Why Darwin Matters_ The Case Against Intelligent Design - Michael Shermer [51]
—Rob Johnson, on ID proponent Phillip Johnson, Church & State magazine, 1999
One evening several years ago, while on a book tour for How We Believe, I gave a lecture at MIT on why people believe in God. Coincidentally, at the same time, down the hall, the mathematician William Dembski was lecturing on Intelligent Design theory. After our respective talks we did what any two people of opposing camps in a controversy should do—we went out for a beer. Accompanied by Bill’s colleague Paul Nelson, we sat around a sports bar and reflected on science and religion, evolution and creationism, and—this being Boston—the Red Sox and the Yankees. Since that evening, I have debated Bill, Paul, and the Intelligent Design philosopher Stephen Meyer, on several occasions, and have shared car rides and meals in the process. Paul Nelson visited the Skeptics Society office and library, after which we dined with God and mammon. Having gotten to know these gentlemen over the years, I must aver that a more gracious, considerate, and thoughtful group you will not find.
Because of our friendship, these guys have been forthright with me about their religious beliefs, which, of course, I could not help but inquire about. Although to a man they remain steadfast in their claim that they are pursuing a scientific agenda and not a religious one, they privately acknowledge their belief that the Intelligent Designer is the God of Abraham. To my knowledge, in fact, all but one of the leading Intelligent Design proponents is an evangelical Christian.
On the one hand, this should not matter in the assessment of someone’s claim, and I have devoted the longest chapter of this book to their arguments. On the other hand, when nearly every single member of a scientific community belongs to one particular religious faith, your baloney detection alarms should signal you that there is something else afoot here, as indeed there is.
As a scientist, I look to the data. And although I disdain to accuse friends of being insincere about their motives, the extant evidence—in their own published words—leads me to conclude that there is a distinct and definite religious and political agenda behind and above whatever science they think they are pursuing. Human behavior is complex and multivariate in its causes—motives are not so easily pigeonholed into black-and-white categories. In my opinion, the Intelligent Design creationists I have met believe their own rhetoric about only doing science and having no religious or political agendas, and they also believe in the religious and political tenets to which they adhere.
God and the Wedge
In an attempt to distance themselves from “scientific creationists,” who were handily defeated in the 1987 Supreme Court case, Intelligent Design creationists emphasize that they are interested only in doing science. According to Dembski, for example, “scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design does not.”1
Baloney. On February 6, 2000, Dembski told the National Religious Broadcasters at their annual conference in Anaheim, California, that “intelligent design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God. . . . The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ. . . . And if there’s anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view.”2 In a feature article in the Christian magazine Touchstone, Dembski was even more direct: “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”3
Make no mistake about it. Creationists and their Intelligent Design brethren do not just want equal time, they want all the time they can get. Listen to the words of Phillip Johnson, the University of California, Berkeley, law professor who is the fountainhead of the modern Intelligent Design movement, at the