by William A.Dembski, Ph.D.
Leadershnip University
2002

From its inception Darwinism posed a challenge to Christian theology.
Darwinism threatened to undo the Church's understanding of creation, and
therewith her understanding of the origin of human life. Nor did the
challenge of Darwinism stop here. With human beings the result of a
brutal, competitive process that systematically rooted out the weak and
favored only the strong (we might say it is the strong who constitute the
elect within Darwinism), the Church's understanding of the fall,
redemption, the nature of morality, the veracity of the Scriptures, and
the ultimate end of humankind were all in a fundamental way called into
question. Without exaggeration, no aspect of theology escaped the need for
re-evaluation in the light of Darwinism.

Well, a lot has happened since the publication of Darwin's Origin of
Species. Theology that is academically respectable has long since made its
peace with Darwinism. Indeed, respectable theologians have long since had
their understanding of the origin of life thoroughly informed by Darwinism
and its interpretation of natural history. Thus when a group of Christian
scholars who call themselves design theorists begin to raise doubts about
Darwinism and propose an alternative paradigm for understanding biological
systems, it is the design theorists, and not Darwin, who end up posing the
challenge to theology.

As a card-carrying design theorist, I want to examine the challenge that
design poses to the contemporary theologian. What continues to intrigue me
is that the group of academicians design theorists have the hardest time
engaging is not the secular scientists, but theologians and
cross-disciplinary scientists whose cross-discipline happens to be
theology (e.g., Nancey Murphy and Howard van Till). Why is this? The short
answer is that mainstream theologians perceive design theorists as
theological greenhorns who unfortunately have yet to fathom the proper
relation between theology and science. Of course, design theorists think
it is rather the mainstream theologians who have failed to grasp the
proper relation between theology and science.

It is ironic that the design theorists have received an even cooler
reception from the theological community than from the Darwinist
establishment (which not surprisingly isn't well-disposed toward the
design theorists either). Yes, a notable design theorist did speak here at
Princeton Seminary last spring, namely, Phillip Johnson. But his talk was
ill-attended (in marked contrast to the large audiences he attracts at
secular universities), with as far as I can recall only one faculty member
from this institution in attendance.

Because the design theorists' approach to biological systems is so
ill-appreciated within the theological community, my aim in this talk is
to make the design theorists' critique of Darwinism intelligible, and I
hope even compelling, to the contemporary theologian. In particular, I
wish to show that the design theorists' critique constitutes a genuine
challenge for contemporary theology, and is not rightly dismissed by a
one-liners like, "Design commits the god-of-the-gaps fallacy" or "Design
violates the rules of science."

To make the design theorists' critique of Darwinism intelligible to the
theological community, I shall need to outline their critique as they
direct it first against the Darwinist establishment. Once we understand
the design theorists' dialogue with this group, it will be easier to
understand the challenge their critique poses to the theological
community. Before taking up these tasks, however, I wish to indicate where
design fits into the creation-evolution controversy generally.

Setting the Stage

Because it is all too easy to dismiss a position without genuinely
understanding it, I want to begin by dispensing with a few labels and
stereotypes. First off, design is not young earth creationism. This is not
to say that there are no young earth creationists who are also design
theorists (Paul Nelson and Siegfried Scherer come to mind). But for the
sake of argument design theorists are willing tacitly to accept the
standard scientific dates for the origin of the earth and the origin of
the universe (i.e., 4-5 billion years for the earth, 10-20 billion years
for the universe), and reason from there. The point is that design theory
does not stand or fall with what age one assigns to the universe.

Next, the design theorists' critique of Darwinism in no way hinges on the
Genesis account of creation. On no occasion do design theorists invoke
Genesis 1 and 2 as a scientific text, trying to conform natural history to
the Genesis account of creation or vice versa. Design as a theory holds to
neither a day-age, nor a gap, nor an apparent age interpretation of
Genesis. Thus it is illegitimate to characterize design theorists as
old-earth creationists (though there are old-earth creationists who are
design theorists, notably Stephen Meyer and Robert Newman). Old-earth
creationism holds that Genesis, modulo some exegetical maneuvering, can
accurately accommodate natural history. Whether one approaches Genesis in
this way is simply irrelevant to design theory.

