Intelligent design movement

The intelligent design movement is a campaign based in the United States that calls for broad social, academic and political changes derived from the notion of "intelligent design", a form of neo-creationism. Chief amongst its activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this notion; the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high schools; and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The overall goal of the movement is to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions".^[1]

The movement was established following the creation of its hub, the conservative Christian think tank^[2] known as the Discovery Institute, in 1990. The Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) counts most of the leading intelligent design advocates among its membership, most notably its program advisor Phillip E. Johnson. Johnson is one of the movement's most prolific authors and the architect of its "wedge strategy" and Teach the Controversy campaign.

Overview

Two fronts, two goals

The intelligent design movement primarily campaigns on two fronts: a public relations campaign meant to influence the popular media and sway public opinion; and an aggressive lobbying campaign to cultivate support for the teaching of intelligent design amongst policymakers and the wider educational community. Both these activities are largely funded and directed by the Discovery Institute, from national to grassroots levels. The movement's first goal is to establish an acceptance of intelligent design at the expense of evolution in public school science; its long-term goal is no less than the "renewal" of American culture through the shaping of public policy to reflect conservative Christian values. As the Discovery Institute states, intelligent design is central to this agenda: "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

Legal arms

The movement's de facto legal arm is the Thomas More Law Center. This has played a central role in defending against legal objections to the teaching of intelligent design in public school science classes, generally brought on First Amendment grounds. The center has also participated as a plaintiff to remove legal barriers to the teaching of intelligent design as science. Similar legal foundations, the Alliance Defense Fund and Quality Science Education for All (QSEA), have also litigated extensively on behalf of the movement. Though much smaller in scale than the Thomas More Law Center, in its first year of existence (2005) QSEA has brought no fewer than three separate lawsuits to further the intelligent design movement's agenda. Critics have suggested that if it were to continue its pattern of litigation, QSEA could be considered a vexatious litigant.

Teach the Controversy

The movement's Teach the Controversy campaign is designed to portray evolution as "a theory in crisis" and to imply that the scientific establishment attempts to stifle or suppress discoveries that support intelligent design. The movement thereby tries to invoke or promote a distrust of science and scientists, especially where currents of anti-intellectualism are already present. In response to such criticism, campaigners claim they are confronting both the limitations of scientific orthodoxy and naturalism. Whatever the motivation, the intelligent design movement has attracted considerable press attention and pockets of public support, especially among conservative American Christians.

Criticism

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" [3]. Intelligent design is an attempt to recast religious dogma in an effort to reintroduce the teaching of biblical creationism to public school science classrooms; the intelligent design movement is an effort to reshape American society into a theocracy, primarily through education. As evidence, critics cite the Discovery Institute's political activities, its "Wedge strategy" and statements made by leading intelligent design proponents.

The mainstream scientific community's position, as represented by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education, is that intelligent design is not science, but creationist pseudoscience. Richard Dawkins, a biologist and professor at Oxford University, compares the intelligent design movement's demand to "teach the controversy" with the demand to teach flat earthism; acceptable in terms of history, but not in terms of science. "If you give the idea that there are two schools of thought within science, one that says the earth is round and one that says the earth is flat, you are misleading children." [4]

Origin of the movement

The intelligent design movement grew out of a creationist tradition which argues against evolutionary theory from a religious standpoint, usually an evangelical or fundamentalistic Christianity. Although intelligent design advocates often claim that they are arguing only for the existence of a "designer" who may or may not be God, all the movement's leading advocates believe that this designer is God. They frequently accompany their arguments with a discussion of religious issues, especially when addressing religious audiences, but elsewhere downplay the religious aspects of their agenda.

In 1987, the United States' Supreme Court decision regarding Edwards v. Aguillard effectively removed the teaching of creationism in public school science classrooms. As a consequence, in 1989 the Foundation for Thought and Ethics published the high school biology textbook Of Pandas and People [5], which circumvented the Court's ruling by presenting a creationism without reference to the book of Genesis or to Christian tenets. In it, one of its editors, Charles Thaxton, coined the phrase "intelligent design" [6]. Of Pandas and People and subsequent intelligent design publications present a creationism which argues that "the origin of new organisms [is] in an immaterial cause: in a blueprint, a plan, a pattern, devised by an intelligent agent", but without making explicit reference to the identity of such an agent. In this way, violation of the United States' First Amendment is avoided.

