Introduction to "Creationism's Trojan Horse"

Butterflies and Wheels ^ | December 1, 2004 | Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross

[snarks_when_bored]

Introduction to Creationism's Trojan Horse

Introduction

It used to be obvious that the world was designed by some sort of intelligence. What else could account for fire and rain and lightning and earthquakes? Above all, the wonderful abilities of living things seemed to point to a creator who had a special interest in life. Today we understand most of these things in terms of physical forces acting under impersonal laws.We don’t yet know the most fundamental laws, and we can’t work out the consequences of all the laws we know. The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather. We can’t predict whether it will rain one month from today, but we do know the rules that govern the rain, even though we can’t always calculate the consequences. I see nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting over billions of years.

Steven Weinberg,
1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics

Dr. Fox’s Lecture

Nearly thirty years ago one of the funniest articles ever published in a respectable medical journal appeared. Of course, it was not meant to be funny. Its purposes were serious and sober enough. The conclusions, moreover, were trustworthy and had important implications for education at all levels. In fact, the conclusions had implications for all conveyance of knowledge by experts to intelligent, but nonexpert, audiences. In the Journal of Medical Education, D. H. Naftulin, M.D., and colleagues published a research study entitled “The Doctor Fox Lecture: A Paradigm of Educational Seduction.”¹ There is no better way to explain the intention and the results of this work than to quote from its abstract:

[T]he authors programmed an actor to teach charismatically and nonsubstantively on a topic about which he knew nothing. The authors hypothesized that given a sufficiently impressive lecture paradigm, even experienced educators participating in a new learning experience can be seduced into feeling satisfied that they have learned despite irrelevant, conflicting, and meaningless content conveyed by the lecturer. The hypothesis was supported when 55 subjects responded favorably at the significant level to an eight-item questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward the lecture.(emphasis added)

For purposes of this experiment, the investigators hired a mature, respectable, scholarly looking fellow, a professional actor. He memorized a prefabricated nonsense lecture entitled “Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education.” The better popular science magazines had recently covered (real) game theory and its possible applications, so the title was appropriate. The silver-haired actor was trained to answer affably all audience questions following his lecture—by means, as the authors explain, of “double talk, neologisms, non sequiturs, and contradictory statements. All this was to be interspersed with parenthetical humor and meaningless references to unrelated topics.”² In two of the three trials of this experiment, the audience consisted of “psychiatrists, psychologists, and social-worker educators,” while that of the third trial “consisted of 33 educators and administrators enrolled in a graduate level university educational philosophy course.” This counterfeit scholar of “Mathematical Game Theory” was called Dr. Myron L. Fox, and a fraudulent but respectful and laudatory introduction was supplied.

Very interesting data followed from the survey and questionnaire administered after each session in which Fox’s (and other) presentations were made. These were simply the detailed statistics of approval or disapproval. The phony Dr. Fox’s presentations of discoveries in mathematical game theory were strongly approved by these educationally sophisticated, lecture-experienced audiences. But the really funny results are in the “subjective” comments added to the questionnaire, that is, in what listeners wrote as prose responses to the invitation to comment (the following comments are from a number of different respondents). “No respondent [in the first group],” Dr. Naftulin and his co-authors wrote, “reported having read Dr. Fox’s publications. [But] subjective responses included the following: ‘Excellent presentation, enjoyed listening. Has warm manner. Good flow, seems enthusiastic. What about the two types of games, zero-sum and non-zero-sum? Too intellectual a presentation. My orientation is more pragmatic.’” From the largest group of subjects for this experiment, the substantive comments were, if possible, even funnier: “Lively examples. His relaxed manner of presentation was a large factor in holding my interest. Extremely articulate. Interesting, wish he had dwelled more on background. Good analysis of subject that has been personally studied before. Very dramatic presentation. He was certainly captivating. Somewhat disorganized. Frustratingly boring. Unorganized and ineffective. Articulate. Knowledgeable.”³

We highly recommend this article. It should still be possible to find it in any university, especially one with a good medical or education library. The “educational seduction” of the title refers to what “Dr. Fox” did for (and to?) his listeners. This result and many others like it should have affected all schools of education, if not teachers generally. However, such was not the case. The possibility, indeed the likelihood, of intellectual “seduction” in circumstances such as these is probably increasing as specialization increases. Countless clones of Dr. Fox tread the academic and public policy boards today, as always. Readers familiar with the now universal practice in higher education of using end-of-course student evaluations as key evidence in faculty promotion and tenure decisions will know this: evaluations by students, who lack the requisite knowledge but are called on to judge their professors’ expertise in their disciplines, can determine the academic fate of nontenured faculty and the possibility of merit raises for tenured ones. Intellectual seduction by substantive (“content”) nonsense, offered to audiences who want or like to hear what they are being told, or who simply assume that what they don’t understand must be correct if it sounds scholarly, is nearly universal.