Nor can it be said that design theory endorses progressive creation.
Progressive creation holds that God intervened at various points in
natural history, creating new kinds, as it were, from scratch. Progressive
creation can accommodate a considerable degree of evolutionary change once
a given kind is in place. According to this view the creation of a given
kind induces an evolutionary envelope within which considerable, but not
unlimited, variation is possible. For instance, we might imagine God
creating an initial pair of dogs, and all subsequent dogs being related to
this initial pair by common descent--everything from a St. Bernard to a
Chihuahua. Nevertheless, the progressive creationist would be uninclined
to view dogs and amoeba as sharing the same genealogical tree.

Nor can design theory strictly speaking be said to be anti-evolutionist.
This may sound surprising, especially since design theorists tend to
dislike the term "evolution," viewing it as a weasel word that serves more
to obfuscate than clarify. The reason design theorists dislike the word is
not because they repudiate every possible construal of it, but because
they regard it as a Protean term which, much like the process it
describes, adapts itself too readily to any situation. Although design
theorists regard the word "evolution" as assuming too many distinct
meanings that are too easily confused, the notion that organisms have
changed over time hardly upsets them. Design theory places no limits on
the amount of evolutionary change that organisms might have experienced in
the course of natural history. Consistent with classical views of
creation, design allows for the abrupt emergence of new forms of life. At
the same time design is also consistent with the gradual formation of new
forms of life from old.

The design theorists' beef is not with evolutionary change per se, but
with the claim by Darwinists that all such change is driven by purely
naturalistic processes which are devoid of purpose. Design theorists
therefore agree completely with the following statement by the historian
of science Stanley Jaki:

As to the claim . . . that the Darwinian evolutionary mechanism (the
interplay of chance mutations with environmental pressure) has solved all
basic problems, I hold it to be absurd and bordering at times on the
unconscionable. While the mechanism in question provoked much interesting
scientific research, it left unanswered the question of transition among
genera, families, orders, classes, and phyla where the absence of
transitional forms is as near-complete as ever. As to the origin of life
and especially of consciousness, they are today no less irreducible to
physics than they were in Darwin's time.

Though design theorists believe Darwinism is dead wrong, unlike the
creationist movement of the 1980's, they do not try to win a place for
their views by taking to the courts. Instead of pressing their case by
lobbying for fair treatment acts in state legislatures (i.e., acts that
oblige public schools in a given state to teach both creation and
evolution in their science curricula), design theorists are much more
concerned with bringing about an intellectual revolution starting from the
top down. Their method is debate and persuasion. They aim to convince the
intellectual elite and let the school curricula take care of themselves.
By adopting this approach design theorists have enjoyed far more success
in getting across their views than their creationist counterparts.

Phillip Johnson, for instance, has debated some of the brightest stars in
the scientific galaxy (including Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg). However
much the Darwinian establishment would like to ignore him, they simply
cannot. This is not to say that the Darwinian establishment is
particularly well-disposed toward Johnson. But Johnson and his fellow
design theorists have gained a grudging respect from at least some
quarters of the Darwinian establishment. Thus when the arch-Darwinist
Michael Ruse wants to give the other side a chance in his journal Biology
and Philosophy, he comes to us. I cannot imagine Ruse making a similar
offer to the creationists who opposed him at the Arkansas creation trial.
From all that I've just said, it's hard to imagine how design theorists
could be identified as narrow fundamentalists. There is nothing in design
theory that requires a narrow hermeneutic for interpreting scripture.
Indeed, design theory makes neither an explicit nor an implicit appeal to
scripture. Nonetheless, design theorists are frequently accused of being,
if not fundamentalists, then crypto-fundamentalists. What lies behind this
tendency to lump them with fundamentalism as opposed to placing them
squarely within the mainstream of American evangelicalism? The answer to
this question is quite simple: Design theorists are no friends of theistic
evolution. As far as design theorists are concerned, theistic evolution is
American evangelicalism's ill-conceived accommodation to Darwinism. What
theistic evolution does is take the Darwinian picture of the biological
world and baptize it, identifying this picture with the way God created
life. When boiled down to its scientific content, theistic evolution is no
different from atheistic evolution, accepting as it does only purposeless,
naturalistic, material processes for the origin and development of life.

