- On a spring day two years ago, in a downtown Columbus
auditorium, the Ohio State Board of Education took up the question of how
to teach the theory of evolution in public schools. A panel of four experts
- two who believe in evolution, two who question it - debated whether an
antievolution theory known as intelligent design should be allowed into
the classroom.
-
- This is an issue, of course, that was supposed to have
been settled long ago. But 140 years after Darwin published On the Origin
of Species, 75 years after John Scopes taught natural selection to a
biology
class in Tennessee, and 15 years after the US Supreme Court ruled against
a Louisiana law mandating equal time for creationism, the question of how
to teach the theory of evolution was being reopened here in Ohio. The
two-hour
forum drew chanting protesters and a police escort for the school board
members. Two scientists, biologist Ken Miller from Brown University and
physicist Lawrence Krauss from Case Western Reserve University two hours
north in Cleveland, defended evolution. On the other side of the dais were
two representatives from the Discovery Institute in Seattle, the main
sponsor
and promoter of intelligent design: Stephen Meyer, a professor at Palm
Beach Atlantic University's School of Ministry and director of the
Discovery
Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and Jonathan Wells, a
biologist,
Discovery fellow, and author of Icons of Evolution, a 2000 book castigating
textbook treatments of evolution. Krauss and Miller methodically presented
their case against ID. "By no definition of any modern scientist is
intelligent design science," Krauss concluded, "and it's a waste
of our students' time to subject them to it."
-
- Meyer and Wells took the typical intelligent design line:
Biological life contains elements so complex - the mammalian blood-clotting
mechanism, the bacterial flagellum - that they cannot be explained by
natural
selection. And so, the theory goes, we must be products of an intelligent
designer. Creationists call that creator God, but proponents of intelligent
design studiously avoid the G-word - and never point to the Bible for
answers.
Instead, ID believers speak the language of science to argue that Darwinian
evolution is crumbling.
-
- The debate's two-on-two format, with its appearance of
equal sides, played right into the ID strategy - create the impression
that this very complicated issue could be seen from two entirely rational
yet opposing views. "This is a controversial subject," Meyer
told the audience. "When two groups of experts disagree about a
controversial
subject that intersects with the public-school science curriculum, the
students should be permitted to learn about both perspectives. We call
this the 'teach the controversy' approach."
-
- Since the debate, "teach the controversy" has
become the rallying cry of the national intelligent-design movement, and
Ohio has become the leading battleground. Several months after the debate,
the Ohio school board voted to change state science standards, mandating
that biology teachers "critically analyze" evolutionary theory.
This fall, teachers will adjust their lesson plans and begin doing just
that. In some cases, that means introducing the basic tenets of intelligent
design. One of the state's sample lessons looks as though it were lifted
from an ID textbook. It's the biggest victory so far for the Discovery
Institute. "Our opponents would say that these are a bunch of
know-nothing
people on a state board," says Meyer. "We think it shows that
our Darwinist colleagues have a real problem now."
-
- But scientists aren't buying it. What Meyer calls
"biology
for the information age," they call creationism in a lab coat. ID's
core scientific principles - laid out in the mid-1990s by a biochemist
and a mathematician - have been thoroughly dismissed on the grounds that
Darwin's theories can account for complexity, that ID relies on
misunderstandings
of evolution and flimsy probability calculations, and that it proposes
no testable explanations.
-
- As the Ohio debate revealed, however, the Discovery
Institute
doesn't need the favor of the scientific establishment to prevail in the
public arena. Over the past decade, Discovery has gained ground in schools,
op-ed pages, talk radio, and congressional resolutions as a
"legitimate"
alternative to evolution. ID is playing a central role in biology curricula
and textbook controversies around the country. The institute and its
supporters
have taken the "teach the controversy" message to Alabama,
Arizona,
Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, and Texas.
-
- The ID movement's rhetorical strategy - better to appear
scientific than holy - has turned the evolution debate upside down. ID
proponents quote Darwin, cite the Scopes monkey trial, talk of
"scientific
objectivity," then in the same breath declare that extraterrestrials
might have designed life on Earth. It may seem counterintuitive, but the
strategy is meticulously premeditated, and it's working as planned. The
debate over Darwin is back, and coming to a 10th-grade biology class near
you.
