Darwinian natural selection with their faith, scientists of many faiths and scientists of no faith have agreed overwhelmingly that intelligent design has not made its case scientifically. All the major scientific societies in the United States have issued statements supporting evolution and rejecting intelligent design. Behe’s own department at Lehigh University has put it as well as any:
The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others.
The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof.
Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of “intelligent design.” While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific 26 .
Amid faculty protests, Dembski has left Baylor University, the largest Baptist university in the world, for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 27 . Many scholars at Baylor and other Christian universities have come to realize that intelligent design does not provide respectable support for their religious beliefs 28 .
The battle over intelligent design, which is fought in the political arena rather than in scientific venues, is producing its share of litigation 29 . In a court case that attracted world attention in December 2005, a federal court in Dover, Pennsylvania, determined that intelligent design was motivated by religion and thus presenting it in science classes in public schools is unconstitutional 30 . This would seem to signal the death knell for intelligent design except for a subtle point that has escaped the notice of most of the scientific community and others that support evolution.
In the Dover trial Judge John E. Jones III ruled that teaching intelligent design (ID) in public-school science classes is an unconstitutional violation of church and state. This case mirrored
McLean v. Arkansas,
described above.
In both trials, the presiding federal judges went further than was necessary in making their rulings. Not only did the jurists rule creation science and ID as unconstitutional entanglements of government with religion, which would have been sufficient to decide each case (as Judge Jones admitted in his decision), but they also labeled them as not science. In doing so, they were forced to define science—something on which neither scientists nor philosophers have been able to reach a consensus.
In Arkansas, Judge William R. Overton relied mainly on the testimony of philosopher Michael Ruse and defined science as follows 31 :
(1) It is guided by natural law;
(2) It has to be explained by reference to natural law;
(3) It is testable against the empirical world;
(4) Its conclusions are tentative, that is, are not necessarily the final word;
(5) It is falsifiable.
The eminent philosopher Larry Laudan, my colleague at the University of Hawaii at the time, had worked for years on the socalled demarcation problem, how to draw a line between science and nonscience. When the Arkansas decision was announced, Laudan objected strenuously. He pointed out that creation science is in fact testable, tentative, and falsifiable. For example, it predicts a young Earth and other geological facts that have, in
The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others.
The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof.
Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of “intelligent design.” While we respect Prof. Behe’s right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific 26 .
Amid faculty protests, Dembski has left Baylor University, the largest Baptist university in the world, for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 27 . Many scholars at Baylor and other Christian universities have come to realize that intelligent design does not provide respectable support for their religious beliefs 28 .
The battle over intelligent design, which is fought in the political arena rather than in scientific venues, is producing its share of litigation 29 . In a court case that attracted world attention in December 2005, a federal court in Dover, Pennsylvania, determined that intelligent design was motivated by religion and thus presenting it in science classes in public schools is unconstitutional 30 . This would seem to signal the death knell for intelligent design except for a subtle point that has escaped the notice of most of the scientific community and others that support evolution.
In the Dover trial Judge John E. Jones III ruled that teaching intelligent design (ID) in public-school science classes is an unconstitutional violation of church and state. This case mirrored
McLean v. Arkansas,
described above.
In both trials, the presiding federal judges went further than was necessary in making their rulings. Not only did the jurists rule creation science and ID as unconstitutional entanglements of government with religion, which would have been sufficient to decide each case (as Judge Jones admitted in his decision), but they also labeled them as not science. In doing so, they were forced to define science—something on which neither scientists nor philosophers have been able to reach a consensus.
In Arkansas, Judge William R. Overton relied mainly on the testimony of philosopher Michael Ruse and defined science as follows 31 :
(1) It is guided by natural law;
(2) It has to be explained by reference to natural law;
(3) It is testable against the empirical world;
(4) Its conclusions are tentative, that is, are not necessarily the final word;
(5) It is falsifiable.
The eminent philosopher Larry Laudan, my colleague at the University of Hawaii at the time, had worked for years on the socalled demarcation problem, how to draw a line between science and nonscience. When the Arkansas decision was announced, Laudan objected strenuously. He pointed out that creation science is in fact testable, tentative, and falsifiable. For example, it predicts a young Earth and other geological facts that have, in
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