Leading Proponents of Intelligent Design Hold Conference on Capitol Hill
HUMAN EVENTS June 2, 2000We may soon witness a counterrevolution in scientific thought that could alter radically the way people think about themselves and the world. Such a counterrevolution would go to the very heart of what is of utmost importance in modern life and thought: the worldview of individuals and societies.
Some may consider it irrelevant and others may entertain it only to dismiss it, but scientific intelligent design theory is coming into its own, taken increasingly seriously by scientists around the world. Intelligent design theory uses reason and the scientific method to argue that life, particularly human life, exhibits evidence of deliberate design by an intelligence. Design theorists insist they are pursuing real science and do not refer to religion or rely upon it in any way.
Ten years ago, hardly any self-respecting biologist of any variety would even debate intelligent design theory. Now, scientists debate it all the time. Baylor University's Michael Polanyi Center hosted an April conference debating naturalism, the philosophy that holds that there exists nothing apart from the material world. The conference drew two Nobel Prize-winners: Steven Weinberg, a physics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Christian de Duve, founder of the Christian de Duve Institute of Cellular Pathology, based in Brussels, Belgium.
At the invitation of Florida Rep. Charles Canady (R.), among others, several of the most prominent figures in the intelligent design movement held a conference in a U.S. House of Representatives office building on May 10. The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a pioneer in promoting intelligent design theory, sponsored the conference.
"I am not making a claim as to who or what designed life," said Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and a model of scientific probity throughout the conference, never deviating from what could be plausibly demonstrated scientifically. "There is overwhelming evidence that life shows proof of having been intelligently designed."
University of California, Berkeley, law professor Phillip Johnson, author of the famous Darwin on Trial, and Discovery Institute fellow Nancy Pearcey, co-author of The Soul of Science, discussed the fundamental importance of this question.
"Every culture has a creation story," said Johnson. "This creation story determines what is important and what is our relationship to ultimate reality. Every culture has a priesthood, the priesthood being the body of people who have the right to interpret the creation story."
In the 19th Century, Johnson said, "one priesthood was replaced by another. The clergy were replaced by scientific intellectuals." Foremost among these, he said, was Charles Darwin, who used natural selection to provide a nontheistic explanation for mankind's existence.
"The new priesthood not only does not want to refer to any Creator," Johnson said, "but insists that the question of whether or not a Creator exists lies outside of knowledge."
Pearcey explained that a materialist philosophy, one that says that the material world of nature is all there is, has certain consequences, especially if human behaviors can be explained in terms of their survival value.
"A recent book calls rape `a natural biological phenomenon' to maximize reproductive success for some men," she said. An offshoot of "evolutionary psychology" or "sociobiology" claims, she said, that "we should have a new logic. We should adopt ideas not based on outdated concepts of truth or falsity, but based on their survival value. Do they help us to survive or not? E. O. Wilson said that the idea of God used to help us to survive, but now we -need new ideas."
Johnson said that there are two definitions of science at work today in the scientific establishment. "One is unbiased empirical investigation and testing," he said. "The other is applied materialist philosophy, that is, assuming that the natural world is all there is and going from there. Like Marxists and Freudians, these believers are willing to suppress their opponents."
Meyer and biochemist Dr. Michael Belie, author of Darwin's Black Box, discussed the scientific basis for accepting intelligent design. "Many organs, such as the eye, are irreducibly complex," said Behe. "That means that without all of their parts arranged properly, they do not work at all. The Darwinian model claims that everything developed through gradual improvements over millions of years, but that could not have happened with the eye.
"Another example is the mousetrap. You need the platform, the hammer, the holding bar, the catch, and the spring, all arranged properly, or you won't catch any mice. Any creature which developed one or more of the parts would have no greater chance of survival than any other. So the question is, how could a mousetrap evolve through the natural selection of gradual improvements?"
Meyer said that 19th-Century scientists and their counterparts in the first half of the 20th Century believed that living organisms were made of many simple parts working together. "We know now that that is not true," he said. "DNA itself is extraordinarily complex. Cells are extraordinarily -complex. The chances of just one protein out of the hundreds needed forming by chance are minuscule. Few scientists believe anymore that life could have begun by random chance." What they admit they don't have, he said, is a plausible alternative.
Mr. D'Agostino is an assistant editor of HUMAN Events.