Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Biology: When Worlds Collide

Stevan J. ArnoldDepartment of ZoologyOregon State University

Overview

• Introduction • Darwin’s legacy • Protestant Fundamentalism and

Evolution • The Collision Between Fundamentalism

and Science • Evolutionary Biology Today • The price if Fundamentalism prevails in

public schools

What is evolution?

• Variation (differences among individuals)

• Inheritance (resemblance between parents and offspring)

• Selection (correspondence between variations in a characteristic and fitness)

• Descent with modification (change from one generation to the next)

“Descended from apes! My dear, let us hope that it is not

true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known.”

Wife of the Bishop of Worchester, about 1860, upon hearing of Darwin’s analysis.

Protestant Fundamentalism and Evolution

A “fundamentalist” is a person willing to “do battle royal” for the fundamentals of the faith

(Curtis Lee Laws 1920).

The Fundamentals

• Evangelism (salvation of individual souls).• Inerrancy (unwavering faith in the literal truth

of the Bible). • Premilliennialism (belief in a future period in

which Jesus Christ will rule the world for 1000 years).

• Separation (establishment of independent churches to avoid apostasy and compromise).

World War I as a trigger for

fundamentalism as a social movement

(1915-1925): a perceived struggle between Christian

civilization and German barbarism

Scopes Trial 1925: Fundamentalism looses credibility and is marginalized

Carl Henry (right), author of Remaking

the Modern Mind (1946): coined the

phrase “secular philosophy of humanism”

Fundamentalism transformed and organized (1925-1975): defining a new

enemy, “secular humanism”

The re-emergence of Fundamentalism as a social movement (1976-present): answers,

order, love and stability in the face of rapid social change

• The challenges: women’s rights, limits on parental rights, gay rights, no prayers in school, right to abortion.

• The reaction: home schooling and Christian academies.

• The reaction: active entry into politics, the Moral Majority.

• The reaction: replace Darwinism in the public schools with ‘creation science’

Fundamentalism and Science

“I like Biblical theology that … does not begin with an hypothesis, and then warp the facts and the philosophy to fit

the crook of our dogma, but a Baconian system, which first gathers the teachings of the word of God, and then seeks to deduce some general

law upon which the facts can be arranged” (Pierson 1895)

Baconian v. Kantian Science

• The task of science is the discovery of the Laws of Nature, established by an all-knowing God.

Francis Bacon (d. 1626)

Baconian v. Kantian Science

• “The order we perceive, the forms and categories through which we understand, are not demonstrably present in the natural world itself but are instead inherent in the ability of the human mind to reason”.

Immanuel Kant (d. 1804)

What is science?

• It is guided by natural law

• It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law

• It is testable against the empirical world

• It’s conclusions are tentative, not necessarily the final word

• It is falsifiable

Judge William R. Overton (1982) in Epperson v. Arkansas

The Creation/Evolution Continuum

The Collision Between Fundamentalism and Science

• Why is evolution a dagger at the throat of PF?

• If evolution prevails, Christianity looses: “Science and divinely-revealed religion/ethics cannot be isolated without inviting long-range disaster. (Whitcomb 1983).

•

Evolution: a dagger at the throat• “I object to the [evolution]

theory for several reasons. First it is a dangerous theory. If a man link himself in generations with the monkeys, it then becomes an important question whether he is going towards him or coming from him – and I have seen them going in both directions. I don’t know of any argument that can be used to prove that man is an improved monkey that may not be used just as well to prove that the monkey is a degenerate man, and the latter theory is more plausible than the former …” William Jennings Bryan 1904,

“The Prince of Peace”

The Collision Between Fundamentalism and Science

• Why is evolution a dagger at the throat of PF? • If evolution prevails, Christianity looses:

“Science and divinely-revealed religion/ethics cannot be isolated without inviting long-range disaster. (Whitcomb 1983).

• Evolution violates the perceived right of every believer to make private interpretations of Scripture.