This book is about a current, national, intellectual seduction phenomenon, not in mathematical game theory, but close enough to it. It is a case, at least formally, not much different from the Dr. Fox lecture, except that the lecturers here actually believe what they are lecturing about, or at least they want very much to believe it, or are convinced that they must believe it. And they are not actors, but executors of a real and serious political strategy. The “audiences” in this case are large; they consist of decent people: students, parents, teachers, public officials across the length and breadth of the United States (and now in other countries of the “developed world”)-people who don’t, in most cases, know much about science, especially the modern biological sciences. But they are people who are deeply and justifiably concerned about their religious faith, the state of their society, and the education of their children. They include some people for whom “fairness” and openness to the ideas of “the other side” have become the cherished, even the indispensable, characteristics of our civilization. Their insistence on the equal worth of all earnestly held opinions-whether or not those opinions are well founded-makes them relativists whether they know it or not. This book is about the newest form of creationism, named by its proponents “intelligent design” (ID); but it is, especially, about the organization of the system of public and political relations that drives the movement. That system operates on a very detailed plan-a set of well articulated goals, strategies, and tactics-named “The Wedge” by its executors. It offers an upgraded form of the religious fundamentalist creationism long familiar in America.

Neo-creationism

Creationism has been a perennial nuisance for American science education. Despite the persistent fecklessness of creationist arguments and their continued failure in the courts since 1925, the creationists refuse to go away. The attempts to insert religion into public elementary and secondary science education are unceasing, and they now include direct efforts to influence college students as well. Efforts to force it into curricula- especially those having anything at all to do with biology and the history of Earth-have been unremitting since the late nineteenth century, and they have continued into the present. The most notorious recent, nearly successful, attempt was the 1999 deletion of evolution and all immediately relevant geology and cosmology from the Kansas public school science standards, by action of the state board of education. Scientific integrity was restored to those defaced standards only after a protracted political effort to defeat creationist board members and replace them with moderates-who eventually undid the damage to science teaching and to the state’s reputation.

The defeated have not given up, however; today they are more active than ever in the politics and public affairs of Kansas and other states.And increasingly it appears that pro-evolution (pro-science) victories are secure only until the next election, when old battles may be revived by “stealth” candidates who do not disclose their anti-evolution agenda until after they are elected to office. Soon after the restoration of the integrity of science standards in Kansas, new efforts, even more forceful and better organized than those in Kansas, were mounted in Ohio. More are brewing in several other states, gaining added impetus from the Wedge’s efforts in the United States Congress. Nor is the phenomenon likely to remain limited to the United States; similar efforts are in progress or being planned in a number of other countries.

This struggle is cyclic; there have been short periods of relative quiet after major creationist failures in the courts. But the effects of the struggle are being felt today far beyond pedagogy in the schools. They are everywhere visible, and except for a few conscientious media outlets, they also threaten to lower the already variable and uncertain standards of science journalism. Contrary to the perception of most scientifically literate people, creationism as a cultural presence has in the recent past grown generally stronger-even as its arguments, in the face of scientific progress, have grown steadily weaker and more hypocritical. Despite the intense activity of creationists, no faction, nor any individual advocate of one, and no modern creationist “research” program has as yet come up with a new, verifiable, fruitful, and important fact about the mechanisms or the history of life or the ancestral relationships among living things on Earth. For that reason, the scorecard of scientific successes for any form of creationism, including ID theory, is blank.

Creationists, including the newest kind-the neo-creationist “intelligent design theorists” who are the subject of this book-offer an abundance of theories. These theories are often decorated with open or only thinly disguised religious allusions, and they always include the nowstandard rejection of naturalism, which is, in these circumstances, the indirect admission of supernaturalism. Their contributions to ongoing science consist of nit-picking and the extraction of trivialities from the vast literature of biology and of unsupported statements about what-they insist-cannot happen: “Darwinism”-organic evolution shaped by natural selection and reflecting the common ancestry of all life forms. In the face of the extraordinary and often highly practical twentieth-century progress of the life sciences under the unifying concepts of evolution, their “science” consists of quote-mining-minute searching of the biological literature-including outdated literature-for minor slips and inconsistencies and for polemically promising examples of internal arguments. These internal disagreements, fundamental to the working of all natural science, are then presented dramatically to lay audiences as evidence of the fraudulence and impending collapse of “Darwinism.” How are such audiences to know that modern biology is not a house of cards, not founded on a “dying theory”?

