Does Intelligent Design Have Merit?

The National Center for Science Education's (NCSE) entire argument that "Academic Freedom isn’t a License to Present Non-Science like ID" is based upon the premise that intelligent design (ID) is "Non-Science."? But whether ID is science and holds scientific merit is in fact the question at stake in this debate.? The NCSE has thus jumped ahead of itself, because it has never satisfactorily demonstrated that ID is "non-science."

Moreover, what about those scientists who do believe ID is science?  Do their voices not deserve to be heard?  Does the fact that some scientists believe ID is "non-science" mean that those who believe ID is science cannot speak their views?  In other words, is there academic freedom for scientists who believe that ID is science?  These are complex questions that the NCSE avoids by employing some of the following tactics:

• (1) Appealing to Authority
• (2) Blatantly Twisting and Misrepresenting ID
• (3) Puffing about the Glory of Evolution
• (4) Rewriting History
• (5) Promoting False Conspiracy Theories about ID
• (6) Hypocritically Harping on the Religious Associations of ID while Ignoring Their Own Side’s Use (and Abuse) of Religion
• (7) Evading the Real Issues

This rebuttal to the NCSE’s fifth opening statement will revisit more re-writing of history by the NCSE (Tactic #4) and twisting of ID (Tactic #2).  More than anything, it will observe how the NCSE uses Tactic #1—appealing to authority—to effectively oppose academic freedom for scientists who believe ID is good science. 

Unfortunately, pro-ID scientists are not the only losers in this push for conformity.  The real loser is the entire scientific community, whose progress and survival depends on the ability of scientists to challenge orthodoxy, think for themselves, and follow the evidence where it leads.  This is what the NCSE is apparently willing to sacrifice in order to keep ID out of the classroom. 

I will also discuss how the NCSE uses Tactic #5 to equate teaching ID with teaching scientific critiques of evolution. Finally, we will see how the NCSE uses tactic #4 to imply that neo-Darwinian evolution should be insulated from all forms of scientific criticism.

Initial Issues: NCSE’s use of Tactics #4 and #2:
In its fifth opening statement, the NCSE makes heavy use of tactics #2 and #4 (twisting and misrepresenting ID), but because I addressed some of these issues in my other rebuttals, I refer readers there for responses. For example, the NCSE says that “ID’s claims about the supernatural fall outside of science.” But as I discussed in my fourth opening statement, ID does not try to address claims about whether the designer is natural or supernatural. For a full rebuttal to the NCSE on this point, see my response to the NCSE’s third opening statement. Likewise, the NCSE asserts that “ID was a phrase used in an attempt to circumvent the constitutional barriers to teaching ‘creation science’.” I address this revisionist history in my rebuttal to the NCSE’s fourth opening statement.

Tactic #1: NCSE Appeals to Authority to Oppose Academic Freedom and Threaten Scientific Progress:
Most Americans agree with the old saying, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Not the NCSE, at least not when you want to defend academic freedom for ID in the classroom. The NCSE appeals to the authority of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) asserting that ID should not be taught in the classroom.  As the NCSE writes in its fifth opening statement:

“By the AAUP’s widely accepted definition, academic freedom is principally the right of college-level scholars to conduct, publish and discuss research. And as the AAUP observes, academic freedom does not carry with it the freedom to misinform students, and that is exactly what happens when ID arguments are taught.”

Is the NCSE correct to imply that the AAUP has said that academic freedom does not extend into classroom instruction? Absolutely not. Its famous “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” clearly states that academic freedom includes both the right to conduct, publish, and discuss research and also the right to teach about material which is relevant to their subject:

"1. Teachers are entitled to full freedom in research and in the publication of the results, subject to the adequate performance of their other academic duties; but research for pecuniary return should be based upon an understanding with the authorities of the institution.
"2. Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.”(1)

In 1970, the AAUP elaborated on what it meant by introducing relevant, though "controversial" material into the classroom: "The intent of this statement is not to discourage what is ‘controversial.’ Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry which the entire statement is designed to foster. The passage serves to underscore the need for teachers to avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to their subject."(2)

Such principles were reaffirmed in the AAUP’s 2007 report on "Freedom in the Classroom," which stated that "if an instructor has formed an opinion on a controversial question in adherence to scholarly standards of professional care, it is as much an exercise of academic freedom to test those opinions before students as it is to present them to the public at large."(3)

In contrast to the NCSE's claim, the AAUP has clearly stated that academic freedom CAN extend into the classroom.? While the NCSE is correct that the AAUP did later issue a condemnation of teaching ID, it would seem that in doing so, the AAUP applied a hypocritical double-standard: According to the AAUP’s principles quoted above, if a university biology professor had published peer-reviewed scientific research on intelligent design (for some examples, see http://www.discovery.org/a/2640), then it would not be inappropriate for that professor to discuss her views in the classroom—especially when she also objectively teaches her students about the prevailing neo-Darwinian viewpoint.