An earlier book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis written by Michael Denton and published in 1985, is cited by Phillip E. Johnson as having convinced him of the problems with the theory of evolution, the scientific method and its epistemological underpinnings. Starting with his 1991 book Darwin on Trial, these have been the themes Johnson pursues in his books, speeches and debates.

Prior to the publication of 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. Johnson became the de facto leader of the group and its campaign [7]. This group formed and continue to operate through the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CSRC, now the Center for Science and Culture, CSC). Johnson says that by the time Darwin on Trial was published (1991), he had mostly worked out the strategy that he thought would win, in time, the intelligent design movement's campaign. He further claims that he was able to convince those creationist educators who had been unseated by the Edwards v. Aguillard ruling, along with young-earth creationists and some old-earth creationists, that his strategy was the best way forward.

According to Johnson, the wedge strategy, 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." [8]

The movement's strategy as set forth by Johnson states the replacement of "materialist science" with "theistic science" as its primary goal; and, more generally, for intelligent design to become "the dominant perspective in science" and to "permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life." This agenda is now being actively pursued by the Center for Science and Culture (CSC), which plays the leading role in the promotion of intelligent design. Its fellows include most of the leading intelligent design advocates: William A. Dembski, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells and Stephen C. Meyer.

Intelligent design has been described by its proponents as a "big tent" belief, one in which all theists united by a having some kind of creationist belief (but of differing opinions as regards details) can support. If successfully promoted, it would reinstate creationism in the teaching of science, after which debates regarding details could resume. In his 2002 article Big Tent: Traditional Creationism and the Intelligent Design Community [9] (PDF document), Discovery Institute fellow Paul A. Nelson credits Johnson for the "big tent" approach and for reviving creationist debate since the Edwards v. Aguillard decision. According to Nelson, "The promise of the big tent of ID is to provide a setting where Christians and others may disagree amicably and fruitfully about how best to understand the natural world as well as scripture."

In his presentation to the 1999 Reclaiming America for Christ Conference, How the Evolution Debate can be Won, Johnson affirmed this "big tent" role for intelligent design:

"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."

"[ID is] inherently an ecumenical movement. Michael Behe is a Roman Catholic. The next book that is coming out from Cambridge University Press by one of my close associates is by an evangelical convert to Greek Orthodoxy. We have a lot of Protestants, too. The point is that we have this broad-based intellectual movement that is enabling us to get a foothold in the scientific and academic journals and in the journals of the various religious faiths." [10]

Intelligent design advocates realize that their arguments have little chance of acceptance within the mainstream scientific community, so they direct them toward politicians, philosophers and the general public. What prima facie "scientific" material they have produced has been attacked by critics as containing factual misrepresentation and misleading, rhetorical and equivocal terminology. A number of pseudoscientific documentaries that present intelligent design as an increasingly well-supported line of scientific inquiry have been made. The bulk of the material produced by the intelligent design movement, however, is not intended to be scientific but rather to promote its social and political aims.

Intelligent design 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 intelligent design 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 intelligent design 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; and 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 intelligent design as the method through which God created life.^[11] Johnson explicitly calls for intelligent design proponents to obfuscate their religious motivations so as to avoid having intelligent design recognized "as just another way of packaging the Christian evangelical message."^[12] 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.^[13] In the foreward to Creation, Evolution, & Modern Science (2000) Johnson writes "The intelligent design movement starts with the recognition that "In the beginning was the Word." and "In the beginning God created." Establishing that point isn't enough, but it is absolutely essential to the rest of the gospel message."

Though not all intelligent design proponents are theistic or motivated by religious fervor, the majority of the principal intelligent design 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.