-
- At its heart, intelligent design is a revival of an
argument
made by British philosopher William Paley in 1802. In Natural Theology,
the Anglican archdeacon suggested that the complexity of biological
structures
defied any explanation but a designer: God. Paley imagined finding a stone
and a watch in a field. The watch, unlike the stone, appears to have been
purposely assembled and wouldn't function without its precise combination
of parts. "The inference," he wrote, "is inevitable, that
the watch must have a maker." The same logic, he concluded, applied
to biological structures like the vertebrate eye. Its complexity implied
design.
-
- Fifty years later, Darwin directly answered Paley's
"argument
to complexity." Evolution by natural selection, he argued in Origin
of Species, could create the appearance of design. Darwin - and 100-plus
years of evolutionary science after him - seemed to knock Paley into the
dustbin of history.
-
- In the American public arena, Paley's design argument
has long been supplanted by biblical creationism. In the 1970s and 1980s,
that movement recast the Bible version in the language of scientific
inquiry
- as "creation science" - and won legislative victories requiring
"equal time" in some states. That is, until 1987, when the
Supreme
Court struck down Louisiana's law. Because creation science relies on
biblical
texts, the court reasoned, it "lacked a clear secular purpose"
and violated the First Amendment clause prohibiting the establishment of
religion. Since then, evolution has been the law of the land in US schools
- if not always the local choice.
-
- Paley re-emerged in the mid-1990s, however, when a pair
of scientists reconstituted his ideas in an area beyond Darwin's ken:
molecular
biology. In his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box, Lehigh University biochemist
Michael Behe contended that natural selection can't explain the
"irreducible
complexity" of molecular mechanisms like the bacterial flagellum,
because its integrated parts offer no selective advantages on their own.
Two years later, in The Design Inference, William Dembski, a philosopher
and mathematician at Baylor University, proposed that any biological system
exhibiting "information" that is both "complex" (highly
improbable) and "specified" (serving a particular function)
cannot
be a product of chance or natural law. The only remaining option is an
intelligent designer - whether God or an alien life force. These ideas
became the cornerstones of ID, and Behe proclaimed the evidence for design
to be "one of the greatest achievements in the history of
science."
-
- The scientific rationale behind intelligent design was
being developed just as antievolution sentiment seemed to be bubbling up.
In 1991, UC Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson published Darwin On
Trial, an influential antievolution book that dispensed with biblical
creation
accounts while uniting antievolutionists under a single, secular-sounding
banner: intelligent design. In subsequent books, Johnson presents not just
antievolution arguments but a broader opposition to the "philosophy
of scientific materialism" - the assumption (known to scientists as
"methodological materialism") that all events have material,
rather than supernatural, explanations. To defeat it, he offers a strategy
that would be familiar in the divisive world of politics, called "the
wedge." Like a wedge inserted into a tree trunk, cracks in Darwinian
theory can be used to "split the trunk," eventually overturning
scientific materialism itself.
-
- That's where Discovery comes in. The institute was
founded
as a conservative think tank in 1990 by longtime friends and former Harvard
roommates Bruce Chapman - director of the census bureau during the Reagan
administration - and technofuturist author George Gilder. "The
institute
is futurist and rebellious, and it's prophetic," says Gilder. "It
has a science and technology orientation in a contrarian spirit" (see
"Biocosm," facing page). In 1994, Discovery added ID to its list
of contrarian causes, which included everything from transportation to
bioethics. Chapman hired Meyer, who studied origin-of-life issues at
Cambridge
University, and the institute signed Johnson - whom Chapman calls "the
real godfather of the intelligent design movement - as an adviser and
adopted
the wedge.
