creationism within the framework of ID, and laying the foundation for the organizational development of ID in the United States. [11] As Scott Swanson wrote in his report on the conference for Christianity Today:
The burgeoning "ID" movement contends that Darwin's explanation of human origins is insufficient. This movement’s goal is to transition from the margins to the mainstream... The first major gathering of ID proponents took place in November [1998] at a conference at Biola University, a Christian university in California... As anticipated by this conference, ID is gaining a substantial following; the meeting was attended by people from over 160 academic societies across 98 universities, colleges, and organizations. {12}
(3) The Legal Struggle
To introduce ID into public school classrooms, the "CRSC" undertook actions aimed at eliminating relevant legal obstacles. David K. DeWolf, a law professor at Gonzaga University in Washington and a Senior Fellow at the CRSC; Stephen C. Meyer, a philosophy professor at Whitworth College; and Mark E. DeForrest (not a CRSC member) co-published the book Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook (1999). On its science education website, the CRSC claims, "Our curriculum will be legally permitted for instruction in public schools... stop the intimidation and suppression of classroom reform." {13} This approach of using legal means to change how the public and influential policymakers evaluate science is vital to their "wedge" strategy [3] for entering the field of education.
Prior to 1968, American creationism consistently attempted to prohibit the teaching of evolution in public secondary schools through statutes such as the 1925 Butler Act in Tennessee. For instance, Arkansas had an anti-evolution law passed by a popular vote in 1928. This statute prohibited any public school (or university) from teaching "the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals." In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the statute invalid because the "sole reason" why the teaching of evolution was made unlawful was that it was "deemed to conflict" with "a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis." The Court found that the statute "established a religion," which is precisely what the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits. Following the failure of attempts to prohibit the teaching of evolution through law, American creationists sought to give creation science and evolutionary theory equal instructional status in public secondary schools through "balanced treatment" laws. In 1981, Arkansas passed "Act 590." Reverend Bill McLean of Little Rock served as the plaintiff, and in 1982, Judge William Overton declared Act 590 invalid. This ruling was of great significance for subsequent court trials regarding creationism because it relied on a definitive definition of science to rule that "creation science" was not a science, but a religion.
The 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Edwards v. Aguillard stated: "The [Louisiana Creationism Act's] primary purpose [in requiring that 'creation science' be taught with evolution in public schools] was to change the public schools' science curriculum to provide persuasive advantage to a particular religious doctrine that rejects the factual basis of evolution in its entirety. Thus, the Act was designed either to promote the theory of creation science which embodies a particular religious tenet of a religious organization or to prohibit the teaching of a scientific theory because of its perceived conflict with a particular religious doctrine. In either case, the Act violates the First Amendment." After 1987, this ruling became the precedent for judges presiding over creationism cases in American courts.
In October 2004, the Dover Area School Board in the United States proposed a resolution requiring that "students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design." In November 2004, the board required that when evolution is taught in 9th-grade science classes, teachers must read a statement of approximately one minute to the students: explaining that evolution is not a "scientific fact" and that "intelligent design" is a theory of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's explanation. Eleven parents of students from Dover, Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit against this requirement. This led to the case Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. {14} This was a U.S. federal court case regarding a statement in public school curricula that intelligent design could serve as an alternative to evolutionary explanations for the origin of species. The plaintiffs successfully demonstrated that intelligent design theory is a form of creationism and that the Dover Area School Board's policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The judge’s ruling provoked significant reactions from both supporters and opponents. Due to the involvement of the book Of Pandas and People, this legal battle was also known as the "Panda Trial," echoing the "Monkey Trial" [4] of the similar 1925 Scopes case. Representing the plaintiffs were the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and the law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP. The defendants were represented by the Thomas More Law Center. The Foundation for Thought and Ethics, which originally published Of Pandas and People, also sought to join the defense but was subsequently denied.