As far as design theorists are concerned, theistic evolution is an
oxymoron, something like "purposeful purposelessness." If God purposely
created life through the means proposed by Darwin, then God's purpose was
to make it seem as though life was created without any purpose. According
to the Darwinian picture, the natural world provides no clue that a
purposeful God created life. For all we can tell, our appearance on planet
earth is an accident. If it were all to happen again, we wouldn't be here.
No, the heavens do not declare the glory of God, and no, God's invisible
attributes are not clearly seen from God's creation. This is the upshot of
theistic evolution as the design theorists construe it.

Design theorists find the "theism" in theistic evolution superfluous.
Theistic evolution at best includes God as an unnecessary rider in an
otherwise purely naturalistic account of life. As such, theistic evolution
violates Occam's razor. Occam's razor is a regulative principle for how
scientists are supposed to do their science. According to this principle,
superfluous entities are to be rigorously excised from science. Thus,
since God is an unnecessary rider in our understanding of the natural
world, theistic evolution ought to dispense with all talk of God outright
and get rid of the useless adjective "theistic."

It's for failing to take Occam's razor seriously that the Darwinist
establishment despises (yes I say despises) theistic evolution. They view
theistic evolution as a weak-kneed sycophant, who desperately wants the
respectability that comes with being a full-blooded Darwinist, but refuses
to follow the logic of Darwinism through to the end. It takes courage to
give up the comforting belief that life on earth has a purpose. It takes
courage to live without the consolation of an afterlife. Theistic
evolutionists lack the stomach to face the ultimate meaninglessness of
life, and it is this failure of courage that makes them contemptible in
the eyes of full-blooded Darwinists (Richard Dawkins is a case in point).
Unlike full-blooded Darwinists, however, the design theorists'
preoccupation with theistic evolution rests not with what the term
"theistic" is doing in the phrase "theistic evolution," but rather with
what the term "evolution" is doing there. The design theorists' objection
to theistic evolution is not in the end that theistic evolution retains
God as an unnecessary rider in an otherwise perfectly acceptable
scientific theory of life's origins. Rather, the design theorists'
objection is that the scientific theory which is supposed to undergird
theistic evolution, usually called the neo-Darwinian synthesis, is itself
problematic.

The design theorists' critique of Darwinism begins with Darwinism's
failure as an empirically adequate scientific theory, and not with its
supposed incompatibility with some system of religious belief. This point
is vital to keep in mind in assessing the design theorists' contribution
to the creation-evolution controversy. Critiques of Darwinism by
creationists have typically conflated science and theology. Design
theorists will have none of this. Their critique of Darwinism is not based
on any supposed incompatibility between Christian theism and Darwinism.
Rather, they begin their critique by arguing that Darwinism is on its own
terms a failed scientific paradigm--that it does not constitute a
well-supported scientific theory, that it's explanatory power is severely
limited, and that it fails abysmally when it tries to account for the
grand sweep of natural history.

Michael Denton's critique of Darwinism is a case in point. In his book
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Denton argues at length that the
neo-Darwinian synthesis is a failed scientific paradigm. It bears noting
that Denton is an agnostic in matters of religious faith--thus in
criticizing Darwinism he has no religious ax to grind. The problems facing
Darwinism are there, and they are glaring: the origin of life, the origin
of the genetic code, the origin of multicellular life, the origin of
sexuality, the gaps in the fossil record, the biological big bang that
occurred in the Cambrian era, the development of complex organ systems,
and the development of irreducibly complex molecular machines are just a
few of the more serious difficulties that confront every theory of
evolution that posits only purposeless, material processes.

As a post-doctoral instructor in philosophy of science at Northwestern
University I taught an undergraduate course on the creation-evolution
controversy. I began this course by having my students read Peter Bowler's
Evolution: The History of an Idea (a generally sympathetic historical
account of the concept of evolution as it plays itself out from ancient
times to the present-day), and followed it with Michael Denton's
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Within three weeks no one in the class
thought that the fundamental claim of Darwinism, namely common descent
through selection and modification, was self-evident or particularly well
supported.