In his keynote address at the "Research and Progress in intelligent design" (RAPID) conference held in 2002 at Biola, William A. Dembski described intelligent design's "dual role as a constructive scientific project and as a means for cultural renaissance." In a similar vein, the movement's hub, the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture had until 2002 been the "Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture". Explaining the name change, a spokesperson for the CSC insisted that the old name was simply too long. However, the change followed accusations that the center's real interest was not science but reforming culture along lines favored by conservative Christians.

Critics of movement cite the Wedge Document as confirmation of this criticism and assert that the movement's leaders, particularly Phillip E. Johnson, view the subject as a culture war: "Darwinian evolution is not primarily important as a scientific theory but as a culturally dominant creation story ... When there is radical disagreement in a commonwealth about the creation story, the stage is set for intense conflict, the kind ... known as 'culture war.' "

At the 1999 "Reclaiming America for Christ Conference" [14] called by Reverend D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, Johnson gave a speech called How the Evolution Debate Can Be Won [15]. In it he sums up the theological and epistemological 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."

"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 U.S. regional and state school boards. Courts have also become involved as those campaigns to include intelligent design or weaken the teaching of evolution in public school science curricula are challenged on First Amendment grounds [16]. In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District the plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Underscoring claims that the intelligent design movement is more religious 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 disputed by science; as a "theory in crisis". The claim that evolution is a "theory in crisis" is the centerpiece of the movement's Teach the Controversy campaign.

Often cited as proof [17] that evolution is indeed a "theory in crisis" is the Discovery Institute's petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism (pdf file). Since 2001 this petition has collected 500 signatures from scientists around the world, of which 73 are biologists. An unfunded project, The Four Day Petition, "A Scientifc Support For Darwinism And For Public Schools Not to Teach Intelligent Design as Science" ran from September to October 2005, and collected 8040 verified scientists' signatures. This represents a 1,200% increase over the Discovery Institute's petition at a rate 640,000% faster than that achieved by the Discovery Institute. A more amusing effort, Project Steve, received over 500 signatures from scientists named Steve in favor of evolution.

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

Also in August 2005, Florida governor Jeb Bush appointed Cheri Yecke to the Department of Education as Florida's K-12 (kindergarten to twelfth grade) Chancellor [18]. Yecke has a history of trying to undermine the validity of evolution: as Minnesota's education commissioner, she drew criticism for trying to introduce creationism into the science curriculum [19] [20].

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 [21] to appeal to a broader, a more secular audience. It hopes to accomplish this by using less overtly theistic messages and language [22]. 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." [23] Until 1995, Ahmanson sat on the board of the Christian reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation [24].

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 intelligent design movement argue that the wedge document and strategy demonstrate that the intelligent design movement is motivated purely by religion and political ideology and that the Discovery Institute as a matter of policy obfuscates its agenda. The Discovery Institute's official response was to characterize the criticism and concern as "irrelevant," "paranoid," and "near-panic" while portraying the wedge document as a "fund-raising document." [25]

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.'" [26] "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 intelligent design 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, intelligent design 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, intelligent design 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" [27].

Faith versus science

Intelligent design's supporters and critics often portray the debate as between science and faith. These advocates imply that to support intelligent design is to support belief in higher power or powers, while to oppose intelligent design is to oppose belief in higher power or powers. One example is a statement from an article in the magazine Focus on the Family, which holds that "Secularists have dismissed Christianity as an acceptable intellectual option" [28] and that "intelligent design" advocates 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 intelligent design have not only questioned whether intelligent design is good science, but also whether it is good theology. Pope John Paul II issued the following statement [29] 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, affirming the teaching of the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes 36:1, suggests that science, philosophy and theology are not at odds, merely responsible for different sections of human knowledge.

Intelligent design 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 intelligent design 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 [30], at least ten state legislatures are now considering legislation regarding how evolution is taught.

On December 20, 2005, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, in his 139 page ruling on Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, struck down the school board's policy requiring a statement be read endorsing intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in ninth-grade high school biology classes. In his ruling Jones wrote that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature. The ruling further stated: "Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources." (page 137-138).