Judge Jones’s final ruling was as follows:
The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy. With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we advocate that ID should any longer be an improper subject for study, debate and discussion. Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science curriculum... (p. 138)
II. Reflections on the ID Movement
With Judge Jones's ruling, the ID movement's attempt to "wedge" its way into public secondary education was declared institutionally bankrupt. However, this does not mean the conflict between ID theory and evolutionary theory has ended. While the emergence of the ID movement undoubtedly has complex social and cultural backgrounds, it is also closely linked to the proliferation of relativism in later philosophy of science.
Methodological naturalists generally assume that the world operates according to natural laws and that people can understand this world based on these laws; such understanding need not involve supernatural forces, such as God. Whether nature exists in a sense that is intervened upon by supernatural forces is not a question considered by methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism seeks to build a solid wall between science and religion. In the philosophy of science, methodological naturalism manifests as the problem of demarcation [5]. For centuries, philosophers of science have expended a great deal of energy on the problem of demarcating science from non-science, attempting to draw a sufficient and necessary boundary between the two, but all such efforts have failed.
Influenced by Anglo-American analytical philosophy, logical empiricism focuses only on general questions of scientific method, utilizing verification or falsification to distinguish science from non-science. The general method of the philosophy of science is itself a form of conceptual analysis, often accompanied by the reconstruction of methods and theories within formal languages and symbolic logic. The history of science is largely a history of cognition, focusing on the logical development of scientific theories themselves. The sociology of science focuses on the social functions and structures of science; despite certain disagreements, the general attitude toward science is one of natural realism.
Of course, there were also many unsettling factors threatening this effort to seek a scientific methodology: such as N.R. Hanson’s thesis on the theory-ladenness of observation, and Quine’s thesis on the underdetermination of theory by evidence. Yet, while acknowledging that all these unsettling factors were very severe, philosophers of science generally believed they could be transcended or avoided.
However, the publication of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions shattered the illusions of logical empiricism. Although Kuhn tells us that he personally did not intend to radically destroy the assertion that science is a rational enterprise, many readers of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions often overlooked its many subtle and ambiguous thoughts. They heard only one voice: science does not "progress" through the accumulation of well-confirmed truths, nor even through the discarding of falsified errors, but through revolutionary leaps [6] during cataclysmic processes.
Thereafter, the history of science was written by the victors; there were no objective standards for evidence, only incommensurable standards belonging to different paradigms. The success of a scientific revolution, like that of a political revolution, relied on propaganda, rhetoric, and the control of resources. A scientist’s shift in loyalty to a new paradigm was not a rational change of mind, but a religious conversion. After the conversion, things appeared so different to him that one could almost say he lived in "a different world." Following this, the "sociological turn" in the philosophy of science emerged—namely, the appearance of social constructivism. Social constructivism holds that science is, to a large extent or in its entirety, a matter of social interests, negotiation and consultation, or the creation of myths and the production of narrative inscriptions. Appeals to "facts," "evidence," or "rationality" are merely ideological lies used to mask the oppression of one group or another. According to this new orthodoxy, science not only lacks any special epistemological authority or unique rational method, but like all telos-driven "inquiry," it is indeed merely a form of politics. Consequently, from the 1970s onward, while scientists and many philosophers of science maintained an objectivist stance toward science, many historians of science and nearly all sociologists of science adopted a constructivist-colored position. Meanwhile, what puzzled philosophers of science most is that for the past twenty-odd years, the development of Science Studies has been almost entirely dominated by social constructivism.
Social constructivism carries a strong tinge of relativism, which directly provided an opportunity for creationism to emerge in the name of science and constituted the theoretical foundation of creation science. Creationists argue that science belongs to "paradigms": if natural science is the paradigm of the scientific community, then creation science is the paradigm of the biblical fundamentalist sect. The two are not only incommensurable but also possess equal status and equal rights. Evolutionary theory and creationism begin from premises with completely different meanings, articulate their own unique scientific paradigms, accept different fundamental values and beliefs, and construct conflicting worldviews. The conflict between science and religion thus becomes a battle for cultural authority in a free society; whoever wins will dominate society and culture. In short, from the perspective of social constructivism, this is not a struggle between fact and error, but a socio-cultural struggle based on different worldviews.