Nor would anyone in my class have agreed with Richard Dawkins that to deny
this central thesis of Darwinism one has to be either stupid or wicked or
insane. No, one can be reasonably well-adjusted, remarkably well-educated
(as many design theorists are), and still think Darwinism is a failed
scientific paradigm. Let me stress that my students represented quite a
cross section of opinion. I had two or three who were conservative
Christians actively involved in Campus Crusade. I also had a few who were
staunch Darwinists and came to love Richard Dawkins when later in the term
we read Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker. Yet none of my students left
the course thinking that the debate over Darwinism was like arguing over
whether the earth is flat. Wherever they stood, they realized there were
serious difficulties which needed to be resolved. In short, they realized
that there is a genuine critique of intellectual merit against Darwinism.

The strength of the design theorists' critique against Darwinism, however,
rests not in the end in their ability to find holes in the theory. To be
sure, the holes are there and they create serious difficulties for the
theory. The point, however, at which the design theorists' critique
becomes interesting and novel is when they begin raising the following
sorts of questions: Why does Darwinism, despite being so inadequately
supported as a scientific theory, continue to garner the full support of
the academic establishment? What is it that continues to keep Darwinism
afloat despite its many glaring faults? Why are alternative paradigms that
introduce design or teleology ruled out of court by fiat? Why must science
explain solely by recourse to naturalistic, materialistic, purposeless
processes? Who determines the rules of science? Is there a code of
scientific correctness which instead of helping to lead us into truth
actively prevents us from asking certain questions and thereby coming to
the truth?

These questions are not merely hypothetical. Dean Kenyon, a fellow design
theorist, is professor of biology at San Francisco State University. In
one of his introductory biology courses Kenyon presented the standard
neo-Darwinian theory and then pointed to some difficulties in it, stating
that he himself holds to a design hypothesis. Mind you, Dean Kenyon is not
a rube or ignoramus. Kenyon received his Ph.D. in biophysics from Stanford
University. In the late 60's he himself firmly held to the neo-Darwinian
synthesis, even writing a seminal book on the topic of prebiotic
evolution. The book was entitled Biochemical Predestination. Yet by the
late 70's he began to entertain doubts about his views. When he changed
his position, not for religious but for scientific reasons, he found that
research moneys dried up and that a not-so-subtle persecution had began.

Thus when not so long ago Kenyon explained his views on design to his
introductory biology course, his department used this as a pretext to
remove him from teaching introductory biology and to relegate him to
supervising lab experiments--this even though he was a senior faculty
member. Every review committee confirmed that Kenyon's department had
violated his academic freedom. It took three meetings of successively more
weighty academic review committees at his institution to lean on the
biology department sufficiently to reinstate Kenyon's right to teach
introductory biology, and this only after another design theorist, Stephen
Meyer, wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal detailing Kenyon's
treatment at the hands of his department.

To reiterate, What keeps Darwinism alive? Why is it so difficult to debate
its merits fairly? In so pluralistic a society as ours, why don't
alternative views about life's origin and development have a legitimate
place in academic discourse? It's not enough to say that the young earth
creationists have left too bad a taste in the mouth of the academic world
about creationism. For Dean Kenyon has never been associated with the
young earth creationists. Indeed, he has always been a full-fledged member
of the scientific establishment.

When Stephen J. Gould, the dean of American evolutionists, wrote a
scathing review of Phillip Johnson's book Darwin on Trial for Scientific
American, why did Scientific American refuse to print Johnson's response
to Gould's review? Does it serve the furtherance of academic discourse for
Nature, the premier science periodical of Great Britain, to contact David
Hull, a philosopher of biology at Northwestern University, and ask him
point blank to write a negative review of Johnson's book, as it were
commissioning Hull to do a hatchet job (I have this story from David
Hull's own lips)?