For a moment, let’s take a step back here. As I discussed in my fifth opening statement, Discovery Institute opposes mandating ID into public school curricula.  So why are we having this debate about academic freedom? This debate is important because academic freedom is the foundation of a free society. If we uphold academic freedom, professors and teachers should have freedom to teach about legitimate scientific viewpoints like ID.

If we uphold academic freedom, scientists should also have academic freedom to publish scientific research into ID. Unfortunately, the NCSE has gone much further than the AAUP in opposing academic freedom for ID, for the NCSE's behavior shows that they even oppose academic freedom for scientists to even publish their views supporting ID in scientific journals.

Exhibit A: The "Meyer" article.

In 2004, ID-theorist Stephen C. Meyer published a peer-reviewed pro-ID scientific article in the scientific journal Proceedings for the Biological Society of Washington. The president of the Biological Society of Washington (BSW), which publishes the journal, admitted privately that “there was not inappropriate behavior vs a vis [sic] the review process”(4) of Meyer’s article. Nonetheless, after the article was published, the NCSE prompted the BSW to attack the paper and assert it was improperly reviewed.(5)

The BSW gladly obeyed the NCSE, issuing a statement that Meyer's paper should not have been published—but not merely because of allegations surrounding its review, but also because the paper supported ID. The NCSE touted the BSW’s attack on Meyer's paper on its website, which stated:

“The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml), which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity. Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.”(6)

So according to the BSW and the NCSE, journals shouldn’t even publish work supporting ID, simply because they believe ID is wrong.  People who care about academic freedom should be very troubled by such developments.  Not only does this go much further in offending academic freedom than the AAUP’s statement quoted by the NCSE, but it exposes a form of self-serving circular logic:

Before Meyer's paper was published, groups like the NCSE had argued that ID was not science because it wasn’t found in peer-reviewed journals. But after Meyer's article was published in a peer-reviewed journal, they claimed that the journal shouldn't publish such material because ID wasn't science. This is self-serving circular logic that is designed to keep ID out of science, and offends both intellectual and academic freedom.

The NCSE and BSW would justify their circular intolerance by citing to a politically motivated edict by the AAAS that condemned ID. Is that a sufficient justification?  As I wrote in my first and sixth opening statements:

"Nothing critics can say—whether appealing to politically motivated condemnations of ID issued by pro-Darwin scientific authorities, or harping upon the religious beliefs of ID proponents—will change the fact that intelligent design is not a 'faith-based' argument. ... Opponents of ID may quote these blanket statements as if they demonstrate that ID has been rejected by the scientific community. Rather, what these statements actually document is the fact that much of the opposition to ID from the scientific community is not scientific in nature, but political, and is based upon fundamental misunderstandings and misrepresentations of ID. After all, since when do leading scientific organizations issue press releases and edicts against an idea? Indeed, Discovery Institute senior fellow John West found that AAAS 'board members voted to brand intelligent design as unscientific without actually reading for themselves the academic books and articles by scientists proposing the theory.'(7)"

Indeed, I don’t think that Stephen Jay Gould and other scientists would have agreed with the harshly anti-academic freedom position of ID's present critics when they wrote to the U.S. Supreme Court the following in an amicus brief:

“Judgments based on scientific evidence, whether made in a laboratory or a courtroom, are undermined by a categorical refusal even to consider research or views that contradict someone’s notion of the prevailing ‘consensus’ of scientific opinion. . . . Automatically rejecting dissenting views that challenge the conventional wisdom is a dangerous fallacy, for almost every generally accepted view was once deemed eccentric or heretical. Perpetuating the reign of a supposed scientific orthodoxy in this way, whether in a research laboratory or in a courtroom, is profoundly inimical to the search for truth. … The quality of a scientific approach or opinion depends on the strength of its factual premises and on the depth and consistency of its reasoning, not on its appearance in a particular journal or on its popularity among other scientists.”(8)

