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Opinion: Two Views of Intelligent Design (Part1 of 2)  <<...OLE_Obj...>>  
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	Intelligent Design Is Creationism in a Cheap Tuxedo
	Adrian L. Melott 
My deliberately provocative title is borrowed from Leonard Krishtalka, who
directs the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. Hired-gun
"design theorists" in cheap tuxedos have met with some success in getting
close to their target: public science education. I hope to convince you that
this threat is worth paying attention to. As I write, intelligent design
(ID) is a hot issue in the states of Washington and Ohio (see Physics Today,
May 2002, page 31*). Evolutionary biology is ID's primary target, but
geology and physics are within its blast zone. 
Creationism evolves. As in biological evolution, old forms persist alongside
new. After the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, creationists tried to get
public schools to teach biblical accounts of the origin and diversity of
life. Various courts ruled the strategy unconstitutional. Next came the
invention of "creation science," which was intended to bypass constitutional
protections. It, too, was recognized by the courts as religion. Despite
adverse court rulings, creationists persist in reapplying these old
strategies locally. In many places, the pressure keeps public school biology
teachers intimidated and evolution quietly minimized. 
However, a new strategy, based on so-called ID theory, is now at the cutting
edge of creationism. ID is different from its forebears. It does a better
job of disguising its sectarian intent. It is well funded and nationally
coordinated. To appeal to a wider range of people, biblical literalism,
Earth's age, and other awkward issues are swept under the rug. Indeed, ID
obfuscates sufficiently well that some educated people with little
background in the relevant science have been taken in by it. Among ID's
diverse adherents are engineers, doctors--and even physicists. 
ID advocates can't accept the inability of science to deal with supernatural
hypotheses, and they see this limitation as a sacrilegious denial of God's
work and presence. Desperately in need of affirmation, they invent "theistic
science" in which the design of the Creator is manifest. Perhaps because
their religious faith is rather weak, they need to bolster their beliefs
every way they can--including hijacking science to save souls and prove the
existence of God. 
William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher at Baylor University and
one of ID's chief advocates, asserts that: " . . . any view of the sciences
that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally
deficient."1 Whether or not they agree with Dembski on this point, most
Americans hold some form of religious belief. Using what they call the Wedge
Strategy,2 ID advocates seek to pry Americans away from "naturalistic
science" by forcing them to choose between science and religion. ID
advocates know that science will lose. They portray science as we know it as
innately antireligious, thereby blurring the distinction between science and
how science may be interpreted. 
When presenting their views before the public, ID advocates generally
disguise their religious intent. In academic venues, they avoid any direct
reference to the Designer. They portray ID as merely an exercise in
detecting design, citing examples from archaeology, the SETI (search for
extraterrestrial intelligence) project, and other enterprises. Cambridge
University Press has published one ID book,3 which, the ID advocates
repeatedly proclaim, constitutes evidence that their case has real
scientific merit. ID creationist publications are nearly absent from
refereed journals, and this state of affairs is presented as evidence of
censorship. 
This censorship, ID advocates argue, justifies the exploitation of public
schools and the children in them to circumvent established scientific
procedures. In tort law, expert scientific testimony must agree with the
consensus of experts in a given field. No such limitation exists with
respect to public education. ID advocates can snow the public and school
boards with pseudoscientific presentations. As represented by ID advocates,
biological evolution is a theory in crisis, fraught with numerous
plausible-sounding failures, most of which are recycled from overt
creationists. It is "only fair," the ID case continues, to present
alternatives so that children can make up their own minds. Yesterday's
alternative was "Flood geology." Today's is "design theory." 
Fairness, open discussion, and democracy are core American values and often
problematic. Unfortunately, journalists routinely present controversies
where none exist, or they present political controversies as scientific
controversies. Stories on conflicts gain readers, and advertising follows.
This bias toward reporting conflicts, along with journalists' inability to
evaluate scientific content and their unwillingness to do accuracy checks
(with notable exceptions), are among the greatest challenges to the broad
public understanding of science. 
ID creationism is largely content-free rhetoric. Michael Behe, a biochemist
at Lehigh University and an ID proponent, argues that many biochemical and
biophysical mechanisms are "irreducibly complex."4 He means that, if
partially dismembered, they would not work, so they could not have evolved.
This line of argument ignores the large number of biological functions that
look irreducibly complex, but for which intermediates have been found. One
response to Behe's claims consists of the tedious task of demonstrating
functions in a possible evolutionary path to the claimed irreducibly complex
state. When presented with these paths, Behe typically ignores them and
moves on. I admire the people who are willing to spend the time to put
together the detailed refutations.5 
The position of an ID creationist can be summarized as: "I can't understand
how this complex outcome could have arisen, so it must be a miracle." In an
inversion of the usual procedure in science, the null hypothesis is taken to
be the thing Dembski, Behe, and their cohorts want to prove, albeit with
considerable window-dressing. Dembski classifies all phenomena as resulting
from necessity, chance, or design. In ruling out necessity, he means
approximately that one could not predict the detailed structures and
information we see in biological systems from the laws of physics. His
reference to chance is essentially equivalent to the creationist use of one
of the red herrings introduced by Fred Hoyle: 
	A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747,
dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard.
What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to
fly, will be found standing there?6
Having dispensed with necessity and chance, Dembski concludes that design
has been detected on the grounds that nothing else can explain the
phenomenon--at least according to him. 
Of course, design has no predictive power. ID is not a scientific theory. If
we had previously attributed the unexplainable to design, we would still be
using Thor's hammer to explain thunder. Nor does ID have any technological
applications. It can be fun to ask ID advocates about the practical
applications of their work. Evolution has numerous practical technological
applications, including vaccine development. ID has none. 
As organisms evolve, they become more complex, but evolution doesn't
contravene the second law of thermodynamics. Dembski, like his creationist
predecessors, misuses thermodynamics. To support the case for ID, he has
presented arguments based on a supposed Law of Conservation of Information,
an axiomatic law that applies only to closed systems with very restricted
assumptions.7 Organisms, of course, are not closed systems. 
ID's reach extends beyond biology to physics and cosmology. One interesting
discussion concerns the fundamental constants. There is a well-known point
of view that our existence depends on a number of constants lying within a
narrow range. As one might expect, the religious community has generally
viewed this coincidence as evidence in favor of--or at least as a
plausibility argument for--their beliefs. The ID creationist community has
adopted the fundamental constants as additional evidence for their Designer
of Life--apparently not realizing that many fine-tuning arguments are based
on physical constants allowing evolution to proceed. Physical cosmology is
largely absent from school science standards. Where present, as in Kansas,
it is likely to come under ID attack. 
I have only scratched the surface here. Don't assume everything is fine in
your school system even if it seems free of conflict. Peace may mean that
evolution, the core concept of biology, is minimized. No region of the
country is immune. Watch out for the guys in tuxedos--they don't have
violins in those cases. 