I myself have written on aspects of the evolution-creation controversy.
When I went on the job market in philosophy a few years back, I was urged
to delete some of my published work from my Curriculum Vitae because, and
this is a verbatim quote from the placement officer at my department, "all
the analytic philosophers are atheists and they don't want to see that."
Most of us who work in the creation-evolution debate have long since
discarded the notion that there is anything like academic freedom in this
affair, nor do we delude ourselves with the thought that a critique of
evolutionary biology will be heard simply because of its inherent
intellectual merit. It's unfortunate, but warfare is all too often the
most appropriate metaphor for describing this debate.

Clearly something more than an honest concern for responsible scientific
inquiry is at stake when individuals of Dean Kenyon's caliber are
prevented from even so much as expressing doubts about a scientific
theory, especially when they are acknowledged experts in the field. We are
dealing here with something more than a straightforward determination of
scientific facts or confirmation of scientific theories. Rather, we are
dealing with competing world views and incompatible metaphysical systems.
With the creation-evolution controversy we are dealing with a naturalistic
metaphysic that shapes and controls what theories of biological origins
are permitted on the playing field in advance of any discussion or
weighing of evidence. This metaphysic is so pervasive and powerful that it
not only rules alternative views out of court, but it cannot even permit
itself to be criticized. The fallibilism and tentativeness that are
supposed to be part and parcel of science find no place in the
naturalistic metaphysic that undergirds Darwinism. It is this metaphysic,
then, that constitutes the main target of the design theorists' critique
of Darwinism, and to which we turn next.

"Creation" and "Evolution"
The design theorists' critique of the naturalistic metaphysic that
undergirds Darwinism can be reduced to an analysis of three words. The
three words are creation, evolution, and science. Let us start with the
words "creation" and "evolution." Suppose you are up on a witness stand
and required to respond yes or no to two questions (if you refuse to
answer yes or no, you will be taken out and summarily shot). The questions
are these: (1) Do you believe in creation? (2) Do you believe in
evolution? Could you respond to these questions with a simple yes or no,
and still feel satisfied that you had expressed yourself accurately.
Probably not. The problem is that the words "creation" and "evolution"
both have multiple senses.

For instance, creation can be construed in the narrow sense of a literal
six day creation as presented in Genesis 1 and 2. On the other hand,
creation can also be construed in the broad sense of simply asserting that
God has created the world with a purpose in mind, where the question of
how God created the world is simply set to one side. Similarly, evolution
can be construed as a fully naturalistic, purposeless process which by
means of natural selection and mutation has produced all living things. On
the other hand, evolution can mean nothing more than that organisms have
changed over time.

Depending on how one construes the words "creation" and "evolution," one's
answer to the question Do you believe in creation? and Do you believe in
evolution? are likely to show quite a bit of variability. For myself, Yes,
I believe that God created the world with a purpose in mind, and No, I
don't believe that God created the world in six 24-hour day periods. No, I
don't believe in fully naturalistic evolution controlled solely by
purposeless material processes, and Yes, I do believe that organisms have
undergone some change in the course of natural history (though I believe
that this change has occurred within strict limits and that human beings
were specially created).

Now it is the design theorists' contention that the Darwinian
establishment, in order to maintain its political, cultural, and
intellectual authority, consistently engages in a fallacy of equivocation
when it uses the terms "creation" and "evolution." The fallacy of
equivocation is the fallacy of speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
It is the deliberate confusing of two senses of a term, using the sense
that's convenient to promote one's agenda. For instance, when Michael Ruse
in one of his defenses of Darwinism writes, "Evolution is Fact, Fact,
Fact!" how is he using the term "evolution"? Is it a fact that organisms
have changed over time? There is plenty of evidence that appears to
confirm that this is the case. Is it a fact that the panoply of life has
evolved through purposeless naturalistic processes? This might be a fact,
but whether it is a fact is very much open to debate.

Suppose you don't buy the Darwinian picture of natural history, that is,
you don't believe that the vast panoply of life evolved through
purposeless naturalistic processes. Presumably then you are a creationist.
But does this make you a young earth creationist? Ever since Darwin's
Origin of Species Darwinists have cast the debate in these terms: either
you're with us, or you're a creationist, by which they mean a young earth
creationist. Darwin made this move in his Origin of Species. Philip
Kitcher makes this move in his book Abusing Science (publication date
1982). When I debated scientists from the faculty of SUNY Stonybrook last
April, they refuted not my actual position, but a caricature which they
preferred to attribute to me. It is amazing what you can refute when you
deliberately refuse to understand something.