While ID may be a minority scientific view, there is no doubt that its proponents have made their case to the scientific community in mainstream scientific venues and that their views deserve the protection of academic freedom: Not only do ID proponents hold tenured positions at respected universities, but they have published their views in respected scientific venues. If one scrutinizes many of the footnotes I have cited in my statements, they will find some examples of the peer-reviewed and/or prestigiously published pro-ID scientific works come from sources such as Cambridge University Press, MIT Press, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Michigan State University Press, Protein Science, Annual Review of Genetics, and Journal of Molecular Biology. (Citations can be found at http://www.discovery.org/a/2640) As 85 scientists supporting academic freedom for ID wrote in their Kitzmiller amicus brief:

“Intelligent design, while admittedly a minority view, is currently being vigorously debated by scientists. For example, Cambridge University Press recently published a volume entitled ‘Debating Design,’ in which scientists on both sides of the issue stated their respective cases. Whether or not intelligent design is ultimately widely accepted as the most persuasive explanation for particular scientific phenomena, design theorists have formulated their theory based upon a scientific evaluation of the empirical evidence. The current formulation of intelligent design theory by its proponents, and its application to recent scientific discoveries, is still in its youth compared to many other scientific theories. For that very reason it is premature to conclude that one side has triumphed and the other has lost. Simply because one group of scientists favors one interpretation, we must not relegate the other side to a category of ‘non-scientists’ who are ineligible to state their case.”(9)

The scientists further stated that “It is crucial that advocates of the new scientific theories be granted freedom of inquiry to question reigning scientific ideas if scientific progress is to be possible.”(10)

While Judge Jones and the NCSE apparently would reject the advice of these 85 scientists regarding ID, hopefully those who are concerned about recent offenses to academic freedom within the scientific community will pay heed. Qualified scientists, educators, and students who openly doubt Darwin often face persecution. Whether or not you agree with ID, everyone should support academic freedom for dissenting and minority scientific viewpoints like ID because intellectual freedom is vital to the progress of science, a healthy democracy, and hopefully in the end, the betterment of humankind.

Pick your side in this debate carefully, for it will have repercussions far beyond the debate over evolution, because intellectual freedom is the foundation of a free society.

Enlisting Logical Fallacies and Rewriting History to Twist ID:
The NCSE claims that ID’s arguments are “merely dandified versions of arguments made by ‘creation scientists’ and earlier generations of creationists.” This claim is false on multiple levels.

First, core ID concepts like Dembski's the explanatory filter are simply not found in pre-ID creationist literature. Moreover, core ID terms such as “specified complexity”(11) and “irreducible complexity”(12) are derived from mainstream scientific literature—not creationist literature.

Second, the NCSE’s argument rests upon a subtle logical fallacy called the fallacy of the undistributed middle. This logical fallacy can look something like this:

• Democrats want Iraq to stabilize so America can get out.
• Republicans want Iraq to stabilize so America can get out.
• Therefore all Republicans are Democrats.

The fallacy is the failure to recognize that the respective positions are more nuanced than the mere claim that “Iraq should stabilize so America can get out.” Those who want Iraq to stabilize and America to get out of Iraq might have different philosophies about how that should happen, placing them into distinctly different camps.

To show how the NCSE commits this logical fallacy in the present situation, here is their basic argument broken down:

• Creationism always opposes neo-Darwinian evolution in favor of an intelligent cause.
• ID opposes neo-Darwinian evolution in favor of an intelligent cause.
• Therefore ID is creationism.

The fallacy is found in the NCSE’s failure to recognize that despite any similarities, there are also key differences between ID and creationism that cause them to fall into distinctly different camps.  Even the NCSE’s executive director Eugenie Scott recognizes that “most ID proponents do not embrace a Young Earth, Flood Geology, and sudden creation tenets associated with YEC [young earth creationism].”(13)  And there are other key differences between ID and creationism:

The theory of ID is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the “apparent design” in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. ID starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what scientific inferences can be drawn from that evidence. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected through science is supernatural. The charge that ID is “creationism” is a rhetorical strategy on the part of Darwinists who wish to delegitimize ID without actually addressing the merits of its case.(14)

NCSE Revises History and Promotes Conspiracy Theories about Critical Analysis of Evolution:
As part of its revisionist history, the NCSE also promotes the predictable conspiracy theory that ID is “now being presented under the guise of ‘critical analysis’ or ‘strengths and weaknesses’ of evolution.” ?I thought that ID-critic Patricia Princehouse put it far more eloquently when she promoted her amusing conspiracy theory that “critical analysis is intelligent design relabeled, just as intelligent design was creationism relabeled”(15) or made the outlandish claim that "[c]ritical analysis is just another name for creationism."(16)