In response, the Discovery Institute accused Judge Jones of being an "activist judge" [31].

Notable instances of intelligent design political actions include:

Intelligent design movement in the public arena

Intelligent design in higher education

The cultivation of support for intelligent design 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 University, 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 intelligent design to university campuses through lectures by intelligent design 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 intelligent design 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 absence 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 intelligent design movement's attempts to weaken or undermine the teaching of evolution as "inimical to principles of academic freedom." [32]

The issue of David Horowitz's proposed academic bill of rights has been accepted by the Discovery Institute as a means to integrating intelligent design 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 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 [33]. 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[34]. 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 Institute describes as "a science program exploring what DNA reveals about the origin of life", claims to show that "In almost every scientific discipline there is new found evidence that supports the theory of intelligent design." 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 donation controversy, is also a production of Illustra Media, a front group for the creationist production company Discovery Media.[35] 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 National Science Foundation and the University of California at Berkeley’s Museum of Paleontology were sued by intelligent design proponents for running a website for school teachers called Understanding Evolution. The lawsuit was brought by Jeanne Caldwell and Larry Caldwell, the husband and wife founders of the anti-evolution, pro-intelligent design group Quality Science Education for All.[36] The Caldwells argued that University of California 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."

The suit alleged that a university-maintained webpage [37] points to a National Center for Science Education webpage [38] that contains statements from 17 religious organizations endorsing the teaching of evolution and in so doing violated the separation of church and state. The Caldwells objected specifically to one web page that says it's a misconception that science and religion are incompatible.

"Basically, what we have is a page that deals with the misconceptions and challenges to the teaching of evolution, and we provided resources to teachers to answer them," said Roy Caldwell. "One of those questions is, 'Aren't religion and evolution incompatible?' and we say, 'no,' and point to a number of sites by clerics and others who make that point."[39]

The plaintiffs alleged that these statements constituted a preference for certain religious viewpoints in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The suit was dismissed 13 March 2006 when judge granted the University of California's motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing. [40]

Dissent within the movement

Under the guidance of the Discovery Institute the movement made significant inroads in its appeal to members of the public, if not the scientific community. That success manifested itself in grassroots local movements, who, to varying degrees, took up the cause with local politicians, school boards, parent-teacher groups and even individual legal actions to promote intelligent design in public schools. The Thomas More Law Center along with the Discovery Institute has often provided resources for these local and regional efforts. Recently grassroots activity has gone beyond that endorsed by the Discovery Institute, which has voiced concern over the ability of mandates to teach intelligent design surviving a challenge on First Amendment grounds and the implications for the movement were the teaching of intelligent design as science in public schools ruled unconstitutional. Such a ruling would have the effect of legally ruling intelligent design a form of religious creationism, and greatly diminish any possibility of the movement ever achieving its goals set forth in the Wedge strategy. Fearing that this was an inevitability, the Discovery Institute repositioned itself for tactical reasons against the teaching of intelligent design favoring a Teach the Controversy strategy.

Just such a case occurred in 2004 in Dover, Pennsylvania (see Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District). The Thomas More Law Center in its vigorous defense of the School District (whose board seats several staunch creationists who are intelligent design proponents), has run afoul of the movement's leadership at the Discovery Institute.

In a round table discussion entitled "Science Wars: Should Schools Teach Intelligent Design?"[41] at the American Enterprise Institute on 21 October 2005 and televised on C-SPAN [42], the Discovery Institute's Mark Ryland and the Thomas More Law Center's Richard Thompson had a frank disagreement, in which Ryland claimed the Discovery Institute has always cautioned against the teaching of intelligent design, and Thompson responded that the institutes leadership had not only advocated the teaching of intelligent design, but encouraged others to do so, and that the Dover Area School District had merely followed the institute's calls for action [43]. As evidence Thompson cited the Discovery Institute's guidebook Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula [44], written by the institute's director and co-founder, Stephen C. Meyer and David DeWolf, a fellow of the institute, which stated in its closing paragraphs: "Moreover, as the previous discussion demonstrates, school boards have the authority to permit, and even encourage, teaching about design theory as an alternative to Darwinian evolution -- and this includes the use of textbooks such as Of Pandas and People that present evidence for the theory of intelligent design."