But to return to the point at hand, of course it doesn't follow, logically
or otherwise, that by rejecting fully naturalistic evolution you
automatically embrace a literal reading of Genesis 1 and 2. Rejecting
fully naturalistic evolution does not entail accepting young earth
creationism. The only thing one can say for certain is that to reject
fully naturalistic evolution is to accept some form of creationism broadly
construed, i.e., the belief that God or some intelligent agent has
produced life with a purpose in mind. Young earth creationism certainly
falls under such a broad construal of creationism, but is hardly
coextensive with creationism in this broad sense.

Let us now assume we've gotten our terms straight. No more terminological
confusions. No more fallacies of equivocation. No more straw men. From
here on in we're going to concentrate on the essence of the
creation-evolution debate. Henceforth this debate will be over whether
life exhibits nothing more than the outcome of fully naturalistic
purposeless material processes, or whether life exhibits the purposeful
activity of an intelligent agent--usually called a designer--who in
creating life has impressed on it the clear marks of intelligence. Phillip
Johnson has dubbed the first view the Blind Watchmaker Thesis--BWT. We'll
call the second view the Intelligent Design Thesis--IDT. BWT and IDT are
mutually exclusive and exhaust all possibilities. According to Johnson the
key problem to be resolved in the creation-evolution controversy is
deciding which of these theses is correct, BWT or IDT. How then shall we
reach a decision?

The first thing to notice is that BWT and IDT both make definite
assertions of fact. To see this, let's get personal. Here you are. You had
parents. They in turn had parents. They too had parents. And so on and so
on. If we run the video camera back in time, generation upon generation,
what do we see? Do we see a continuous chain of natural causes which go
from apes to small furry mammals to reptiles to slugs to slime molds to
blue green algae, and finally all the way back to a pre-biotic soup, with
no event in the chain ever signaling the activity of an intelligent agent?
Or as we trace back the genealogy do we find events that clearly signal
the activity of an intelligent agent?

There is a legitimate distinction here. Whole branches of science
presuppose that features of the world can display unequivocal marks of
intelligence and thereby clearly signal the activity of an intelligent
agent (e.g., anthropology, archeology, and forensic science). Nor need the
intelligences inferred in this way necessarily all be human or even
earthbound (consider, for instance, NASA's Search for Extra-Terrestrial
Intelligence program--SETI for short--in which certain radio signals from
outer space would with full confidence be interpreted as signaling the
presence of an extra-terrestrial intelligence). There are reliable
criteria for inferring the activity of an intelligent agent. Does natural
history display clear marks of intelligence and thereby warrant such a
design inference, or does it not? To answer this question one way is to
come down on the side of IDT, to answer it the other way is to come down
on the side of BWT.

Now Darwinists are very clear in asserting that natural history does not
underwrite a design inference. They are quite explicit in affirming that
BWT is correct and in rejecting IDT as incorrect. George Gaylord Simpson,
one of the founders of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, in his book The
Meaning of Evolution leaves us with no doubts about the matter:

Although many details remain to be worked out, it is already evident that
all the objective phenomena of the history of life can be explained by
purely naturalistic or, in a proper sense of the sometimes abused word,
materialistic factors. They [that is, the objective phenomena of the
history of life] are readily explicable on the basis of differential
reproduction in populations [that's natural selection], and the mainly
random interplay of the known processes of heredity [that's random
mutation, the other major element in the Darwinian picture]. Therefore,
man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have
him in mind.

But Phillip Johnson, Michael Denton, Hubert Yockey, Lecomte du Noüy,
Freddy Hoyle, and even Francis Crick have all shown glaring weaknesses in
the very theory to which Simpson is referring. Where then does Simpson get
his confidence that BWT is right and IDT is wrong? How can Simpson so
easily elide the glaring weaknesses in his theory, and then with perfect
equanimity assert "it is already evident that all the objective phenomena
of the history of life can be explained by purely naturalistic factors"?
And how does Simpson know that when the "many details that remain to be
worked out" actually do get worked out, that they won't overthrow BWT and
instead confirm IDT? Science is after all a fallible enterprise. Whence
does Simpson derive such certainty?