-
- For Discovery, the "thin end" of the wedge
- according to a fundraising document leaked on the Web in 1999 - is the
scientific work of Johnson, Behe, Dembski, and others. The next step
involves
"publicity and opinion-making." The final goals: "a direct
confrontation with the advocates of material science" and "possible legal assistance in response to integration of design theory into pu
blic
school science curricula."
-
- Step one has made almost no headway with evolutionists
- the near-universal majority of scientists with an opinion on the matter.
But that, say Discovery's critics, is not the goal. "Ultimately, they
have an evangelical Christian message that they want to push," says
Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State. "Intelligent
design is the hook."
-
- It's a lot easier to skip straight to steps two and
three,
and sound scientific in a public forum, than to deal with the rigor of
the scientific community. "It starts with education," Johnson
told me, referring to high school curricula. "That's where the public
can have a voice. The universities and the scientific world do not
recognize
freedom of expression on this issue." Meanwhile, like any champion
of a heretical scientific idea, ID's supporters see themselves as
renegades,
storming the gates of orthodoxy. "We all have a deep sense of
indignation,"
says Meyer, "that the wool is being pulled over the public's
eyes."
-
- The buzz phrase most often heard in the institute's
offices
is academic freedom. "My hackles go up on the academic freedom
issue,"
Chapman says. "You should be allowed in the sciences to ask questions
and posit alternative theories."
-
- None of this impresses the majority of the science world.
"They have not been able to convince even a tiny amount of the
scientific
community," says Ken Miller. "They have not been able to win
the marketplace of ideas."
-
- And yet, the Discovery Institute's appeals to academic
freedom create a kind of catch-22. If scientists ignore the ID movement,
their silence is offered as further evidence of a conspiracy. If they join
in, they risk reinforcing the perception of a battle between equal sides.
Most scientists choose to remain silent. "Where the scientific
community
has been at fault," says Krauss, "is in assuming that these
people
are harmless, like flat-earthers. They don't realize that they are well
organized, and that they have a political agenda."
-
- Taped to the wall of Eugenie Scott's windowless office
at the National Center for Science Education on the outskirts of Oakland,
California, is a chart titled "Current Flare-Ups." It's a list
of places where the teaching of evolution is under attack, from California
to Georgia to Rio de Janeiro. As director of the center, which defends
evolution in teaching controversies around the country, Scott has watched
creationism up close for 30 years. ID, in her view, is the most highly
evolved form of creationism to date. "They've been enormously
effective
compared to the more traditional creationists, who have greater numbers
and much larger budgets," she says.
-
- Scott credits the blueprint laid out by Johnson, who
realized that to win in the court of public opinion, ID needed only to
cast reasonable doubt on evolution. "He said, 'Don't get involved
in details, don't get involved in fact claims,'" says Scott.
"'Forget
about the age of Earth, forget about the flood, don't mention the
Bible.'"
The goal, she says, is "to focus on the big idea that evolution is
inadequate. Intelligent design doesn't really explain anything. It says
that evolution can't explain things. Everything else is hand-waving."
-
- The moveme
nt's first test of Johnson's strategies began
in 1999, when the Kansas Board of Education voted to remove evolution from
the state's science standards. The decision, backed by traditional
creationists,
touched off a fiery debate, and the board eventually reversed itself after
several antievolution members lost reelection bids. ID proponents used
the melee as cover to launch their own initiative. A Kansas group called
IDNet nearly pushed through its own textbook in a local school
district.
-
- Two years later, the Discovery Institute earned its first
major political victory when US senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania)
inserted language written by Johnson into the federal No Child Left Behind
Act. The clause, eventually cut from the bill and placed in a nonbinding
report, called for school curricula to "help students understand the
full range of scientific views" on topics "that may generate
controversy (such as biological evolution)."
-
- As the institute was demonstrating its Beltway clout,
a pro-ID group called Science Excellence for All Ohioans fueled a brewing
local controversy. SEAO - consisting of a few part-time activists, a Web
site, and a mailing list - began agitating to have ID inserted into Ohio's
10th-grade-biology standards. In the process, they attracted the attention
of a few receptive school board members.