In his pioneering work on social constructivism, Knowledge and Social Imagery, David Bloor calls for a symmetrical treatment of science and religion. Bloor notes:
Is it not strange to specify science by means of a religious metaphor? Are they not both neutral principles? This metaphor is neither appropriate nor offensive. Those who find in science the paradigm of knowledge cannot commit themselves to religion having the same validity. Therefore we can expect them to view this comparison with loathing. This reaction may overlook a certain perspective, the aim of which is to compare two areas of social life and to point out that the same principles operate in both. This aim is neither to belittle one side or the other nor to entrap practitioners in these two fields. Religious behavior is established around the distinction between the sacred and the profane, and the various manifestations of this distinction are similar to the positions people often take toward science. This point of contact signifies that perhaps other insights concerning religion are also applicable. {16}
Therefore, Bloor insists that the symmetry principle [7] should be applied to study the relationship between religion and science. That is to say, there is no need to involve nature; one only needs to study the social causes of the polemics between science and religion to reveal the essence of such disputes. Within this framework, discourses of negotiation and rhetoric built upon faith, the operations of power as social symbolism, and the orientation of social interests all play key roles in defining the truth-claims of scientific and religious statements.
Consequently, in the book Darwin on Trial, Johnson also positions this debate at the level of worldviews. He regards the struggle for authority between evolution and creationism as a "clash of stories," arguing that the conflict between the two is a battle between two narratives. Both sides seek to capture the hearts and minds of the people, implying what constitutes the human good, how they should organize their social lives, and what their responsibilities are. These two stories have already persuaded thousands of listeners, many of whom work tirelessly to ensure their story gains a wider audience and exerts a greater influence on the lives of others. Each story reflects the fundamental values and beliefs of certain storytellers; they in fact reflect a larger-scale struggle hidden within contemporary American culture: "Leaders of science see themselves as locked in a desperate battle against religious fundamentalism, a label which tends to connote any belief that a Creator plays an active role in worldly affairs. These fundamentalisms are seen as a threat to liberalism... As the creation myth of scientific naturalism, [evolution] plays an indispensable ideological role in the battle against fundamentalism." {17}
In summarizing the significance of the debate between evolution and creationism, Kary Smout states: "The creation/evolution controversy is a struggle for cultural power, an example of a polemic of our generation. The recurring controversy over creation and evolution—concerning whose view is the self-evident truth and whose is deceptive sophistry—raises several very important questions. When America commits itself to humanity or to God, should our public schools teach a spirit of skeptical criticism or a trusting loyalty to some other ideal? When the answers of science and religion to specific questions conflict, should we obey science or religion? Or should we try to show that the answers of both have different meanings in different spheres? When we celebrate great achievements of the past, should we tell the stories of heroic scientists or of extraordinary events from the Bible?" {18}
Concluding Remarks
In the Western cultural context, science and religion are two completely different domains of human activity: science investigates nature, while religion governs the spiritual and moral life of humanity; the two are unrelated. If one party attempts to intervene in the other's domain, conflict inevitably breaks out. The three major conflicts between science and religion in the 20th century were rooted in the attempt of creationism to intervene in or replace evolution. There are many causes for this conflict, among which the current trend of postmodern relativism [8] permeating academic circles is especially worthy of our reflection. We believe that methodological naturalism cannot erect a solid wall between science and religion, while postmodern relativism has gone to another absurd extreme. The key issue is that both discuss the relationship between science and religion abstractly, detached from the concrete practice of science. Therefore, to identify the unscientific characteristics of creationism, one must contrast the practice of evolution with the practice of creation science. Only then can its true unscientific face be recognized, and a genuine demarcation between science and religion be achieved.