"Science"

To answer this question we need to examine how the third word in our trio
gets employed by the Darwinist establishment, namely, the word "science."
Although design theorists take the question Which is correct, BWT or IDT?
as a perfectly legitimate question concerning certain facts of the natural
world, it is not treated as a legitimate question by the Darwinist
establishment. According to the Darwinist establishment BWT poses a
"scientific" question whereas IDT poses a "religious" question. Thus, as
far as the Darwinist establishment is concerned, IDT is a non-starter. Yes
BWT and IDT taken together may be mutually exclusive and exhaustive, but
BWT is the only viable scientific option. IDT must therefore be ruled out
of court from the start.

Why is this? The answer is really quite simple. Science according to the
Darwinist establishment by definition excludes everything except the
material and the natural. It follows that all talk of purpose, design, and
intelligence is barred entry from the start. To see that I am not making
this up one has only to consider the following remark by the author of
Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod:

The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is
objective. In other words, the systematic denial that "true" knowledge can
be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes--that is to
say, of "purpose."

Of course, the only way even to begin to justify a negative principle like
this is to argue that science has uniformly failed to make headway when it
has employed the notion of an intelligent or purposeful cause. And even
this sort of argument cannot preclude the possibility that for all its
past failures, a concept may yet prove useful in the future.

But back to the point at hand. By defining science as that form of inquiry
restricted solely to what can be explained in terms of naturalistic,
purposeless, material processes, the Darwinist establishment has ruled IDT
out of science from the start. But suppose now that a design theorist
comes along, and like most Americans thinks IDT is correct and BWT is
incorrect. (According to a Gallop poll close to 50% of Americans are
creationists of a stricter sort, thinking that God specially created human
beings; another 40% believe in some form of God-guided evolution; and only
9% are full-blooded Darwinists. It's this 9%, however, that controls the
academy.) The design theorist's first inclination might be to say, "No big
deal. IDT is at least as good an answer to the origins question in biology
as BWT. Science just happens to be limited in the questions it can pose
and the answers it can give." Fortunately, design theorists are not so
naive.

The problem is this. As Phillip Johnson has rightly observed, science is
the only universally valid form of knowledge within our culture. This not
to say that scientific knowledge is true or infallible. But within our
culture, whatever is purportedly the best scientific account of a given
phenomenon demands our immediate and unconditional assent. This is
regarded as a matter of intellectual honesty. Thus to consciously resist
what is currently the best scientific theory in a given area is, in the
words of Richard Dawkins, to be either stupid, wicked, or insane.
Thankfully, Richard Dawkins is more explicit than most of his colleagues
in making this point, and therefore does us the service of not papering
over the contempt with which the scientific community regards anyone who
questions scientific assertions for other than scientific reasons
(theological reasons being of course the worst offender here).

It bears repeating: the only universally valid form of knowledge within
our culture is science. Within late 20th century western society neither
religion, nor philosophy, nor literature, nor music, nor art makes any
such cognitive claim. Religion in particular is seen as making no
universal claims that are obligatory across the board. The contrast with
science is here blaring. Science has given us technology--computers that
work as much here as they do in the third world. Science has cured our
diseases. Whether we are black, red, yellow, or white, the same
antibiotics cure the same infections. It's therefore clear why relegating
IDT to any realm other than science (e.g., religion) ensures that BWT will
remain the only intellectually respectable option for the explanation of
life.

But something isn't quite right here. IDT and BWT both inquire into
definite matters of fact. If each of the cells that make up living things
were to have emblazoned on them in clear script the phrase "made by
Yahweh," there would be no question that IDT is correct and BWT is
incorrect. Don't let the science-fiction character of this example
distract you. The point is that IDT and BWT are both real possibilities so
long as one doesn't impose any a priori conditions that restrict in
advance what can count as a viable option in the explanation of life.
Granted, cells don't have emblazoned on them the phrase "made by Yahweh."
But we wouldn't know this unless we actually looked at cells under the
microscope.