-
- When the board proposed the two-on-two debate and invited
Discovery, Meyer and company jumped at the opportunity. Meyer, whom Gilder
calls the institute's resident "polymath," came armed with the
Santorum amendment, which he read aloud for the school board. He was
bringing
a message from Washington: Teach the controversy. "We framed the issue
quite differently than our supporters," says Meyer. The approach put
pro-ID Ohioans on firmer rhetorical ground: Evolution should of course
be taught, but "objectively." Hearing Meyer's suggestion, says
Doug Rudy, a software engineer and SEAO's director, "we all sat back
and said, Yeah, that's the way to go."
-
- Back in Seattle, around the corner from the Discovery
Institute, Meyer offers some peer-reviewed evidence that there truly is
a controversy that must be taught. "The Darwinists are bluffing,"
he says over a plate of oysters at a downtown seafood restaurant.
"They
have the science of the steam engine era, and it's not keeping up with
the biology of the information age."
-
- Meyer hands me a recent issue of Microbiology and
Molecular
Biology Reviews with an article by Carl Woese, an eminent microbiologist
at the University of Illinois. In it, Woese decries the failure of
reductionist
biology - the tendency to look at systems as merely the sum of their parts
- to keep up with the developments of molecular biology. Meyer says the
conclusion of Woese's argument is that the Darwinian emperor has no
clothes.
-
- It's a page out of the antievolution playbook: using
evolutionary biology's own literature against it, selectively quoting from
the likes of Stephen Jay Gould to illustrate natural selection's downfalls.
The institute marshals journal articles discussing evolution to provide
policymakers with evidence of the raging controversy surrounding the
issue.
-
- Woese scoffs at Meyer's claim when I call to ask him
about the paper. "To say that my criticism of Darwinists says that
evolutionists have no clothes," Woese says, "is like saying that
Einstein is criticizing Newton, therefore Newtonian physics is wrong."
Debates about evolution's mechanisms, he continues, don't amount to
challenges
to the theory. And intelligent design "is not science. It makes no
predictions and doesn't offer any explanation whatsoever, except for 'God
did it.'"
-
- Of course Meyer happily acknowledges that Woese is an
ardent evolutionist. The institute doesn't need to impress Woese or his
peers; it can simply co-opt the vocabulary of science - "academic
freedom," "scientific objectivity," "teach the
controversy"
- and redirect it to a public trying to reconcile what appear to be two
contradictory scientific views. By appealing to a sense of fairness, ID
finds a place at the political table, and by merely entering the debate
it can claim victory. "We don't need to win every argument to be a
success," Meyer says. "We're trying to validate a discussion
that's been long suppressed."
-
- This is precisely what happened in Ohio. "I'm not
a PhD in biology," says board member Michael Cochran. "But when
I have X number of PhD experts telling me this, and X number telling me
the opposite, the answer is probably somewhere between the
two."
-
- An exasperated Krauss claims that a truly representative
debate would have had 10,000 pro-evolution scientists against two Discovery
executives. "What these people want is for there to be a debate,"
says Krauss. "People in the audience say, Hey, these people sound
reasonable. They argue, 'People have different opinions, we should present
those opinions in school.' That is nonsense. Some people have opinions
that the Holocaust never happened, but we don't teach that in
history."
-
- Eventually, the Ohio board approved a standard mandating
that students learn to "describe how scientists continue to
investigate
and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." Proclaiming
victory, Johnson barnstormed Ohio churches soon after notifying
congregations
of a new, ID-friendly standard. In response, anxious board members added
a clause stating that the standard "does not mandate the teaching
or testing of intelligent design." Both sides claimed victory. A press
release from IDNet trumpeted the mere inclusion of the phrase intelligent
design, saying that "the implication of the statement is that the
'teaching or testing of intelligent design' is permitted." Some
pro-evolution
scientists, meanwhile, say there's nothing wrong with teaching students
how to scrutinize theory. "I don't have a problem with that,"
says Patricia Princehouse, a professor at Case Western Reserve and an
outspoken
opponent of ID. "Critical analysis is exactly what scientists
do."
