This is a paper I wrote about Intelligent Design for a rhetoric class last term. Cross-posted to atheism and antitheism .

On September 17, 2008, Professor Michael Reiss, the director of education at the Royal Society of London was asked for his resignation after he recently commented that 'intelligent design', “should be discussed in schools” (BBC). Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-Presidential candidate, has voiced her support for the inclusion of intelligent design curriculum in Alaska schools (Paulson). Meanwhile, the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank and the largest advocate for intelligent design in the U.S., has mounted court challenges in dozens of states in an attempt to get intelligent design taught in science classrooms. In the most recent court case, 2005's Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District, Judge John E. Jones III ruled that “an overwhelming number of scientists, as reflected by every scientific association that has spoken on the matter, have rejected the ID proponents’ challenge to evolution.” The Judge further stated that, “we find that ID is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community. ID, as noted, is grounded in theology, not science.... [I]t still has utterly no place in a science curriculum” (84-89). Yet despite this devastating ruling a recent poll suggests that 55% of Americans would like intelligent design taught side by side with evolution in schools (Harris). What is intelligent design? Why do so many Americans think it should be taught in science class rooms?
According to the Discovery Institute's website, “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). It is fair to use this definition as a working model of what ID is, since it was the Discovery Institute that pioneered the theory in 1994 and has been funding the push to include ID in public schools ever since (Wallis). The intelligent design argument is similar to the teleological argument for God, as stated most succinctly in the Blind Watchmaker analogy. The analogy, first made famous by William Paley who put forth the idea in 1802, states that if a pocket watch were to wash up on the shores of a sandy beach it would be obvious to any human that discovered it that an intelligent person had designed the watch. Life, and most particularly human life, is too complex to have come from natural processes. Like the pocket watch it must have come from somewhere. Paley concluded that someone must have designed life and that Designer was God.
This belief held sway until Darwin's theory explained how life evolved through a series of natural selections, with no supernatural processes needed. Evolution is now almost universally believed by scientists to be the best and most elegant explanation for the origin of life. However, intelligent design borrows from the meat of Paley's theory, while carefully making no mention of God as the Intelligent Designer. Many scientists are quick to point out that the argument for intelligent design itself leads to a supernatural conclusion, even without the direct mention of a Designer, and it is thus dismissed by most scientists as simply unscientific. Nevertheless, ID has set itself up as a theory in competition with evolution and has demanded entrance into public schools.
Phillip E. Johnson, co-founder of the Discovery Institute and father of the modern ID movement calls it “teaching the controversy.” This strategy, introduced in 2002, highlights perceived flaws in evolutionary theory and offers ID as the only scientific alternative to Darwin's theory. Then proponents of ID can claim that their theory should be taught alongside, and sometimes in lieu of, evolution. This scheme is part of a larger goal outlined in the Discovery Institute's infamous Wedge Document. The document outlines the Institute's strategy to “insert religion into public schools as the first step towards returning American culture to a pre-scientific state that accepts religious, not scientific, explanations for natural phenomena” (Timeline). While the Discovery Institute denies that they are interested in setting up a theocracy, they readily admit that they are against what they call “scientific materialism”, that is, the idea that humans are animals created by evolutionary process. Part of the Wedge document, quoted from the Discovery Institute's own website, states that, “ this cardinal idea [that humans were created in the image of God] came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. Discovery Institute’s Center... seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies” (Wedge 6). Thus, even the Discovery Institute admits that ID has an agenda: the “overthrow” of Darwin's theory of evolution and the replacement of it with “the proposition that human beings are created in the image of God” (Wedge 5).
Such an agenda is not only unscientific, it is blatantly theocratic. To merely state that “human beings are created in the image of God” is to start at the conclusion of the argument and then hunt for evidence to support it. Real science is achieved through careful observation of natural phenomenon, the gathering of evidence and the positing of a theory. If any evidence is shown to refute the theory then the theory must be rejected and the whole process started over. Not so in intelligent design. The Wedge document shows that advocates of ID start with their theory, that Darwin is wrong and that humans were created “in the image of God” and then try to find evidence to support it. This method completely contravenes the scientific method. Worse, it sets forth a theological, rather than a scientific, proposition. Which God created humans? If humans are created in God's image then why is there so much evil in the world? Did God intend for the world to be this way? Such questions are not scientific questions. They belong to the realm of philosophy and religion. They simply have no place in a scientific theory.