Intelligent Design

Until a few years ago, “scientific” creationism was led by biblical literalists like Duane Gish and Henry Morris, whose Bible-thumping and logicchopping were easy to discount, even for ordinary (nonscience) journalists, by exposing the obvious errors of fact and logic-independently of the gross errors of actual science. But those old-timers have now been eclipsed by a new brand of creationists who have absorbed a part of their following: the new boys are intelligent design promoters, mainly those associated with the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (now Center for Science and Culture), based in Seattle, Washington. This group operates under a detailed and ambitious plan of action: “The Wedge.” Through relentlessly energetic programs of publication, conferences, and public appearances, all aimed at impressing lay audiences and political people, the Wedge is working its way into the American cultural mainstream. Editorials and opinion pieces in national journals, prime-time television interviews, and other high-profile public appearances, offhand but highly visible negative judgments on evolution or “Darwinism” from conservative politicians and sympathetic public intellectuals (assisted in their anti-science by a scattering of “feminist epistemologists,” postmodernists, and Marxists)-all these contribute to a rising receptiveness to ID claims by those who do not know, or who simply refuse to consider, the actual state of the relevant sciences. In documenting and analyzing the political and religious nature of the Wedge, and bringing together expert comment on the ID “science” claims, we show that such grateful reception of the glad tidings of intelligent design is entirely unjustified by either the scientific, the mathematical, or the philosophic weight of any evidence offered.

THE WEDGE’S HAMMERS

Under cover of advanced degrees, including a few in science, obtained in some of the major universities, the Wedge’s workers have been carving out a habitable and expanding niche within higher education, cultivating cells of followers-students as well as (primarily nonbiology) faculty-on campus after campus. This is the first real success of creationism in the formerly hostile grove of academe. Furthermore, the Wedge’s political alliances reach into a large, partisan elite among the nation’s legislators and other political leaders. Armed thus with a potentially huge base of popular support that includes most of the Religious Right, wielding a new legal strategy with which it hopes to win in the litigation certain to follow insertion of ID into public school science anywhere-and lawyers ready to go to work when it does-the Wedge of ID creationism is, indeed, intelligently designed. To be sure, its science component is not. But in a public relations-driven and mass-communications world, that is not a disadvantage. In the West, opinions, perceptions, loyalties, and, ultimately, votes are what matter when the goal is to change public policy- or for that matter, cultural patterns. Serious inquiry and questions of truth are often a mere diversion.

This newly energized, intellectually reactionary enterprise will not fade quietly away as the current team of ID promoters ages. It is already too well organized and funded, and the leading Wedge figures have invested too much of themselves for that to happen. Moreover, there is every reason to think that religiously conservative, anti-science agitation will increase, especially as the life sciences and medical research continue to probe the fundamentals of human behavior. As that happens, the general public uneasiness with evolutionary biology and the underlying genetics and cell biology becomes simple hostility, not just on the political right. Some of the far-left intelligentsia help to fuel the hostility, at least in academia. Therefore, we have undertaken to document very thoroughly, largely but not exclusively by means of the Wedge’s own announcements and productions, its steadily increasing output of antievolution and more broadly anti-science materials.

The Discovery Institute’s creationists are younger and better educated than most of the traditional “young-earth” creationists. Their public relations tricks are up to date and skillful; they know how to manipulate the media. They are very well funded, and their commitment is fired by the same sincere religious fervor that characterized earlier and less affluent versions of creationism. This combination makes them crusaders, just as inspired as, but much more effective than, the old literalists, whose pseudo-science was easily recognized as ludicrous. And the Wedge carries out its program as a part of the evangelical Christian community, which William Dembski credits with “for now providing the safest haven for intelligent design.”⁴ The welcoming voices within this community have all but drowned out those of its many members who are honest in their approach to science, sincere in their Christian faith, and appreciative of the protection afforded to both by secular, constitutional democracy. Dembski admits that the Wedge’s acceptance among evangelicals is not “particularly safe by any absolute standard.”⁵ Yet in our survey of this issue, we see that the evangelical voices most prominently heard, with a few notable exceptions, support the Wedge.

FOCUS ON EDUCATION

Unfortunately, ID, by now quite familiar among scientifically qualified and religiously neutral observers as the recycled, old-fashioned creationism it is, drapes its religious skeleton in the fancy-dress language of modern science, albeit without having contributed to science, at least so far, any data or any testable theoretical notions. Therefore, ID creationism is most unlikely in the short term to change genuine science as practiced in industry, universities, and independent research laboratories. But the Wedge’s public relations blitz (intended to revolutionize public opinion); its legal strategizing (intended as groundwork for major court cases yet to come); and its feverish political alliance-building (through which the Discovery Institute hopes to shape public policy) all constitute a threat to the integrity of education and in the end to the ability of the public to judge scientific and technological claims. This last threat is not just a secondary, long-term worry. Competent, honest scientific thinking is critically important now, not only to the intellectual maturation of our species, especially of its children, but also to optimal management of such current, urgent policy problems as environmental preservation and improvement, energy resources, management and support of scientific research, financing medicine and public health (including human heredity and reproduction), and, in general, the support and use of advanced technology.