Adrian Melott is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of
Kansas in Lawrence. He is also a founding board member of Kansas Citizens
for Science. 

Letters are encouraged and should be sent to Letters, Physics Today,
American Center for Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD
20740-3842 or by e-mail to ptletter@aip.org <mailto:ptletter@aip.org> (using
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address, and daytime phone number. We reserve the right to edit 

References 
1. W. Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology,
InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill. (1999), p. 206. 
2. See <http://rnaworld.bio.ukans.edu/id-intro/sect3.html>. Another source
is http://www.sunflower.com/~jkrebs/JCCC/05%20Wedge_edited.html
<http://www.sunflower.com/%7Ejkrebs/JCCC/05%20Wedge_edited.html> 
3. W. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small
Probabilities, Cambridge U. Press, New York (1998). For a review by W.
Elsberry, see http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/zgists/wre/papers/dembski7.html
<http://inia.cls.org/%7Ewelsberr/zgists/wre/papers/dembski7.html>. 
4. M. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free
Press, New York (1996). 
5. See <http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/catalano/box/behe.htm>. See also
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/behe.html
<http://www.cs.colorado.edu/%7Elindsay/creation/behe.html> 
6. F. Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York
(1983), p. 18. 
7. W. Dembski, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased
without Intelligence, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md. (2002).
Continue to Part 2: Philosophy Is Essential to the Intelligent Design Debate
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Adrian Melott's Additional ID Resources 
	Fliers suitable for distribution when advocates of intelligent
design show up in your area, as well as short essays:
<http://home.kc.rr.com/bnpndxtr>
<http://www.sunflower.com/~jkrebs/Resources/Fliers.html> 
	More general information sites related to ID and creationism:
<http://www.kcfs.org> (Kansas Citizens for Science)
<http://www.natcenscied.org> (National Center for Science Education;
numerous links). <http://www.talkorigins.org> (for those who want details on
science issues)
<http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/students/kornreich/lfg/tactics.html> (common
creationist tactics) 
	Publications of value in dealing with ID: R. T. Pennock, Tower of
Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
(1999). R. T. Pennock, ed. Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics:
Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives, MIT Press,
Cambridge, Mass. (2001). See also the review of the book by K. Padian in the
29 March 2002 issue of Science. An excellent collection of short position
statements by ID advocates and critics appears in the April 2002 issue of
Natural History, which is also available at
<http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html>. 
	On the relation of religion to some ID issues: K. R. Miller, Finding
Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground between God and
Evolution, Cliff Street Books, New York (1999). R. Dawkins, Blind
Watchmaker, W. W. Norton, New York (1994). S. Weinberg, Facing Up: Science
and Its Cultural Adversaries, Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, Mass. (2001).
<http://www.natcenscied.org/article.asp?category=11> (Congregational guide
to the PBS TV series Evolution) 
	Elementary school enrichment curriculum in evolution and cosmology:
http://kusmos.phsx.ukans.edu/~melott/phyed.html
<http://kusmos.phsx.ukans.edu/%7Emelott/phyed.html> 
	© 2002 American Institute of Physics
<http://www.aip.org/copyright.html>