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There’s an urban legend that goes like this: “Evolution is a proven fact. The Scopes ‘monkey trial’ in Dayton, Tenn., back in 1925, closed the book on it, and today ‘mountains of evidence’ add to the proof of it. Of course, Bible-thumpers question it, believing instead that God created all there is. Remember though, youngsters believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, don’t they?”
What the masses don’t hear is that these “mountains of evidence” show subtle changes within species–adaptation, microevolution, whatever you choose to call it. Most don’t know that 150 years after Darwin’s “On The Origin of Species,” there remains no sustainable evidence of species evolving into other forms. When most people speak of evolution, they mean the kind that has man evolving from some ape-like ancestor.
So when a vocal minority of scientists and philosophers began looking into the growing evidence of design in the universe and in its life forms beginning in the 1980s and gaining steam in the last decade, they were dismissed, then scorned, by the greater scientific community.
Mostly, though, they were kept under the radar except within evangelical and conservative Roman Catholic circles, where they gained a following. Finally, something cheeky comes along with mass appeal, and the “big science” establishment is livid and hopefully embarrassed.
The movie documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” which opened in theaters across the country on April 18, has drawn the science establishment’s wrath by exposing the mistreatment of scientists and educators who question that grand faith position and sweeping meta-narrative of our day–Darwinian evolution.
Darwinism and its later variations say a primordial soup ripe with possibility plus random good luck and hundreds of millions of years explain bio-diversity and complexity–from dust mites to dogs to space-traveling, navel-contemplating humans.
Realizing the legitimate threat to the status quo from “Expelled,” big science has detonated a series of verbal dirty bombs aimed at derailing the film, which stars comedic actor, economist and former presidential speechwriter Ben Stein and a notable cast of smart guys on both sides of this fight.
Scientific journals have trashed “Expelled,” and big-city daily papers have followed their lead. The result is that hardly an original appraisal of the movie is found in the mainstream press. Within the circles of power–big media, big science, and big academia–no one dares dissent.
The Dallas Morning News, for example, ran only a syndicated review of the film the day it opened. The reviewer from the Orlando Sentinel graded it an F, dismissing it out of hand as empty propaganda.
It is propaganda, but it’s far from empty. Even if one doesn’t agree with its premise, it is well done, albeit polemical. The same day, the Dallas paper gave a movie called “Zombie Strippers” a D. Yes, really.
Darwinism and its offspring, neo-Darwinism, have influenced nearly every nook and cranny of culture–religion to politics to bioethics. Where possible, religionists have blended this grand story with theirs and are safe so long as they stay on their side of the fence. “Stay on your side,” they’re told, “and you won’t get punched in the mouth.”
And so it goes. Only this time, the proponents of intelligent design (ID)–the view that the universe bears remarkable evidence of intent–have an unprecedented opportunity to make their case to the masses on a large scale.
There lies the danger for big science. Much of the public rejects evolution outright–48 percent according to a Gallup poll last summer–and most of the rest believe God somehow directed it (theistic evolution), or they have no opinion.
So the science establishment must wage war against ID by character assaults and claims of a dressed-up creationist agenda, or else contend with an already skeptical public.
Note that intelligent design is not creationism. ID acknowledges the marks of design in the universe. It is a non-sectarian endeavor. It leads to the metaphysical question, “Who or what caused us to be?” But it doesn’t answer the question. Those who charge that ID is a Trojan horse for biblical creationism are ignorant or evil or both. The last thing I want in 2008 is a public school teacher instructing my kids on Genesis. How about you?
The gist of what ID proposes is that the deeper researchers probe into microbiology, the more machines they see that display the marks of complex engineering, making the explanation of their existence through evolutionary processes not just difficult, but statistically absurd.
The implications of ID are earthshaking, which explains the ardent assault on the movie. Accept that ID has legs, and the foundations of the neo-Darwinian scheme collapse, which affects a good number of academic pursuits that use a Darwinian template. Psychology, bioethics, anthropology–all would require a new base.
John Rennie, editor in chief of the journal Scientific American, in his review of “Expelled” called ID proponents “anti-intellectual” and “cranks” who don’t grasp science fundamentals.
In the film, Stein plays a game of “Who’s on First?” with evolutionist Michael Ruse over how life may have arisen on the backs of crystals, as Ruse suggested. Ruse’s circular reasoning finally causes him to concede that he doesn’t know the answer as to what the catalyst for life was. His, too, is a faith position. He has admitted as much lately, calling evolution a philosophical belief. So the question remains: Whose faith position holds more water?
Rennie of Scientific American wrote: “‘We don’t know yet’ is what defines the fruitful frontier of science; it is what directs scientists’ curiosity and motivates them to spend years on research. Research starts where knowledge and certainty drop off. It’s one of the many ironies of Expelled that Ben Stein says he wants this movie to free people to ask questions about science, but the ID theories he defends would close off inquiry with nonanswers.”
Rennie claims “mountains of evidence” for evolution while dismissing ID as a “smattering of vanity-press pamphlets.”
Mathematician and philosopher William Dembski of Southwestern Seminary, who appears in the film, told the TEXAN in an e-mail: “John Rennie’s review of ‘Expelled’ for Scientific American illustrates the very intolerance for freedom of inquiry and expression that Ben Stein unmasks in his film? Materialistic approaches to life’s origin have failed. In Rennie’s words, they constitute ‘nonanswers'” while “intelligent design promises to do far better than Rennie’s atheistic approach to science, and certainly can’t do worse.”
By the way, Dembski’s resume includes postdoctoral work in math at that watered-down excuse for an academic institution called M.I.T. At the University of Chicago he earned a doctorate in math and did advanced study in physics. At Princeton, he earned a master of divinity in its theological school and did post-grad work in computer science. From the University of Illinois at Chicago he holds an M.S. in statistics and a Ph.D. in philosophy. He has held prestigious National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships also.
Another “anti-intellectual crank,” Baylor distinguished professor of engineering Robert Marks, in responding to the Scientific American’s critique, said “the idea of ID is not to ‘close off inquiry’ but to broaden the frontier of investigation with a richer set of possibilities.”
Imagine if one has committed his life’s work to a Darwinian or neo-Darwinian explanation of biology, only to hear what he feared all along might be true: Absurdly improbable luck and eons of time–even hundreds of millions of years–won’t do. The improbability is too great and becoming greater with each day’s findings.
The human tendency is to fight back as if one’s years of primary research, publications and career depended on it. And that has been the typical response in the last 15 years or son as ID has ascended as a viable challenge to materialist orthodoxy.
As Dembski has written, this film will not change hardened minds, but hopefully it will embolden future scientists and thinkers to engage the evidence and follow it where it leads. This fight is about preserving honest inquiry and freedom of conscience in a free marketplace of ideas, and the worldview implications of this debate play out in the bioethics questions of our day. Baptists should care deeply about this.
As Christians, we should also rejoice that ID raises, without attempting to answer, the deeper question of “Who or what designed all this?” From that starting point, we are a step forward in engaging honest seekers in the marketplace and across the back fence with well-reasoned answers to the deepest questions.