Led by Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, Michael Behe, and Jonathan Wells-the four current top names of the Discovery Institute’s

Center for Science and Culture-with a growing group of like-minded fellows and co-workers, this movement seeks nothing less than to overthrow the system of rules and procedures of modern science and those intellectual footings of our culture laid down in the Enlightenment and over some 300 years. If this sounds overwrought, we ask our readers to proceed at least a little way into the following chapters to judge for themselves. In any case, the Wedge admits that this is its aim. By its own boastful reports, the Wedge has undertaken to discredit the naturalistic methodology that has been the working principle of all effective science since the seventeenth century. It desires to substitute for it a particular version of “theistic science,” whose chief argument is that nothing about nature is to be understood or taught without reference to supernatural or at least unknowable causes-in effect, to God. The evidence that this is a fundamental goal follows within the pages of this book. No matter that these creationists have produced not even a research program, despite their endlessly repeated scientific claims. Pretensions to the contrary, this strategy is not really aimed at science and scientists, whom they consider lost in grievous error and whom they regularly accuse of fraud (as we will demonstrate), of conspiring to hide from a gulled public the failures of modern science, especially of “Darwinism.” It is aimed, rather, at a vast, mostly science-innocent populace and at the public officials and lawmakers who depend on it for votes.

A Neo-creationist’s Progress

In April 2001, ID movement founder Phillip Johnson released on the creationist Access Research Network website “The Wedge: A Progress Report.” ⁶ There he reviewed the Wedge’s goals: “to legitimate the topic of intelligent design . . . within the mainstream intellectual community” and “to make naturalism the central focus of discussion [meaning “of attack”] in the religious world.” He cited the establishment of a “beachhead” in American journalism, exemplified by articles in major newspapers. He declared that “the Wedge is lodged securely in the crack” between empirical science and naturalistic philosophy, which he calls “the dominant naturalistic system of thought control.” According to Johnson, “the [Wedge] train is already moving along the logical track and it will not stop until it reaches its destination. . . . The initial goals of the Wedge strategy have been accomplished. . . . [I]t’s not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.”⁷

There is some justification for this aggressive show of confidence. As Johnson says, ID has won significant coverage in major U.S. newspapers and, more recently, abroad as well. In the New York Times, James Glanz wrote that “evolutionists find themselves arrayed not against traditional creationism, with its roots in biblical literalism, but against a more sophisticated idea: the intelligent design theory.” On the front page of the Los Angeles Times, Teresa Watanabe wrote that “a new breed of mostly Christian scholars redefines the old evolution-versus-creationism debate and fashions a movement with more intellectual firepower, mainstream appeal, and academic respectability.”⁸ And Robert Wright (author of The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life, Vintage Books, 1994) points out in a critical Slate article that while ID presents no new ideas of any significance, the New York Times article “has granted official significance to the latest form of opposition to Darwinism.” Wright concludes that although ID is just a new label, a marketing device for an old product, it is also an effective one.⁹

The admirable, but in this particular case misguided, concern of most Americans to be fair, “even-handed,” to consider both sides of a dispute respectfully, especially the side claiming to suffer discrimination, creates a fertile field for ID activists. They have enough financial backing and self-righteous zeal to outlast what little effectively organized opposition to them presently exists, especially in the higher education community, which one would quite reasonably expect to be in the forefront of opposition to the Wedge. There is, of course, the further-and very real- possibility that the demographics of the judiciary will shift toward creationism should there be appointments of judges with strong doctrinal or emotional ties to the Religious Right, where one’s views on evolution are once again, as they were in the 1920s, a “litmus test.” There is no doubt that the Wedge’s immediate goal is to change what is taught in classrooms about the basics of biology and the history of life, as we show here from its own documents, sources of support, and productions. But based on our demonstration in chapter 9 of the religious foundation of the intelligent design movement and the importance of this foundation to the Wedge’s goal of “renewing” American culture, we also believe that its ultimate goal is to create a theocratic state, which would provide a protective framework for its pedagogical goals. In an important respect, the Wedge is another strand in the well organized Religious Right network, whose own well documented but poorly understood purposes are strongly antagonistic to the constitutional barriers between church and state.