Rifts between factions within the movement's leadership and also between local and regional movement leaders and the national leadership are likely to increase considering the increasing number of pro-intelligent design amendments and proposals coming before state and local school boards, and legal actions brought by local proponents, such as Quality Science Education for All.

Criticisms of the movement

Intellectual dishonesty, in the form of misleading impressions created by 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, 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 the following statement: "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 referring to him as a "five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize" because Nobel Prize nominations remain confidential for fifty years.

This criticism is not reserved for only the institute; individual intelligent design proponents have been accused of using their own credentials and those of others in a misleading or confusing fashion. For example, critics allege William 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 which he fails to mention to his audience that in 1986, during the Edwards v. Aguillard hearings, 72 Nobel laureates endorsed an amicus curiae brief that noted that the "evolutionary history of organisms has been as extensively tested and as thoroughly corroborated as any biological concept."

Another common criticism is that since no intelligent design research has been published in mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific journals, the Discovery Institute often misuses the work of mainstream scientists by putting out lists of articles that allegedly support their arguments for intelligent design drawing from mainstream scientific literature. Often, the original authors respond that their articles cited by the center don't support their arguments at all. Many times, the original authors have publicly refuted them for distorting the meaning of something they've written for their own purposes.

University of Texas molecular biologist Sahotra Sarkar, who has testified that intelligent design advocates, and specifically the Discovery Institute, has misused his work by misrepresenting its conclusions to bolster their own claims, has gone on to allege that the extent of the misrepresentations rises to the level of professional malfeasance [45]:

"When testifying before the Texas State Board of Education in 2003 (in a battle over textbook adoption that we won hands down), I claimed that my work had been maliciously misused by members of the Discovery Institute. ...The trouble is that it says nothing of the sort that Meyer claims. I don't mention Dembski, ID, or "intelligent" information whatever that may be. I don't talk about assembly instructions. In fact what the paper essentially does is question the value of informational notions altogether, which made many molecular biologists unhappy, but which is also diametrically opposed to the "complex specified information" project of the ID creationists. ...Notice how my work is being presented as being in concordance with ID when Meyer knows very well where I stand on this issue. If Meyer were an academic, this kind of malfeasance would rightly earn him professional censure. Unfortunately he's not. He's only the Director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture."

An October 2005 conference called "When Christians and Cultures Clash" was held at the Pennsylvania Evangelical School of Theology. Attorney Randy Wenger, who is affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund, and a close ally of the Discovery Institute, and one of the presenters at the conference advocated the use of subterfuge for advancing the movement's religious goals: "But even with God’s blessing, it’s helpful to consult a lawyer before joining the battle. For instance, the Dover area school board might have had a better case for the intelligent design disclaimer they inserted into high school biology classes had they not mentioned a religious motivation at their meetings. Give us a call before you do something controversial like that, I think we need to do a better job at being clever as serpents." [46]

External links

The Wedge Breaking the Modernist Monopoly on Science by Phillip E. Johnson. Touchstone, A Journal of Mere Christianity. Volume 12, Issue 4. July/August 1999
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
Discovery's Creation A brief history of how the Wedge Document fell in the hands of an outsider and found its way on the internet.
Does "Intelligent Design" Threaten the Definition of Science? John Roach. National Geographic News. April 27, 2005
Over 500 Scientists Proclaim Their Doubts About Darwin’s Theory Discovery Institute February 20, 2006
Design & the Discriminating Public Gaining a Hearing from Ordinary People by Nancy Pearcey. Touchstone, A Journal of Mere Christianity. Volume 12, Issue 4. July/August 1999
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 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 Yorker. May 2005
Intelligent design network .org

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. [47]
^ "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.