Intelligent Design Is Creationism in a Cheap Tuxedo

My deliberately provocative title is borrowed from Leonard Krishtalka, who directs the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. Hired-gun "design theorists" in cheap tuxedos have met with some success in getting close to their target: public science education. I hope to convince you that this threat is worth paying attention to. As I write, intelligent design (ID) is a hot issue in the states of Washington and Ohio (see Physics Today, May 2002, page 31*). Evolutionary biology is ID's primary target, but geology and physics are within its blast zone.

Creationism evolves. As in biological evolution, old forms persist alongside new. After the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, creationists tried to get public schools to teach biblical accounts of the origin and diversity of life. Various courts ruled the strategy unconstitutional. Next came the invention of "creation science," which was intended to bypass constitutional protections. It, too, was recognized by the courts as religion. Despite adverse court rulings, creationists persist in reapplying these old strategies locally. In many places, the pressure keeps public school biology teachers intimidated and evolution quietly minimized.

However, a new strategy, based on so-called ID theory, is now at the cutting edge of creationism. ID is different from its forebears. It does a better job of disguising its sectarian intent. It is well funded and nationally coordinated. To appeal to a wider range of people, biblical literalism, Earth's age, and other awkward issues are swept under the rug. Indeed, ID obfuscates sufficiently well that some educated people with little background in the relevant science have been taken in by it. Among ID's diverse adherents are engineers, doctors--and even physicists.

ID advocates can't accept the inability of science to deal with supernatural hypotheses, and they see this limitation as a sacrilegious denial of God's work and presence. Desperately in need of affirmation, they invent "theistic science" in which the design of the Creator is manifest. Perhaps because their religious faith is rather weak, they need to bolster their beliefs every way they can--including hijacking science to save souls and prove the existence of God.

William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher at Baylor University and one of ID's chief advocates, asserts that: " . . . any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient."1 Whether or not they agree with Dembski on this point, most Americans hold some form of religious belief. Using what they call the Wedge Strategy,2 ID advocates seek to pry Americans away from "naturalistic science" by forcing them to choose between science and religion. ID advocates know that science will lose. They portray science as we know it as innately antireligious, thereby blurring the distinction between science and how science may be interpreted.

When presenting their views before the public, ID advocates generally disguise their religious intent. In academic venues, they avoid any direct reference to the Designer. They portray ID as merely an exercise in detecting design, citing examples from archaeology, the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) project, and other enterprises. Cambridge University Press has published one ID book,3 which, the ID advocates repeatedly proclaim, constitutes evidence that their case has real scientific merit. ID creationist publications are nearly absent from refereed journals, and this state of affairs is presented as evidence of censorship.

This censorship, ID advocates argue, justifies the exploitation of public schools and the children in them to circumvent established scientific procedures. In tort law, expert scientific testimony must agree with the consensus of experts in a given field. No such limitation exists with respect to public education. ID advocates can snow the public and school boards with pseudoscientific presentations. As represented by ID advocates, biological evolution is a theory in crisis, fraught with numerous plausible-sounding failures, most of which are recycled from overt creationists. It is "only fair," the ID case continues, to present alternatives so that children can make up their own minds. Yesterday's alternative was "Flood geology." Today's is "design theory."

Fairness, open discussion, and democracy are core American values and often problematic. Unfortunately, journalists routinely present controversies where none exist, or they present political controversies as scientific controversies. Stories on conflicts gain readers, and advertising follows. This bias toward reporting conflicts, along with journalists' inability to evaluate scientific content and their unwillingness to do accuracy checks (with notable exceptions), are among the greatest challenges to the broad public understanding of science.

ID creationism is largely content-free rhetoric. Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University and an ID proponent, argues that many biochemical and biophysical mechanisms are "irreducibly complex."4 He means that, if partially dismembered, they would not work, so they could not have evolved. This line of argument ignores the large number of biological functions that look irreducibly complex, but for which intermediates have been found. One response to Behe's claims consists of the tedious task of demonstrating functions in a possible evolutionary path to the claimed irreducibly complex state. When presented with these paths, Behe typically ignores them and moves on. I admire the people who are willing to spend the time to put together the detailed refutations.5

The position of an ID creationist can be summarized as: "I can't understand how this complex outcome could have arisen, so it must be a miracle." In an inversion of the usual procedure in science, the null hypothesis is taken to be the thing Dembski, Behe, and their cohorts want to prove, albeit with considerable window-dressing. Dembski classifies all phenomena as resulting from necessity, chance, or design. In ruling out necessity, he means approximately that one could not predict the detailed structures and information we see in biological systems from the laws of physics. His reference to chance is essentially equivalent to the creationist use of one of the red herrings introduced by Fred Hoyle:

A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?6 Having dispensed with necessity and chance, Dembski concludes that design has been detected on the grounds that nothing else can explain the phenomenon--at least according to him.