These conspiracy theories that teaching scientific critique of evolution?equals teaching ID are demonstrably false for a variety of reasons:

(1) The Educational Approaches Are Logically Distinct:
One can critique evolution without discussing "replacement theories" or alternative explanations such as intelligent design. For example, Ohio’s former Critical Analysis of Evolution Lesson Plan offered critiques of arguments for evolution from the fossil record, homology, antibiotic resistance, and endosymbiosis, without any appeals to any alternative explanations. The theory of ID is not based upon mere refutation of evolution: thus teaching ID requires some positive argument for ID, and mere “critical analysis” of evolution does not logically lead to the conclusion of ID.

(2) Explicit Statements of Intent to Not Require Teaching ID:
Various districts and states which have sanctioned critical analysis of evolution have also included in their policies explicit disclaimers to ensure that teachers, students, and the public understand that the critical analysis policy does not call for teaching ID. For example, Kansas’s former State Science Standards required scientific critique of evolution, but?they also stated: “While the testimony presented at the science hearings included many advocates of Intelligent Design, these standards neither mandate nor prohibit teaching about this scientific disagreement.” (emphasis added) The NCSE would have you believe that there was a giant conspiracy in Kansas where every teacher in the state somehow believed that this really meant “teach ID,” even when the standards actually unambiguously state that teaching ID is not required.

(3) Scientific Critique Is a Separate Legal Category from Teaching about Alternative Theories:
Court have distinguished between teaching scientific critiques of evolution, and teaching ID. For example, in the case Selman v. Cobb County, Judge Clarence Cooper explained in a lawsuit over a textbook disclaimer requiring that be “critically considered,” that “the issue before the Court is not whether it is constitutionally permissible for public school teachers to teach intelligent design.”(17) Courts have thus recognized that critical analysis exists as a separate legal category from teaching ID.

(4) Some Critics of Darwin Don't Support ID:
Some critics of Neo-Darwinism, such as structuralists or self-organization proponents, have explicitly opposed intelligent design. For example, leading biologist Lynn Margulis rejects ID, but sharply criticizes neo-Darwinism’s reliance on mutations, arguing “new mutations don’t create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.”(18) Complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman, another critic of ID, cautions that “there appears to be a limit on the complexity of a genome that can be assembled by mutation and selection.”(19) Evolutionary biologist Stanley Salthe does not accept ID but describes himself as “a critic of Darwinian evolutionary theory,” which he insists “cannot explain origins, or the actual presence of forms and behaviors” in organisms.(20) If critiquing neo-Darwinian evolution necessarily equals ID, then these people should not exist.

Again, this illustrates the NCSE’s logical fallacy: by equating ID and scientific critique of evolution, they have ignored the fact that one can scientifically critique neo-Darwinism without accepting ID.

(5) Final Proof: The Pudding (i.e. the Darwinists’ Own Behavior):
It took ID’s legal opponents less than two months to file a lawsuit to ban ID from Dover, Pa, after Dover passed an explicitly pro-ID policy. If ID’s legal critics truly believed that policies calling for critical analysis of evolution during science instruction are the same as teaching ID, lawsuits would have arisen over the past few years over the many critical analysis of evolution policies around the United States. But they haven’t filed such lawsuits, and they won’t, because they know that critical analysis of evolution is different from teaching about ID.

NCSE’s Rewrites History on Criticisms of Evolution and Promotes “Evolution of the Gaps” Reasoning.
The easiest way to insulate evolution from any form of scientific critique is to declare evolution to be correct and hold that any critiques of it will be resolved in the future. This might be called an “evolution of the gaps” approach, which holds that any deficiencies in neo-Darwinian evolution will eventually be corrected, so current critiques of the theory are misplaced.? In fact, this is precisely the approach the NCSE recommends in evolution education.

For example, the NCSE asserts, “When paleontologists uncovered numerous fossils demonstrating exactly the transitions which ID promoters insisted did not exist, whales disappeared from the ID list of ‘weaknesses,’ but they still advocate teaching students that we do not have a perfect fossil record of bat evolution.” There are multiple problems with this statement.

First, if there was a time when there were no known plausible transitional fossils in the whale sequence, what would be wrong with informing students about that the state of scientific knowledge at that point in time? Must we tell students that “evolution will always be the answer” or should we just teach them the present state of knowledge? The NCSE implies we should teach them the former, rather than the letter.