Battling Against Evolution in the Classroom: A Succession of Tactics

• Outlawing evolution (<1925)

• Creation Science (1961-1987)

• Intelligent Design (1984-present)

Sputnik (1957): a wakeup call

The NSF-funded Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (1963)

ICR: a Fundamentalist reaction to evolution in the schools

The Discovery Institute: Creationism repackaged

Michael Behe: leading proponent of intelligent design

What is Intelligent Design?

The proposition that the intricacy and complexity of life is evidence for an intelligent designer

Intelligent Design: a new idea?

• Thomas Aquinas (13th century)

• Reverend Paley (19th century)

• Thraxton et al. (1984, The Mystery of Life’s Origin)

• Percival Davis & Dean Kenyon (1989, Of Pandas and People)

The Discovery Institute’s Wedge Document (1999)

Twenty year goals:• “To see intelligent design theory as the dominant

perspective in science.”• “To see design theory application in specific

fields including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics …

• To see design theory permeate our religious, cutural, moral and political life.

Collision in the Courtroom

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

Collision in the Courtroom

Scopes Trial (1925): Scopes convicted of teaching evolution; reversed on a technicality.

Epperson v. Arkansas (1968): struck down Arkansas state law prohibiting the teaching of human evolution.

McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education (1981): struck down a law requiring ‘equal time for Creation Science and evolution’ in the classroom.

Edwards v. Aquillard (1987): struck down a Louisiana state law requiring equal time for Creation Science and evolution in the classroom.

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005): prohibited teaching intelligent design in Dover Area public schools.

Quotes from Kitzmiller v. Dover

• “We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries –old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980’s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community… ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.”

• “Notably, every major scientific association that has taken a position on the issue of whether ID is science has concluded that ID is not, and cannot be considered as such.”

• “…Professor Behe’s claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large.”

More quotes from Kitzmiller v. Dover

• “ … we conclude that the religious nature of ID would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child”

• “The only apparent difference between the argument made by Paley [in the early 19th century] and the argument for ID … is that ID’s “official position” does not acknowledge that the designer is God.”

• “Moreover, ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.”

• “…the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and … in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.”

The intelligent design movement’s tactics of bamboozlement

• Claiming that intelligent design is a scientific theory

• Pretending that evolution is controversial within the scientific community

• Ignoring the scientific literature• Misrepresenting scientific results• Systematically disguising the creationist

origin of the movement

Discovery Institute’s Evolving Banners 1996-2005

Center for Science & Culture (CSC)

Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture (CRSC)

Center for Science & Culture (CSC)

Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture (CRSC)

Evolutionary Biology Today:

Intelligent Design –

What controversy?

Notable discoveries of the last 20 years in evolutionary biology

• The prevalence of junk DNA: non-intelligent design

• A molecular perspective on the diversification of life

• Our relationship to chimps

• Human evolution over the last 5 million years

COMMON ANCESTOR

YOU ARE HERE

The price if Fundamentalism prevails in the public schools?

• Cost

• Credibility

• Confusion

Will Fundamentalism prevail in the public schools?

Time magazine(summer 2005)

… loosing the war “Human beings developed from earlier species of animals” (% Agreement)

Summary

• Intelligent design is one item in the agenda of a social movement known as Protestant Fundamentalism.

• Fundamentalists are at war with the modern world, science in general, and evolution in particular.

• Intelligent design is a religious argument. It is not a scientific hypothesis.

• Teaching intelligent design in public science classes has been deemed a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

• The battle over teaching intelligent design and other forms of creationism that masquerade as science is a continuing struggle.

References• Ammerman, N. T. 1991. North American Protestant

Fundamentalism. Pp. 1-65 IN: M. E. Marty & R. S. Appleby, Fundamentalisms Observed. Univ. Chicago Press.

• Freeman, S. and J. C. Herron. 2004. Evolutionary Analysis. Pearson/Prentice Hall.

• Moore, J. 1993. The creationist cosmos of Protestant Fundamentalism. Pp. 42-72 IN: M. E. Marty & R. S. Appleby, Fundamentalism and Society. Univ. Chicago Press.

• Scott, E. C. 2004. Evolution vs. Creationism. Univ. California Press.