As of March 2001, creationists had launched programs to change public school curricula in one out of five states across the nation. During the writing of this book, creationists were causing significant problems in Ohio,Washington, Idaho, Montana, Kansas, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.¹⁰ At present, there are renewed rumblings in New Mexico, where a hard-fought battle was presumably resolved. These programs have not yet attained their broadest goals, but they continue to divert precious educational resources, time, and energy from the real problems of public education in the United States toward the work of responding to creationist attacks. Even in the small, rural state of Louisiana, ID advocates seem to be waiting in the wings to initiate a sequel to recent attempts by Representative Sharon Weston- Broome to declare the idea of evolution “racist.”¹¹ In Kansas, where creationist changes to the state’s science standards have finally been reversed, the Discovery Institute is nevertheless actively assisting a satellite group, the Intelligent Design Network (IDnet), in pushing ID more aggressively than ever. In June 2001, IDnet held its Second Annual Symposium, “Darwin, Design, and Democracy II: Teaching the Evidence in Science Education,” featuring three key Wedge campaigners-Phillip Johnson,William Dembski, and Jonathan Wells.¹² The great public universities are now a main target of wedge efforts: a Discovery Institute fellow, Jed Macosko, taught ID in a for-credit course at the University of California-Berkeley; his father, Chris Macosko, has been doing the same at the University of Minnesota.¹³

Concern about the Wedge is building, very late but finally, in scientific and academic quarters. The American Geophysical Union considered ID a problem serious enough to require scheduling at least six presentations on it at the spring 2001 conference.¹⁴ Philosopher Robert Pennock’s eye-opening book, Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism (MIT, 1999), analyzed and recounted the philosophical and scientific flaws of ID creationism. It is followed by his anthology, Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives (MIT, 2001). These books seem to be making a contribution in awakening academics to the need for an effective counterstrategy. Similar books are on the way; and in book reviews and a spate of recent writings, distinguished scientists are at last taking the trouble (and it is troublesome, and time-consuming, and costly!) to rebut, point by point, the new creationist claims. Of course, those claims are not really new. They are rather pretentious variants of the ancient, and discredited, argument from design (aptly renamed for our era, by Richard Dawkins, the argument from personal incredulity).

So far, however, no book has documented the genesis, the support, the real goals, and the remarkable sheer volume of Wedge activities.We have come to believe that such a chronicle is needed if people of good will toward science and toward honest inquiry are to understand the magnitude of this threat-not only to education but to the principle of separation of church and state. The chapters that follow are our effort to supply the facts: as complete an account, within the limits of a single volume and the reader’s patience, as can be assembled-and checked independently-from easily accessible public sources. To convince those with the indispensable basic knowledge who are in a position to act, that they must do so, we must first make the case that (1) a formal intelligent design strategy, apart from and above the familiar creationist carping about evolutionary and historical science, does exist, and (2) it is being executed successfully in all respects except the production of hard scientific results-data. To accomplish these aims, we have had to accumulate the evidence, which consists of the massive schedule of the Wedge’s own activities in execution of the strategy, together with the actual pronouncements of Wedge members. We have allowed them to speak for themselves here at length and as often as possible.

The Wedge’s busy schedule of ID activities and its increasing public visibility have been accompanied by a steadily evolving public relations effort to present itself as a mainstream organization. In August 2002, the CRSC changed its name, now calling itself simply the “Center for Science and Culture.” This move parallels the Wedge’s low-key phase-out of the overtly religious banners on its early web pages: from Michelangelo’s God creating Adam, to Michelangelo’s God creating DNA, to the current Hubble telescope photo of the MyCn18 Hourglass Nebula.15 But despite the attempt to alter its public face, the Wedge’s substantive identity remains. Thus, we refer henceforth to the Center for Science and Culture by the name under which it has been known during the period covered in this book: the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).

The readers’ patience may well be tried at times by the repetitiousness of Wedge activities: conferences, websites, trade book and media publications and appearances, testimony before legislative bodies and education committees, summonses to religious and cultural renewal predicated on anti-science. The Wedge’s efficient and planned repetitiousness is itself one of our main points. In fact, it is one of the most remarkable examples in our time of naked public relations management substituting successfully for knowledge and the facts of the case - substituting for the truth. For that reason alone, it is both interesting and important. It must be known and understood if there is to be recognition-among scientists as well as the literate nonscientist public-of current anti-evolutionism and its aims.

The Issue

The issue, then, is not-as ID creationists insist it is, to their increasingly large and credulous audiences nationwide-that the biological sciences are in deep trouble due to a collapse of Darwinism. The issue is that the public relations work, but not the “science,” of the Wedge and of ID “theorists” is proving all too effective. It is not refutations or technical dismissals of ID scientific claims that are needed. The literature of science and the book review pages of excellent journals are already replete with those: expert reviews of ID books and other public products are readily available to anyone.We provide here what we hope is an adequate sampling of those technical dismissals and expert scientific opinions, and we document the sound science and the ID anti-science as needed. But in the past few years, very detailed disproof has been provided, again and again, by the commentators best qualified to speak to the substance: some of the world’s most honored evolutionary and physical scientists, as well as some of the most distinguished philosophers of mind and science. Rather, what is needed now is documentation of the Wedge itself, from its own internal and public relations documents, so that the public may understand its purposes and the magnitude of its impact, current and projected. The issue is not Darwinism or science: the issue is the Wedge itself.