Nevertheless, advocates of intelligent design insist that their assertions are on par with Darwinism and should be taught in public schools. To achieve this goal, the Discovery Institute has begun to lobby county and state boards of education to enact policies that would cripple or remove the teaching of evolution from public schools by portraying it as “controversial” or “in crisis” (People). Science groups say nothing could be further from the truth. The American Association of University Professors calls the push to include ID in school curriculum “deplorable” (Faculty) and the United States Academy of Sciences states “Creationism, Intelligent Design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science” (Science). A Scientific Support for Darwinism, a word-of-mouth petition against the teaching of ID in public schools was signed by over 7000 scientists in just four days (Thousands). In fact, all major national and international scientific organizations have issued statements rejecting intelligent design, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Science Teachers Association, the Council of Europe and London's Royal Society (Statements). Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea and Tufts University professor, describes the manufactured controversy in this way: “The proponents of intelligent design use an ingenious ploy that works something like this: 'Smith's work in geology supports my argument that the earth is flat,' you say, misrepresenting Smith's work. When Smith responds with a denunciation of your misuse of her work, you respond, saying something like: 'See what a controversy we have here? Professor Smith and I are locked in a titanic scientific debate. We should teach the controversy in the classrooms.'" (Dennett).
However, scientists contend, there is simply no scientific merit to intelligent design. During the Dover trial, Michael Behe, a biochemist and advocate of intelligent design, conceded that, “There are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred” (Dover). Experimentation and peer review are the two strongest pillars of the scientific method and are used by scientists as a way to expose errors and weaknesses in a theory. While some advocates of ID have claimed to publish scientific papers in peer reviewed journals, these journals are creations of the Discovery Institute and “the reviewers are themselves ardent supporters of intelligent design” (Isaak). Judge Jones, who ruled on the aforementioned Kitzmiller vs. Dover case wrote that, “ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand” (Kitzmiller). Even the Templeton Foundation, a conservative group of scientists dedicated to explaining the origin of life, has pulled their funding from the Discovery Institute, stating that “From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review” (Goodstein). In contrast, evolutionary theory has a long history of peer review and repeated experimentation and evidential backing while intelligent design has failed to adhere to scientific standards of evidence and is thus a “pseudoscience” (Science).
However, the perception of a debate is what is important. As long as the American people think that intelligent design in a credible competing theory of origin its proponents can appeal to the idea of fair play and claim that their theory is being censored because it is excluded from the classroom. Many legal challenges have taken place in an attempt to shoehorn ID into science classrooms alongside evolution. These challenges have been primarily concerned with the issue of fairness--stating that it was unfair to teach evolution and exclude ID. Nevertheless, by appealing to American's sense of fairplay, advocates of intelligent design can remove the issue from the scientific playing field, where the rigors of the scientific method apply, and instead make an emotional appeal to justice, fairness and other commonplaces.
Still more troubling is the apparent agenda that ID's proponents espouse. The Discovery Institute's website outlines their goal to overthrow evolution and replacing it with “traditional concepts of God and man” (Wedge). This is particularly disturbing because the existence, much more the carrying out, of such a goal goes against the very fundamentals of the scientific method. Instead of publishing in legitimate peer-reviewed journals, empirically testing results and rigorously reviewing a theory, proponents of ID have instead pushed a philosophical agenda onto the American people and tried to pass it off as science. Has the Discovery Institute tried to fool the American people to wedge their philosophy into schools? Daniel Dennett certainly seems to think so. He calls intelligent design a “hoax” and likens it to cold fusion. John Jones ruled that, “[A]dvocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class... is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard” (Kitzmiller). Even proponents of intelligent design, like scientist Michael Behe, agree that there is no scientific way to prove intelligent design (Wallis). But without credible evidence what is left? Only a manufactured controversy.
































Works Cited


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"The Wedge Document, So What?." The Discovery Institute. 02/03/06. Center for Science and Culture. Pgs. 5-6. 09/26/08 <http://www.discovery.org/a/2101>. Online.

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