Chapter 6

Intelligent Design According to Its Believers: Is Intelligent Design the Same as Creationism, and Is Intelligent Design Religion?

People get confused about ID because it is a very broad subject. In this chapter I will discuss what it is according to its believers, how it relates to creationism, and how it relates to religion.

Intelligent Design According to Its Believers

ID asserts that sometime in the past, in ways not described, some singular being (possibly God) created life, and created all the species of biological organisms on the planet. However, there is a wide diversity of opinions among the proponents of ID as to exactly what ID really is.

Here are the opinions about ID from many of ID’s most vocal promoters, in their own words.

Phillip E. Johnson is the founding father of the modern ID movement. He believes that ID is correct because he does not like the idea that science restricts itself to looking for natural causes for natural phenomena.

We are taking an intuition most people have (the belief in God) and making it a scientific and academic enterprise. We are removing the most important cultural roadblock to accepting the role of God as creator.14

However, Johnson, who is a law professor rather than a scientist, also publicly insists that AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus. Johnson is retired from the University of California at Berkeley Law School, and is the co-founder and program advisor for the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute.

Dr. William Dembski, a prominent ID promoter, insists that ID is not religion. He makes this a contrast between ID and creationism, which he says is religion:

Intelligent design, by contrast [to creationism], places no such requirement on any designing intelligence responsible for cosmological fine-tuning or biological complexity. It simply argues that certain finite material objects exhibit patterns that convincingly point to an intelligent cause. But the nature of that cause—whether it is one or many, whether it is a part of or separate from the world, and even whether it is good or evil—simply do not fall within intelligent design’s purview.15

Though sometimes he says that ID is religion after all. Specifically, it is Christianity.

It is no accident that the first thing the Bible teaches is creation. Creation implies purpose. Because we are created, there is a purpose for our existence, for the family, for work, for sex, and for how we ought to live. Creation by a loving God is our origin.16

Dr. Dembski is a philosopher and mathematician. He is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and has recently been a research professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Dr. Jonathan Wells (John Corrigan Wells) insists that Intelligent Design is science.

ID maintains that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than unguided natural processes.

Three things are noteworthy about this description of ID. First, design is inferred from evidence, not deduced from scripture or religious doctrines. All of us make design inferences every day, often unconsciously. ID attempts to formulate our everyday logic in terms rigorous enough to warrant inferences from the evidence in nature. This is clearly not the same as biblical creationism.17

Though he arrived at this conclusion though prayer, rather than because there was evidence that convinced him, and because of advice from Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

At the end of the Washington Monument rally in September, 1976, I was admitted to the second entering class at [Moon’s] Unification Theological Seminary. During the next two years, I took a long prayer walk every evening. I asked God what He wanted me to do with my life, and the answer came not only through my prayers, but also through Father’s [Moon’s] many talks to us, and through my studies. Father encouraged us to set our sights high and accomplish great things.

He also spoke out against the evils in the world; among them, he frequently criticized Darwin’s theory that living things originated without God’s purposeful, creative activity. My studies included modern theologians who took Darwinism for granted and thus saw no room for God’s involvement in nature or history; in the process, they re-interpreted the fall, the incarnation, and even God as products of human imagination.

Father’s words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.18

He admits that the earth is many billions of years old.

Since 1859, however, many Precambrian fossils have been found, including microfossils of single-celled bacteria in rocks more than three billion years old. In addition, multicellular Precambrian fossils have been found in the Ediacara Hills of Australia, though there is continuing debate over whether any—or how many—of the Ediacaran fossils were animals, or what relationship—if any—they had to the Cambrian phyla. In 1998, Cambridge University paleobiologist Simon Conway Morris (who is featured in the film “Darwin’s Dilemma”) wrote, ‘Apart from the few Ediacaran survivors . . . there seems to be a sharp demarcation between the strange world of Ediacaran life and the relatively familiar Cambrian fossils’ (Crucible of Creation, 30).19

Dr. Wells has PhDs in both molecular and cell biology and in religious studies. Dr. Wells also denies that HIV is the cause of AIDS. He is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

Dr. Paul A. Nelson is a Young Earth creationist. Young Earth creationists generally believe that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old, at most. However, Dr. Nelson isn’t quite sure what he means by “young.”

We hold the view of recent or so-called young earth creation. Unfortunately, neither “young earth” nor “recent” is satisfactory as a descriptive adjective.20

Though he acknowledges that the scientific evidence is against this view.

Natural science at the moment seems to overwhelmingly point to an old cosmos. Though creationist scientists have suggested some evidence for a recent cosmos, none are widely accepted as true. It is safe to say that most recent creationists are motivated by religious concerns.21

Dr. Nelson also believes that there is not yet a genuine theory of intelligent design.

Easily the biggest challenge facing the ID community is to develop a full-fledged theory of biological design. We don’t have such a theory right now, and that’s a problem. Without a theory, it’s very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right now, we’ve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as ‘irreducible complexity’ and ‘specified complexity’—but, as yet, no general theory of biological design.22

Dr. Nelson is a philosopher and a fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

Dr. Michael Behe accepts the idea of common descent among organisms.