Providing the necessary documentation, including the minutiae that can turn out to be important, is always a writer’s strategic problem when the intended audience is broader than a small group of specialists. Even scholars who demand and are accustomed to copious documentation can find it off-putting. Others, members of the most important audience of all-curious, able, and genuinely fair-minded general readers-who rarely if ever read with constant eye and hand movement between text and references, are strongly tempted to give up when confronted with profuse supporting data and the necessary but distracting scholarly apparatus of notes and references.We do not have a good solution to this problem. The endnotes can be taken, however, as running commentary, supplementary to, but not essential for, the main text. Our references to literature include, whenever possible and therefore in abundance, pointers to sites on the World Wide Web.

No reader needs to use the notes to apprehend the argument and to judge its broad justifications-or lack of them. The main text can usefully and properly be read for itself alone. But for those readers who decide that this argument is to be taken seriously, and who feel the need to arm themselves with facts, they are here; or there is a pointer to them, immediately serviceable for anyone with access to a computer and an Internet connection. Initially, we envisioned a much shorter response than this book to the Wedge’s campaign.We have delayed work on other projects to write it, even though we would have preferred not to have found it necessary. The more we examined the situation, the more expansive and invasive the Wedge’s program proved to be, and the greater, therefore, was the need we saw for full public examination and for a proper response to it. We have watched and waited for the coalescence of an appropriately organized counter-movement, and, indeed, a few small organizations and individual members of the scientific and academic communities, as well as concerned citizens, have recently mounted admirable efforts, with only a minute fraction of the resources available to the Wedge. But those active people are few, and they need the help of everyone who has a stake in the high quality of our civic, scientific, and educational cultures.

Notes

1. Donald H. Naftulin, John E. Ware, Jr., and Frank A. Donnelly, “The Doctor Fox Lecture: A Paradigm of Educational Seduction,” Journal of Medical Education 48 (July 1973), 630-635.

2. Naftulin et al., 631.

3. Naftulin et al., 633.

4. William A. Dembski, “Intelligent Design Coming Clean.” Posted on Metaviews in November 2000. Accessed on May 4, 2002, at this site.

5. Dembski, “Intelligent Design Coming Clean.”

6. Phillip E. Johnson, "The Wedge: A Progress Report," Access Research Network. Accessed on April 21, 2001, at this site.

7. See the archive of "Phillip Johnson's Weekly Wedge Update".

8. See James Glanz, "Evolutionists Battle New Theory on Creation," New York Times, April 8, 2001. Accessed on April 22, 2001, at this page. See also Teresa Watanabe, "Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator: Believers in ‘Intelligent Design’ Try to Redirect Evolution Disputes Along Intellectual Lines," Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2001. Accessed on April 22, 2001, at http://www.discovery.org/news/EnlistingScience.html.

9. Robert Wright, "The ‘New’ Creationism," Slate, April 16, 2001. Accessed on April 22, 2001, at http://slate.msn.com/Earthling/01-04-16/Earthling.asp.

10. "2001 Church/State Legislation," Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, April 18, 2001.

11. Will Sentell, "Baton Rouge Legislator Calls Theory Racist," The Advocate, April 18, 2001. Accessed on April 26, 2001, at http://www.theadvocate.com/news/story.asp?StoryID=20792. At Weston-Broome's April 17, 2001, public meeting, when a questioner asked her what alternatives to teaching evolution she would consider, she mentioned "the design intelligence [sic] theory."

12. Intelligent Design Network, “Second Annual IDNet Symposium.” Accessed on April 26, 2001, at this site.

13. See references to the two Macoskos' teaching activities in Newsletter of the American Scientific Affiliation and Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation, January/February 2001. Accessed on April 23, 2003, at this site.

14. "2001 Spring Meeting," American Geophysical Union. Accessed on April 26, 2001, at this site.

15. National Center for Science Education, “Evolving Banners at the Discovery Institute.” Accessed on August 29, 2002, at this site.

Barbara Forrest is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Department of History and Government, Southeastern Louisiana University. Paul R. Gross is University Professor of Life Sciences, University of Virginia (Emeritus).

This Introduction to Creationism's Trojan Horse: the Wedge of Intelligent Design, Oxford University Press, is republished by permission. Creationism's Trojan Horse can be ordered at the OUP website.

[Dataman]

No, it's an argument from plausibility. How plausible is it to think that thousands and thousands of smart, professional scientists are engaged in an enterprise devoted to pulling the wool over the eyes of the public?

Plausibility? An evolutionist appeals to plausibility? How plausible is it that the first DNA assembled itself by chance? Answer 1 chance in 10 to the 40,000 power. That's more than the number of electrons in the entire universe.

What are the chances the simplest DNA would add two gene pairs per year (by random chance) to arrive at human DNA today? Answer: ZERO. Gould knew it-- which is why he invented his Punctuated Equilibrium to mask the problem.