Of course, design has no predictive power. ID is not a scientific theory. If we had previously attributed the unexplainable to design, we would still be using Thor's hammer to explain thunder. Nor does ID have any technological applications. It can be fun to ask ID advocates about the practical applications of their work. Evolution has numerous practical technological applications, including vaccine development. ID has none.

As organisms evolve, they become more complex, but evolution doesn't contravene the second law of thermodynamics. Dembski, like his creationist predecessors, misuses thermodynamics. To support the case for ID, he has presented arguments based on a supposed Law of Conservation of Information, an axiomatic law that applies only to closed systems with very restricted assumptions.7 Organisms, of course, are not closed systems.

ID's reach extends beyond biology to physics and cosmology. One interesting discussion concerns the fundamental constants. There is a well-known point of view that our existence depends on a number of constants lying within a narrow range. As one might expect, the religious community has generally viewed this coincidence as evidence in favor of--or at least as a plausibility argument for--their beliefs. The ID creationist community has adopted the fundamental constants as additional evidence for their Designer of Life--apparently not realizing that many fine-tuning arguments are based on physical constants allowing evolution to proceed. Physical cosmology is largely absent from school science standards. Where present, as in Kansas, it is likely to come under ID attack.

I have only scratched the surface here. Don't assume everything is fine in your school system even if it seems free of conflict. Peace may mean that evolution, the core concept of biology, is minimized. No region of the country is immune. Watch out for the guys in tuxedos--they don't have violins in those cases.

Adrian Melott is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He is also a founding board member of Kansas Citizens for Science.

Letters are encouraged and should be sent to Letters, Physics Today, American Center for Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3842 or by e-mail to ptletter@aip.org (using your surname as "Subject"). Please include your affiliation, mailing address, and daytime phone number. We reserve the right to edit.

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References 1. W. Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill. (1999), p. 206. 2. See http://rnaworld.bio.ukans.edu/id-intro/sect3.html. Another source is http://www.sunflower.com/~jkrebs/JCCC/05%20Wedge_edited.html 3. W. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, Cambridge U. Press, New York (1998). For a review by W. Elsberry, see http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/zgists/wre/papers/dembski7.html. 4. M. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free Press, New York (1996). 5. See http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/catalano/box/behe.htm. See also http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/behe.html 6. F. Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York (1983), p. 18. 7. W. Dembski, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md. (2002).

Are you suggesting that science and religion are at odds?

What I am saying is… History has shown, a scientist’s success at adding knowledge to his particular field of endeavor, is inversely proportional to his religious fanaticism. Got that.

One only has to ask the question how did the simple cell acquire the millions of instructions associated with its DNA. Intellegent Design recognizes that anyone interested can see the difference between the natural Mount Evans or Longs Peak and the designed Mount Rushmore. In biology you see the same thing. Evolutionists refuse to acknowledge the several human biological subsystems could not evolve because they are irreducably complex. To reject design because it would impact your world view is intellectual dishonesty and not worthy of one who would like to call him or herself as scientist.

These debates are so predictable. Why do you even bother? You'll all scream and shout at each other, your side screaming "Creationist" and the other side screaming "Evolutionist" and in the end you will be right where you started, if a little more diametrically opposed to one another's views. What I find most amusing, and perhaps most telling, is how angry and hostile some people are to the Intelligent Design concept. Do you really feel threatened? I mean, let's be honest. Actions speak louder than words, and your actions tell me that "Intelligent Design" poses a serious threat to the monopoly that natural Evolution has in the public sphere. Furthermore, you lack confidence in your natural Evolution, you lack confidence in your own science, and fear that an open debate in a public forum would not win your side any points. That's why you wish to stifle the debate, and shut the opposition out. You fear them. Oh, sure. You'll deny it, no doubt. But your actions, and I mean all people who behave as you do regarding this subject, expose your own motives.