It's here that we come to the heart of the design theorists' critique of
Darwinism. Logically, BWT and IDT are real possibilities. What's more, as
mutually exclusive and exhaustive possibilities, one of these theses has
to be correct (I'm sorry, but at this level of discourse the law of the
excluded middle definitely holds). The Darwinist establishment has so
defined science that BWT alone can constitute an appropriate scientific
answer to the question How did life originate and develop? Nevertheless,
when Stephen J. Gould, Michael Ruse, Richard Dawkins, George Gaylord
Simpson, and their many disciples assert the truth of BWT, they purport
that BWT is the conclusion of a scientific argument based on empirical
evidence. But of course it is nothing of the sort. The empirical evidence
is in fact weak, and the conclusion follows necessarily as a strict
logical deduction once science is as a matter of definition restricted to
purposeless, naturalistic, material processes. BWT is therefore built into
the very premises with which we started. It is a winner by default.

Logicians have names for this--circular reasoning and begging the question
being among them. The view that science must be restricted solely to
purposeless, naturalistic, material processes also has a name. It's called
methodological naturalism. So long as methodological naturalism sets the
ground rules for how the game of science is to be played, IDT has no
chance Hades. Phillip Johnson makes this point eloquently. So does Alvin
Plantinga. In his work on methodological naturalism Plantinga remarks that
if one accepts methodological naturalism, then Darwinism is the only game
in town.

Okay, since BWT is so poorly supported empirically and since the
scientific community is telling us that IDT isn't science, what's wrong
with a simple profession of ignorance? In response to the question How did
life originate and develop? what's wrong with simply saying We don't know?
(Such a profession of ignorance, by the way, was the reason Michael
Denton's book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis was panned by the Darwinist
establishment.) As philosophers of science Thomas Kuhn and Larry Laudan
have pointed out, for scientific paradigms to shift, there has to be a new
paradigm in place ready to be shifted into. You can't shift into a vacuum.
Napoleon III put it this way: "One never really destroys a thing till one
has replaced it." If you're going to reject a reigning paradigm, you have
to have a new improved paradigm with which to replace it. BWT is the
reigning paradigm. But what alternative is there to BWT? Logically, the
only alternative is IDT. But IDT isn't part of science. This is a case of
Hobson's choice. There's no pleading ignorance and no shifting away
because BWT is the only game in town.

Note that I'm not saying BWT is a tautology. The tautology criticism has
been a long-standing criticism offered against Darwinism. Accordingly,
Darwinism is tautologous because it asserts the survival of the fittest,
but then turns around and identifies the fittest with those who survive.
This sort of tautology is not what we've been talking about here. BWT has
genuine content. It sets definite limits on the type of world we inhabit.
BWT is not true simply as a matter of linguistic convention. The problem
is that BWT purports to be the conclusion of a scientific argument based
on empirical evidence, but is actually a strict logical consequence of a
prior assumption about how to do science, namely the assumption of
methodological naturalism.

In the words of Vladimir Lenin, What is to be done? Design theorists
aren't at all bashful about answering this question: The ground rules of
science have to be changed. We need to realize that methodological
naturalism is the functional equivalent of a full blown metaphysical
naturalism. Metaphysical naturalism asserts that the material world is all
there is (in the words of Carl Sagan, "the cosmos is all there ever was,
is, or will be"). Methodological naturalism asks us for the sake of
science to pretend that the material world is all there is. But once
science comes to be taken as the only universally valid form of knowledge
within a culture, it follows at once that methodological and metaphysical
naturalism become for all intents and purposes indistinguishable. They are
functionally equivalent. What needs to be done, therefore, is to break the
grip of naturalism in both guises, methodological and metaphysical. And
this happens once we realize that it was not empirical evidence, but the
power of a metaphysical world view that was all along urging us to adopt
methodological naturalism in the first place. Yes, the heavens still
declare the glory of God, and yes, God's invisible attributes are clearly
seen from God's creation. But to hear what the heavens declare and to see
what the creation makes manifest, we need to get rid of our metaphysical
blinders.