Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Biology: When Worlds Collide

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Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Biology
When Worlds Collide

• Stevan J. Arnold
• Department of Zoology
• Oregon State University

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Overview

• Introduction
• Darwins legacy
• Protestant Fundamentalism and Evolution
• The Collision Between Fundamentalism and Science
• Evolutionary Biology Today
• The price if Fundamentalism prevails in public
  schools

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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)

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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 Darwins analysis.
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Protestant Fundamentalism and Evolution

• A fundamentalist is a person willing to do
  battle royal for the fundamentals of the faith
• (Curtis Lee Laws 1920).

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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).

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World War I as a trigger for fundamentalism as a
social movement (1915-1925) a perceived struggle
between Christian civilization and German
barbarism
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Scopes Trial 1925 Fundamentalism looses
credibility and is marginalized
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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
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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 womens 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

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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)

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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)
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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)
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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
• Its conclusions are tentative, not necessarily
  the final word
• It is falsifiable

Judge William R. Overton (1982) in Epperson v.
Arkansas
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The Creation/Evolution Continuum
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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).

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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 dont
  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
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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.

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Battling Against Evolution in the Classroom A
Succession of Tactics

• Outlawing evolution (lt1925)
• Creation Science (1961-1987)
• Intelligent Design (1984-present)

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Sputnik (1957) a wakeup call
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The NSF-funded Biological Sciences Curriculum
Study (1963)
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ICR a Fundamentalist reaction to evolution in
the schools
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The Discovery Institute Creationism repackaged
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Michael Behe leading proponent of intelligent
design
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What is Intelligent Design?

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

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Intelligent Design a new idea?

• Thomas Aquinas (13th century)
• Reverend Paley (19th century)
• Thraxton et al. (1984, The Mystery of Lifes
  Origin)
• Percival Davis Dean Kenyon (1989, Of Pandas and
  People)

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The Discovery Institutes 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.

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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.

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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.

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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 1980s and (3)
  IDs 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 Behes claim for irreducible
  complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed
  research papers and has been rejected by the
  scientific community at large.

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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 IDs
  official position does not acknowledge that the
  designer is God.
• Moreover, IDs 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.

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The intelligent design movements 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

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Evolutionary Biology Today

• Intelligent Design
• What controversy?

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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

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COMMON ANCESTOR
YOU ARE HERE
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The price if Fundamentalism prevails in the
public schools?

• Cost
• Credibility
• Confusion

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Will Fundamentalism prevail in the public
schools?
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loosing the war Human beings developed from
earlier species of animals ( Agreement)
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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.

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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.