Second, this is more revisionist history from the NCSE. Where is this “list of ‘weaknesses’” in neo-Darwinism from which whale evolution disappeared? I challenge the NCSE to provide the reference. It will be difficult to provide such a reference, given that in their 2008 book The Design of Life, leading ID theorists William Dembski and Jonathan Wells continue to offer potent critiques of the currently known fossil evidence cited to support whale evolution:

"Some Darwinists regard fossil evidence for the evolution of whales as a success story second only to the fossil evidence for the evolution of mammals from mammal-like reptiles. In fact, the evidence for neither is compelling. ... According to Berkeley paleontologist, all of the fossils in the whale series have 'distinguishing characteristics, which they would have to lose in order to be considered direct ancestors of other known forms.' At best, therefore, each fossil represents a terminal side branch of the whales' hypothetical lineage."(21)

Dembski and Wells continue on to give a devastating critique of the contradictory logic used by evolutionary scientists who argue for an evolutionary transition of whales:

"Fossil similarities suggest that hippos are close evolutionary relatives of other even-toed hoofed mammals such as pigs and camels, but far removed from whales. On the other hand, molecular similarities suggest that hippos are close evolutionary relatives of whales, but far removed from pigs and camels. But if the original fossil similarities are not the evidence for common ancestry, then by the same logic molecular similarities need not be either. There's no compelling reason to trust either hypothesis. In fact, there is good reason to distrust both hypotheses."(22)

Dembski and Wells do not even delve into the fact that the fossil record permits dramatically insufficient time to convert a land-mammal into a whale. The evolution of whales from a "primitive little mammal"(23) supposedly took place in less than 10 million years.(25) Think about that for a moment. Whales, with all of their complex adaptations for aquatic life, evolved from a "primitive little mammal"(25) to fully aquatic whales in less than ten million years. Whales have a long generation time, meaning that there were perhaps only a few million generations at best to allow for the change to add up. If they had a generation time as short as 5 years, Haldane's dilemma predicts that only a few thousand mutations could become fixed into an evolving population during that time period.(26) Regardless of what fossils are found, the timeline of the fossil record provides a significant challenge to neo-Darwinian accounts of whale evolution.

If NCSE’s imaginary “list of ‘weaknesses’” in neo-Darwinism kept by ID proponents does exist, it would seem that whale evolution has not been removed from that list. In fact, Dembski and Wells discuss many of the alleged transitional forms in the whale series, such as Pakicetus, Ambuloceuts, and Rodhocetus. This does not mean that ID proponents are taking an unscientific approach; it means that ID proponents, like good scientists, are making their scientific assessments using the latest, best-available data.

The NCSE’s assertion that there are no legitimate scientific critiques of evolution does not make it so. Given that there are potent critiques of the alleged land-mammal to whale transition, what the NCSE is actually doing is assuming the truth of its argument (i.e. assuming that neo-Darwinism is correct), and then putting arbitrary restrictions on acceptable scientific arguments in order to insulate neo-Darwinian evolution from scientific criticism. This is called “evolution of the gaps” reasoning, where it is presumed that any scientific deficiencies in neo-Darwinian evolution will one day be corrected, and thus current critiques are misguided. This is not how science is done, and this does not make for good educational policy. To use the NCSE’s own words, “This is a strategy of teaching students what we don’t know, rather than what we do, and leaves students ill-prepared to learn new information as science progresses.”

ID proponents suggest a different method: Phillip Johnson, a law professor whose ideas inspired many in the ID movement, recommends that “students should learn the orthodox Darwinian theory and the evidence that supports it, but they should also learn why so many are skeptical, and they should hear the skeptical arguments in their strongest form rather than in a caricature intended to make them look as silly as possible.”(27) Stephen Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, proposes that “Teachers should teach students about the main scientific arguments for and against Darwinian theory.”(28)  Leading pro-ID biochemist Michael Behe similarly stated in the New York Times that schools should “[t]each Darwin's elegant theory. But also discuss where it has real problems accounting for the data, where data are severely limited….”(29)? Molecular biologist and textbook analyst Jonathan Wells suggests that “[s]tudents should be taught about Darwinian evolution because it is enormously influential in modern biology. But they should also be given the resources to evaluate the theory critically.”(30)

There’s someone else who supports this method of teaching evolution. In Origin of Species, Charles Darwin said, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.”(31) It would seem that the NCSE rejects Darwin’s approach to teaching evolution—and sadly their position makes for bad science, and bad educational policy.