The word “evolution” carries many associations. Usually it means common descent—the idea that all organisms living and dead are related by common ancestry. I have no quarrel with the idea of common descent, and continue to think it explains similarities among species. By itself, however, common descent doesn’t explain the vast differences among species.23

He also accepts that the universe is billions of years old.

For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no particular reason to doubt it.24

And he accepts that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor.

For example, both humans and chimps have a broken copy of a gene that in other mammals helps make vitamin C. . . . It’s hard to imagine how there could be stronger evidence for common ancestry of chimps and humans. . . . Despite some remaining puzzles, there’s no reason to doubt that Darwin had this point right, that all creatures on earth are biological relatives.25

Dr. Behe is a biochemist who is a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and is a senior fellow at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

A Wide Diversity of Opinions . . .

So actually, when I said that there is a wide diversity of opinions among the proponents of ID as to exactly what it is, what I really meant is that these guys couldn’t agree that gravity makes things fall down.

Although they may have other explanations, their willingness to simultaneously assert and deny that ID is religion at least appears fundamentally dishonest.

. . . But One Agenda

The only thing they do agree on, however, is that they want to teach ID to your children as science, and they expect you to pay for it. They are well funded, well organized, and have no idea what they’re talking about. However, even though they can’t agree on what ID is, they insist that it be in science textbooks, and be taught in public schools.

They also know how they want to accomplish this. They planned it all out in 1998, when they produced an action plan for forcing ID into public schools. They called this action plan the Wedge Strategy. I discuss the Wedge Strategy in Chapter 7.

Is Intelligent Design the Same as Creationism?

ID proponents claim that ID is different from creationism. Here’s what intelligent design has to say about itself and creationism.

Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. Intelligent design starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what 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.26

So according to ID proponents themselves, creationism is based on religion. ID, on the other hand, they say, looks at the real world. But they don’t do experiments. Note the lack of the words “experimental evidence” anywhere in their definition of ID.

What They Say and What They Really Mean

Creationism actually claims that it isn’t religion, but it is. ID also claims it isn’t religion, but it is. However, they do not state exactly the same thing all the time. So in that way creationism and ID are different. However, they were invented by the same people, for the same purpose.

In fact, they are so close that the same textbook was written for both of them.

Here’s what I mean.

“Creationists,” “Design Proponents,” and “Cdesign Proponentsists”

In 1987, The Supreme Court decided that teaching creationism in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the United States constitution. The case was called Edwards v. Aguillard.

The Establishment Clause is the one saying that we won’t have any official state religion. This means that we therefore shouldn’t advocate a particular religion in public schools. The Supreme Court found that creationism qualifies as religion, and therefore can’t be taught in American public schools.

The creationists had written a textbook espousing creationism called Of Pandas and People. They wanted public schools to adopt it. Unfortunately for the creationists, once creationism was found to be religion by the Supreme Court, public schools weren’t going to buy it.

So they went back to the book, and took out all the words that sounded like creationism, and put in words that sounded like intelligent design. For instance, the word creationism was changed to intelligent design, and the word creationists was changed to design proponents. Except that in one case they were sloppy. The word creationists was not completely removed before the words design proponents were put in, and the book said cdesign proponentsists. This proved that ID and creationism are essentially the same thing, being pushed by the same people, for the same reasons.

Here are copies of the two texts from the website for the National Center for Science Education:

Figure 6.1 Of Pandas and People (1987, “creationist” version), ch. 3, p. 40.

Figure 6.2 Of Pandas and People (1987, “intelligent design” version), ch. 3, p. 41.

You can see that the two texts are exactly the same, except that the word creationists was replaced with the words design proponents—and that sometimes they didn’t do a very good job of swapping the words.

“Cdesign Proponentsists”—the Transitional Species!

Opponents of evolution often point to the fossil record and say, incorrectly, that there isn’t any evidence in the fossil record of organisms slowly transitioning over time from one species to another. The in-between organisms, that have some of the characteristics of the older organisms, and some characteristics of the later organism that the species eventually becomes, are known as transitional species. The fossil record is full of them, but design proponents ignore this.

However, the written record is very clear. “Cdesign proponentsists” is the transitional species between creationism and ID, and shows that creationism is the institutional ancestor of ID.

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

The book Of Pandas and People was used as part of the evidence in a later court case when design proponents again wanted to insist on teaching ID in public schools. This time the schools were in Dover, Pennsylvania and the year was 2005.

This case was called Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. In it, Judge John E. Jones III found that ID and creationism are fundamentally the same thing, and that therefore since creationism is religion, then ID is too. It therefore can’t be taught in public schools. Here’s what the judge said:

As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas went through many drafts, several of which were completed prior to and some after the Supreme Court’s decision in Edwards, which held that the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge: (1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the definition of ID; (2) cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which appeared approximately 150 times, were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID; and (3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes in Edwards. This word substitution is telling, significant, and reveals that a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change in content . . . . The weight of the evidence clearly demonstrates, as noted, that the systemic change from “creation” to “intelligent design” occurred sometime in 1987, after the Supreme Court’s important Edwards decision.27

These days, the ID folks try hard to distance themselves from creationism in public, but not in private. Remember that Dr. Paul Nelson, who pushes ID, is a Young Earth creationist.