What are the chances that our DNA would stop changing completely when we got the ability to decode it? ZERO.

The whole theory is nothing but a collection of impossible odds, naturalistic miracles, just-so stories and fabricated Peppered Moth pictures.

And you dare speak of plausibility?

[snarks_when_bored]

You're missing the point of my argument. I'm not arguing about the details of evolution theory, I'm arguing about science, scientists and human nature. Won't you address that argument before introducing another one?

Let me restate it in the form of a question:  Do you think it plausible to believe that thousands of smart, highly educated men and women from around the world (and over several generations) have engaged in an overt conspiracy to hide 'the truth' about the development of life on Earth from ordinary people?

If you'll answer that question, we can perhaps move forward.

[Dataman]

And let me add that this: do you think that evolutionists 'believe in' evolution in the way that religious believers 'believe in' God? If so, I'd say that you're mistaken. Scientists (those worthy of the name, anyway) entertain theories as 'current best explanations' of the facts in evidence, always subject to review and modification as new facts are discovered or old facts are re-interpreted. This is not the (common) attitude of religious believers with respect to belief in God.

Yes and Yes.

Yes, evolution is a belief system requiring faith. It is an interpretation of observations based on certain philosophical presuppositions, many of which are absurd.

The very fact that evolutionary theory is changing removes any sense of absoluteness about it. What is "true" today may not be "true" tomorrow. Therefore what is not true tomorrow is false today. Yet you'd have us believe it as fact regardless. Kleibold and Harris believed it as fact. I will not set aside my intellect in order to conform to the wishes of a few. If evolution is true, convince me and the other %54 of conservative, educated, successful Americans who are still waiting to be convinced.

If reasonable people are not convinced, why not? Are they all ignorant, as you imply, or is the case for evolution anemic at best?

As for the "attitude of religious believers with respect to belief in God," you should expect nothing less. God's existence is different than the evolutionary theory in many ways:

His existence is not theoretical. Evolution is.

Theists do not mindlessly rule out the existence of things unseen. Naturalists do.

The existence of God automatically requires absolutes. Evolutionists fear absolutes.

An omnipotent omniscient eternal God does not and cannot change. Evolution is a Mexican jumping bean.

[snarks_when_bored]

The very fact that evolutionary theory is changing removes any sense of absoluteness about it.

Are you reading what I'm writing? Your sentence which I've just quoted implies that I made some sort of claim for the absolute truth of evolution theory. I made no such claim; in fact, I made just the opposite claim.

Here's what I wrote in the message you were responding to (you quoted it yourself!):

Scientists (those worthy of the name, anyway) entertain theories as 'current best explanations' of the facts in evidence, always subject to review and modification as new facts are discovered or old facts are re-interpreted.

There's nothing unclear about that, I think. And, considering what you wrote in the remainder of your message, I believe you agree with me about the differences between the attitude of mind of a scientist and the attitude of mind of a religious believer.

[Fatalis]

earing their slab coats

"Slab coats?" Damn.

[balrog666]

Yes and Yes.

Wrong and wrong. Again.

[RightWingNilla]

But the odds are already less than statistical zero...

The odds of a bacterium springing up from nothing in a single instant.

Which is completely irrelevant since no one thinks this ever occurred (except creationists perhaps).

But you knew this already.

[narby]

You can run from the problem but you can't hide, because unless that first life happened naturally, naturalism collapses.

You're not so dense as to have missed the innumerable times people have pointed out that God could have zapped life into existence, and it then proceded to Evolve. So I must conclude that you are fundamentally dishonest in your posts, because "naturalism", I.E. Evolution most certianly does not collapse if God personally created the first DNA molecule.

Indeed, to believe the Creationist pap alongside the physical evidence collected over the last 200 years, you must believe that God deliberatly seeded the earth with evidence to lead us astray. I just don't buy into the idea that God plays games with our heads to get His jollies off.

I don't abide intellectually dishonest arguments. That's why I reject the tenents of Environmentalism and Creationism. The left and right sides of the same dishonest coin.

[narby]

His existence is not theoretical. Evolution is.

Well, now here we are at the prime directive of Creationists. To create a "scientific aura" around their claims that somehow they've proven God's existence.

This is the goal of Creationism.

It's just a carbon copy of the "scientific" methods of the Environmentalists, which are just as bogus. Wherein they take one small slice of scientific evidence, ignore the rest, and procede to install themselves in positions of power.

Maybe someday the Creationists will win and we'll have a Creationism Promotion Agency operating out of the old EPA dept.

What post are you angling for Dataman? Counting your government retirement checks yet?