ID was originally developed to find evidence of intellegent life on other planets. It has found patterns that indicate that life on this planet has a design behind it. This does not challenge evolution in any way. It merely suggests that god has used evolution to create life. Atheists simply fear that the evidence is going against them.

The study of science in all of its aspects was started by Christians

"Cyril's army of monks murdered the prefect and were cannonized by him for this deed; marauding through the city they came across Hypatia, daughter of the Museum's last great mathematician Theon. She was a Neoplatonist philosopher and astronomer whose teachings are partially recorded by one of her admirers and pupils, the Christian Synesius, and she was also supposedly an advisor to Orestes and one of the last members of the Museum. Driving home from her own lectures without attendant, this independent woman and scholar epitomized the suspect nature of Paganism and its heretical scientific teachings. She was dragged from her chariot by the mob, stripped, flayed, and finally burned alive in the library of the Caesareum as a witch. Cyril was made a saint. After her death Alexandria became steadily less stable, overrun by the monks who evolved into the Copts, who incorporated the old Alexandrian prejudices towards foreigners with the new prejudice towards any scientific or classical knowledge."

I'm still waiting for the science that demonstrates that non-living matter can self-assemble, simultaneously acquire the ability to convert raw energy into a usable form, and subsequently increase in informational complexity to the point that it becomes self aware. In the absence of such science, you sir, have faith. Just like everyone. It's so funny to see you put on heirs, puffing out your free-thinking, rationalist chest and pounding it a while, declaring your side to be the correct and scientifically justified side. I find it most bizzare how you try and use science as a tool with which to beat your arch-enemy over the head with. It makes those of us who are actually thinking things through laugh quietly.

It makes those of us who are actually thinking things through laugh quietly.

Well, you'll have to express yourself as you can, since your ID'ers don't seem to be able to get published in peer reviewed scientific journals -- oh, I forgot, you are all the victims of the vast atheist conspiracy. I suggest tinfoil.

Some postulate some sort of--what's it called--pans spermia?

a la ET.

That is, that ET seeded creation to get it going good. Of course, that doesn't answer where ET came from.

But atheists don't have a good answer for where the original atoms came from either. . . . and though she might have thought otherwise, it wasn't from M. M. O'Hair's farts either.

I think they ought to publish in peer reviewed journals. Dembski has offered explainations as to why he doesn't. Maybe he will someday. Why are they "my Id'ers"? I'm playing devils advocate like I always do. It's fun to sit in the middle and watch extremists like yourself get your panties in a bunch. I don't think there is an atheist conspiracy either. I think it's extremely hard to get something that is almost totally math-based to be accepted as empirical science. Then again, no peer reviewed papers have been published explaining how non-living matter self assembles and simultaneously acquires energy conversion capabilities. I expect you'll start screaming "Creationist" soon, so just get on with it and I'll resign myself to laughing. Unless you think you can carry on a discussion without resorting to sarcasm and insults.

I mean, let's be honest. Actions speak louder than words, and your actions tell me that "Intelligent Design" poses a serious threat to the monopoly that natural Evolution has in the public sphere. Furthermore, you lack confidence in your natural Evolution, you lack confidence in your own science, and fear that an open debate in a public forum would not win your side any points.

Such BS, scientific theory is not a destination it is a journey, the question is never really answered, discoveries and advancements simply spur better questions. ID is an attempt to hijack this process and interject god into all the current unknowns, thus effectively shutting down all future research. The real fear is that America would loose its technological edge and its ability to remain on the cutting edge. I mean really lets be honest.

Can you explain specifically how ID attempts to "inject God" into "science"? I expect you to make specific references to Dembski's work, quotes of his statements, etc. in order to make your case. I'll look forward to reading an explaination for this oft made remark.

atheists don't have a good answer for where the original atoms came from either

Here's the difference. Theists can't answer where god came from. Now the difference between atoms and god is that we know atoms exist. So theists are merely adding an unseen layer -- multiplying entities, as Occham would say.

I also would like you to explain, specifically, how Intelligent Design would hinder people from studying evolutionary theory, natural or otherwise. Also, explain how specifically a desire to acquire more technological information would be harmed. Thanks.

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