Dr. Nelson’s Young Earth creationists believe that the earth is at most 10,000 years old, and that all biological organisms, as well as the earth and the universe, were created as direct acts of the Abrahamic God.

Dr. Nelson continues to be a fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, so obviously, the ID lobby likes him pretty well.

What’s more, the book Of Pandas and People now has a new edition, retitled as Design of Life, and the new authors listed on the cover are William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells, both of whom are prominent ID proponents.

Of course, Jonathan Wells also denies that the HIV virus causes AIDS, so it’s not clear how reliable he is as a science textbook author.

Is Intelligent Design Religion?

It is clear that ID starts from an overtly conservative Christian viewpoint, and seeks to promote this as science. Although ID promoters shy away from talking about their God in their official definition of themselves, they talk long and loud about God and intelligent design elsewhere.

To quote Phillip E. Johnson, the father of ID:

Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.

—American Family Radio, January 10, 2003 broadcast

And also by Johnson:

This isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about science. It’s about religion and philosophy.28

What’s more, Dr. William Dembski, another famous ID promoter, has had the following things to say in a book promoting ID:

God the Father creates through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. By a free act that mirrors the intratriune personal relations, God creates a world of finite creatures (which include physical as well as spiritual beings, humans as well as angels).29

And:

“Christian theology, properly so-called, regards the doctrine of creation ex nihilo or creation from no preexisting stuff as nonnegotiable.”30

And this is in a book about ID, a movement that claims publicly to be nonreligious!

Other books by Dr. Dembski spell it right out in the book description itself, such as this one. Here’s the title: Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language. Here’s the book’s description as written by Dr. Dembski himself on his own website: “A user-friendly introduction to ID for Christian young people.”31

This makes the connection between unconcealed Christian religion and ID perfectly plain.

They Publish in a Religious Journal and through a Religious Publisher

To make things still clearer, the people who write about ID often publish their essays in a journal called Touchstone. The full title for Touchstone is Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. This tells us that not only are these folks pushing Christian religion; they’ve got a chip on their shoulders about it as well (and they like C. S. Lewis).

They publish many of their books through a Christian religious press called InterVarsity Press. According to its own website, “InterVarsity Press is a Christian publishing company dedicated to serving the university, the church and the world.”

Make no mistake. The ID lobby is a Christian religious lobby.

So there you have it. ID promoters really do assert that their “intelligent designer” is God, and they really do know that ID is not science, and they do acknowledge that their aim is to insert it into American public schools, whether the Constitution likes it or not.

And finally, their choice of words gives away their intention from the outset. They assume that they will find the Christian God. After all, ID promoters always refer to a singular “Designer.” Why do they assume that there’s only one Designer? Why not many? Why not a “Design Team”? Why not competing “Designers”? But no. They always refer to “the Designer”—not “the Designers,” or “the Committee.” In other words, they are assuming, based on nothing, that their Designer is one, monotheistic entity. In short, the Judeo-Christian God.

Now in case you had any doubts as to what ID promoters really want, or whether or not it really has a religious agenda, read about when they tipped their hand in the secret, infamous document titled The Wedge Strategy.

14. Quoted in Teresa Watanabe, “Enlisting Science to Find the Fingerprints of a Creator,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2001.

15. Dembski, Expert Witness Report: The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design, www.designinference.com/.../2005.09.Expert_Report_Dembski.pdf.

16. William Dembski and Sean McDowell, Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2008), 18.

17. Wells, “Give Me That Old Time Evolution: A Response to the New Republic,” http://www.discovery.org/a/2933.

18. Wells, “Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D.,” http://www.tparents.org/library/unification/talks/wells/darwin.htm.

19. Wells, Deepening Darwin’s Dilemma, Discovery Institute September 16, 2009.

20. Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds, “Young Earth Creationism,” in J. P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds, eds., Three Views on Creation and Evolution (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 41.

21. Ibid., 49.

22. Nelson, “The Measure of Design,” Touchstone, July 8, 2004, 64–65.

23. Behe, “Darwin Under the Microscope,” New York Times, October 29, 1996.

24. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: Free Press, 2006), 5–6.

25. Behe, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism (New York: Free Press, 2008), 71–72.

26. From intelligentdesign.org, February 24, 2010. Intelligentdesign.org is a part of the Center for Science and Culture, which is a part of the Discovery Institute.

27. Judge John E. Jones III, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

28. Johnson, “Witnesses for the Prosecution,” World Magazine, November 30, 1996, 18.

29. Dembski, The Design Revolution (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009), 175.

30. Ibid., 174.

31. See http://www.designinference.com/.