[FederalistVet]

Haven't you heard? One of their recent discoveries discredits everything that biologists and paleontologists have taught over the last 100 years. Turns out their time-line is all mucked up and their "links" aren't links, but don't worry two days later they began their spin all over again.
Paleontologists play in the dirt. Biologists are afraid to lose their jobs. When Evolution became "fashionable" and the "religion of the day," many scientists went along out of fear. Also, most high school biology teachers are not adequately trained in the sciences; they were education majors and often have taken just the lowest level science classes everyone else takes.
Many scientists around the world have begun to reject evolution. Even the advocates of evolution are backing down because now they are saying that evolution just means "change." In order to defend their religious dogma, they are now redefining it to the point that it is meaningless.
You still have to deal with the problem that Darwin's observations can be better explained by Mendel's Law. I can account for all the evolutionists in high places in the Universities with two words. "Religious Discrimination."

[Dimensio]

You're not so dense as to have missed the innumerable times people have pointed out that God could have zapped life into existence, and it then proceded to Evolve.

No, he's just a liar. He insists that evolution means godless naturalism, when it does not. He has been told that it does not mean this, he cannot cite a single scientific reference that authoratitavely claims this, but he repeats this claim anyway.

Dataman isn't interested in presenting rational arguments. His only purpose is to lie about evolution in the hopes that some naieve lurkers will see it and develop doubts based upon the strawman that he has presented. Dataman is one of the lowest of the creationist liars. He knows that his statements are false, and he doesn't even try to support them with facts. He just repeats the same lie that "evolution" = "atheistic naturalism" and that evolution somehow requires a completely specific (and completely naturalistic) origin for life even though the theory of evolution works regardless of how the first life forms came into existence in the first place.

Basically, Dataman can't argue against evolution based on facts, so he has to deliberately lie about what evolution states in order to form an argument against it. Nothing that Dataman says can be trusted, because he's already made it clear that he is a shameless liar.

[Dimensio]

One of their recent discoveries discredits everything that biologists and paleontologists have taught over the last 100 years.

Citation?

[Dimensio]

It's just a carbon copy of the "scientific" methods of the Environmentalists, which are just as bogus.

At least some environmentalist claims are built upon truth. If you pour toxic substances into a lake, the life in the lake will probably die and the water will be unsafe for human consumption.

I can't find a similar truthful foundation in creaitonism -- at least not Dataman's variety.

[balrog666]

Welcome to FantasyLand. Population: you.

[narby]

At least some environmentalist claims are built upon truth. If you pour toxic substances into a lake, the life in the lake will probably die and the water will be unsafe for human consumption.

Certianly the Environmentalist dogma is built on some grain of truth. As is the Creationist dogma. That's what makes both so hard to oppose in the scientific layman universe.

Environmentalists demonstrate that their political issues are prioritized over science when they oppose nuclear power (which would single handedly cure many genuine environmental threats). Their incessant carping over nuclear waste and it's transport is a prime example. Nuclear waste is "scientifically" less harmful than any number of other carcinogens, pathogens and poisons. It's far less harmful on a national scale than things like basement radon and car exaust. But they block any and all attempts to rationally handle nuclear waste, and then use the fact that nothing can be done with it to rationalize opposing nuclear power itself.

They are shameless liars, as are many in the Creationist leadership.

The ID movement looks to me like a carbon copy of the Environmentalist movement. And formed for the same purpose. Political power.

[snarks_when_bored]

Here's a very slightly corrected version of a question that I posted on another thread yesterday:

How does the creationist deal with the transmutation of one chemical element into another? Such transmutations are taking place pretty much all of the time around the cosmos (and humans can produce them at will). Presumably, God made the elements, too. How does the creationist account for, say, the cascade of radioactive decay that turns uranium ultimately into lead? Weren't the chemical elements 'kinds' just as clearly marked out as were the living species 'kinds' (perhaps even more so)?

Does anybody know the creationist/ID position on this question?

[FederalistVet]

I believe it was a discovery in Madagascar that throws the whole works out of whack by a million or was it two million years. Look for the associated press reports within the last two to three weeks. (I think it was one and a half weeks ago. It means all the links taught in Biology classrooms across America are incorrect.

[FederalistVet]

Intelligent reply. I wonder if our friend who thinks he or she knows more about Aristotle and Plato than this Greek comprehends why I brought up these fathers of the Natural Sciences.
Could it be that they believed in an intelligent creator of the Universe based upon the Empirical evidence available to them? Is it because they believed the universe showed an intelligent design based upon the Empirical evidence?
I guess I'm in very good company.

[balrog666]

I guess I'm in very good company.

Only in your own mind.

[Dimensio]

I believe it was a discovery in Madagascar that throws the whole works out of whack by a million or was it two million years

That's not really a lot to go on. I can search for AP articles within the past two weeks that cover both Madagascar and evolution, but it sounds to me like you aren't remembering all of the details and perhaps only remembering what you think it said rather than what it did say.