The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific Article available from Universiteit Gent idea of intelligent design (ID), which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."Forrest & Gross 2004, p. 7 Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it.Forrest 2001, "The Wedge at Work: How Intelligent Design Creationism Is Wedging Its Way into the Cultural and Academic Mainstream" The movement arose out of the creation science movement in the United States, Context, pp. 18–31. [p. 18] "An Objective Observer Would Know that ID and Teaching About 'Gaps' and 'Problems' in Evolutionary Theory are Creationist, Religious Strategies that Evolved from Earlier Forms of Creationism" [p. 24] "The concept of intelligent design (hereinafter 'ID'), in its current form, came into existence after the Edwards case was decided in 1987. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the religious nature of ID would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child." [p. 31] "...we find that ID's religious nature would be further evident to our objective observer because it directly involves a supernatural designer. ... A 'hypothetical reasonable observer,' adult or child, who is 'aware of the history and context of the community and forum' is also presumed to know that ID is a form of creationism.... The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism." and is driven by a small group of proponents. — Barbara Forrest, 2005, testifying in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. The Encyclopædia Britannica explains that ID cannot be empirically tested and that it fails to solve the problem of evil; thus, it is neither sound science nor sound theology.
Purpose The overall goal of the intelligent design movement is to overthrow materialism and atheism. Its proponents believe that society has suffered "devastating" cultural consequences from adopting materialism and that science is the cause of the decay into materialism because it seeks only natural explanations, and is therefore atheistic. They believe that the scientific theory of evolution implies that humans have no spiritual nature, no moral purpose, and no intrinsic meaning. They seek to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview", represented by the theory of evolution, in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."
To achieve their goal of defeating a materialistic world view, advocates of intelligent design take a two-pronged approach. Alongside the promotion of intelligent design, proponents also seek to "Teach the Controversy"; discredit evolution by emphasizing perceived flaws in the theory of evolution, or disagreements within the scientific community and encourage teachers and students to explore non-scientific alternatives to evolution, or to critically analyze evolution and the controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution. But the world's largest general scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has stated that "There is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of evolution." and that "Evolution is one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science." The ruling in the 2005 Dover Area School District trial; Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, where the claims of intelligent design proponents were considered by a United States federal court, stated that "evolution, including common descent and natural selection, is 'overwhelmingly accepted' by the scientific community." Whether ID is Science, p. 70 Whether ID is Science, p. 83
The Discovery Institute (DI) is a religious think tank that drives the intelligent design movement.Attie, et al. 2006 The Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) counts most of the leading intelligent design advocates among its membership, most notably its former program advisor the now deceased Phillip E. Johnson. Johnson was the architect of the movement's key strategies, the wedge strategy and the "Teach the Controversy" campaign. The Discovery Institute and leading proponents represent intelligent design as a revolutionary scientific theory.Dembski 2004 The overwhelming majority of the scientific community, as represented by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of SciencesNational Academy of Sciences 1999, p. 25 and nearly all scientific professional organizations, firmly reject these claims, and insist that intelligent design is not valid science, its proponents having failed to conduct an actual scientific research program. This has led the movement's critics to state that intelligent design is merely a public relations campaign and a political campaign.
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." 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 scientific community's position, as represented by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), 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."
Philosophy At the 1999 "Reclaiming America for Christ Conference" called by Reverend D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, Phillip E. Johnson gave a speech called "How The Evolution Debate Can Be Won." In it he sums up the theological and epistemological underpinnings of intelligent design and its strategy for victory:
Darwin's Black Box, mentioned in the quote above, received harsh criticism from the scientific community, including negative reviews by evolutionary scientist Nathan Lents.
History of the movement The intelligent design movement grew out of a creationist tradition which argues against evolutionary theory from a religious standpoint, usually that of 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.
Origins The modern use of the words "intelligent design," as a term intended to describe a field of inquiry, began after the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), ruled that creationism is unconstitutional in public school science curricula. A Discovery Institute report says that Charles Thaxton, editor of Of Pandas and People, had picked the phrase up from a NASA scientist, and thought "That's just what I need, it's a good engineering term." In drafts of the book over one hundred uses of the root word "creation," such as "creationism" and "creation science," were changed, almost without exception, to "intelligent design," Context, pp. 31–33. while "creationists" was changed to "design proponents" or, in one instance, "cdesign proponentsists." In 1989, Of Pandas and People was published by the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), with the definition:
Pandas was followed in 1991 by Darwin on Trial, a neo-creationist polemic by Phillip E. Johnson, that is regarded as a central text of the movement.Stewart 2007, p. 2 Darwin on Trial mentioned Pandas as "'creationist' only in the sense that it juxtaposes a paradigm of 'intelligent design' with the dominant paradigm of (naturalistic) evolution," but his use of the term as a focus for his wedge strategy promoting "theistic realism" came later.Johnson 2010, pp. 238–239 Article reprinted in full by Access Research Network here. The book was reviewed by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould for Scientific American in July 1992, concluding that the book contains "... no weighing of evidence, no careful reading of literature on all sides, no full citation of sources (the book does not even contain a bibliography) and occasional use of scientific literature only to score rhetorical points." Gould's review led to the formation in 1992 or 1993 of an 'Ad Hoc Origins Committee' of Johnson's supporters, which wrote a letter, circulated to thousands of university professors, defending the book. Among the 39 signatories were nine who later became members of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).Forrest & Gross 2004, p. 18
During the early 1990s Johnson worked to develop a 'big tent' movement to unify a wide range of creationist viewpoints in opposition to evolution. In 1992, the first formal meeting devoted to intelligent design was held in Southern Methodist University. It included a debate between Johnson and Michael Ruse (a key witness in McLean v. Arkansas (1982)) and papers by William A. Dembski, Michael Behe and Stephen C. Meyer. In 1993, Johnson organized a follow-up meeting, including Dembski, Behe, Meyer, Dean H. Kenyon (co-author of Pandas) and Walter Bradley (co-author with Thaxton and Kenyon of The Mystery of Life's Origin (1984)), as well as two graduate students, Paul A. Nelson and Jonathan Wells.Numbers 2006, p. 380
Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture
On December 6, 1993, an article by Meyer was published in The Wall Street Journal, drawing national attention to the controversy over Dean H. Kenyon's teaching of creationism. This article also gained the attention of Discovery Institute co-founder Bruce Chapman. On discovering that Meyer was developing the idea of starting a scientific research center in conversations with conservative political scientist John G. West, Chapman invited them to create a unit within the Discovery Institute called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (later renamed the Center for Science and Culture). This center was dedicated to overthrowing "scientific materialism" and "fomenting nothing less than a scientific and cultural revolution."Numbers 2006, pp. 381–382 A 1995 conference, "The Death of Materialism and the Renewal of Culture," served as a blueprint for the center.Forrest & Gross 2004, p. 19 By 1996 they had nearly a million dollars in grants, the largest being from Howard Ahmanson, Jr., with smaller but still large contributions coming from the Stewardship Foundation established by C. Davis Weyerhaeuser and the Maclellan Foundation, and appointed their first class of research fellows.
The wedge strategy