-
- The good feelings didn't last long. Early this year,
a board-appointed committee unveiled sample lessons that laid out the kind
of evolution questions students should debate. The models appeared to lift
their examples from Wells' book Icons of Evolution. "When I first
saw it, I was speechless," says Princehouse.
-
- With a PhD in molecular and cell biology from UC
Berkeley,
Wells has the kind of cred that intelligent design proponents love to cite.
But, as ID opponents enjoy pointing out, he's also a follower of Sun Myung
Moon and once declared that Moon's prayers "convinced me that I should
devote my life to destroying Darwinism." Icons attempts to discredit
commonly used examples of evolution, like Darwin's finches and peppered
moths. Writing in Nature, evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne called Icons
stealth creationism that "strives to debunk Darwinism using the
familiar
rhetoric of biblical creationists, including scientific quotations out
of context, incomplete summaries of research, and muddled
arguments."
-
- After months of uproar, the most obvious Icons-inspired
lessons were removed. But scientists remain furious. "The ones they
left in are still arguments for special creation - but you'd have to know
the literature to understand what they are saying. They've used so much
technical jargon that anybody who doesn't know a whole lot of evolutionary
biology looks at it and says 'It sounds scientific to me, what's the matter
with it?'" says Princehouse. "As a friend of mine said, it takes
a half a second for a baby to throw up all over your sweater. It takes
hours to get it clean."
-
- As Ohio teachers prepare their lessons for the coming
year, the question must be asked: Why the fuss over an optional lesson
plan or two? After all, both sides agree that the new biology standards
- in which 10 evolution lessons replace standards that failed to mention
evolution at all - are a vast improvement. The answer: In an era when the
government is pouring billions into biology, and when stem cells and
genetically
modified food are front-page news, spending even a small part of the
curriculum
on bogus criticisms of evolution is arguably more detrimental now than
any time in history. Ironically, says Ohio State University biology
professor
Steve Rissing, the education debate coincides with Ohio's efforts to lure
biotech companies. "How can we do that when our high school biology
is failing us?" he says. "Our cornfields are gleaming with GMO
corn. There's a fundamental disconnect there."
-
- Intelligent design advocates say that teaching students
to "critically analyze" evolution will help give them the skills
to "see both sides" of all scientific issues. And if the
Discovery
Institute execs have their way, those skills will be used to reconsider
the philosophy of modern science itself - which they blame for everything
from divorce to abortion to the insanity defense. "Our culture has
been deeply influenced by materialist thought," says Meyer. "We
think it's deeply destructive, and we think it's false. And we mean to
overturn it."
-
- It's mid-July, and the Ohio school board is about to
hold its final meeting before classes start this year. There's nothing
about intelligent design on the agenda. The debate was settled months ago.
And yet, Princehouse, Rissing, and two other scientists rise to speak
during
the "non-agenda" public testimony portion.
-
- One by one, the scientists recite their litany of
objections:
The model lesson plan is still based on concepts from ID literature; the
ACLU is considering to sue to stop it; the National Academy of Sciences
opposes it as unscientific. "This is my last time," says Rissing,
"as someone who has studied science and the process of evolution for
25 years, to say I perceive that my children and I are suffering injuries
based on a flawed lesson plan that this board has passed."
-
- During a heated question-and-answer session, one board
member accuses the scientists of posturing for me, the only reporter in
the audience. Michael Cochran challenges the scientists to cite any
testimony
that the board hadn't already heard "ad infinitum." Another board
member, Deborah Owens-Fink, declares the issue already closed. "We've
listened to experts on both sides of this for three years," she says.
"Ultimately, the question of what students should learn "is
decided
in a democracy, not by any one group of experts."
-
- The notion is noble enough: In a democracy, every idea
gets heard. But in science, not all theories are equal. Those that survive
decades - centuries - of scientific scrutiny end up in classrooms, and
those that don't are discarded. The intelligent design movement is using
scientific rhetoric to bypass scientific scrutiny. And when science
education
is decided by charm and stage presence, the Discovery Institute
wins.
-
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