A Plethora of Pandas; Discovery Institute, Amicus Briefs, and Kitzmiller v. Dover

Dear Discovery Institute,

Today we will explore Appendix A from your Amicus brief filed in Kitzmiller V. Dover. This section is titled "Documentation showing that the scientific theory of intelligent design makes no claims about the identity or nature of the intelligent cause responsible for life". This page is taken right from your site, at http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=647 . We will study it one section at a time.

From 1st paragraph:
Plaintiffs have falsely asserted that the scientific theory of intelligent design postulates a "supernatural" creator. In fact, the scientists and philosophers of science who have developed the theory of intelligent design have constistently maintained that the scientific evidence and the methods of design detection that they employ cannot establish whether the intelligent cause(s) responsible for life are inside or outside of nature.

Well, you're starting out with a problematic statement. First, if the people behind Intelligent Design argue that the "scientific evidence" for intelligent design cannot tell us "whether the intelligent cause(s) for life are inside or outside of nature", then how can one qualify intelligent design as science? Science has to be testable, and disprovable. If you cannot scientifically identify a designer in nature, then by the nature of science (under the Discovery Institute's preferred definition of science), that designer does not exist. However, this is only under the Wedge Document's preferred definition of science, which also allows for the incorporation of the supernatural into science. According to the Wedge Document definition, the Intelligent Designer must not exist because there is no proof for its existence that can give us a smoking gun to identify what it is. Under the mainstream definition of science, however, there is no such issue. Mainstream science takes the stance that supernatural causation is outside the realm of science, and therefore cannot be proven or disproven by science. Therefore, while mainstream science cannot disprove God, the Discovery Institute has pushed a view of science that would allow for the disproof of God's existence.

You may notice that I'm going a bit God-heavy in a discussion of a theory that the Discovery Institute claims makes no statement on what the cause of intelligent design is. This is because many of the mainstream ID proponents (such as Jonathan Wells and William Dembski)have no qualms whatsoever about identifying the "designer". Let's look quickly at a quote by Jonathan Wells that explains his motivation as a scientist:

" At the end of the Washington Monument rally in September, 1976, I was admitted to the second entering class at Unification Theological Seminary. During the next two years, I took a long prayer walk every evening. I asked God what He wanted me to do with my life, and the answer came not only through my prayers, but also through Father's many talks to us, and through my studies. Father encouraged us to set our sights high and accomplish great things.

He also spoke out against the evils in the world; among them, he frequently criticized Darwin's theory that living things originated without God's purposeful, creative activity. My studies included modern theologians who took Darwinism for granted and thus saw no room for God's involvement in nature or history; in the process, they re- interpreted the fall, the incarnation, and even God as products of human imagination.

Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle. "
taken from http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Wells/DARWIN.htm

As readers of this blog should know, Jonathan Wells is one of the major supporters of Intelligent Design. Is it a coincidence that his mission to destroy Darwinism for God coincides with his involvement with Intelligent Design, judging from the Discovery Institute's Wedge Document, probably not, as evidenced by the following piece of the Wedge Document:

"The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip ]ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions. "
(http://deardiscoveryinstitute.blogspot.com/2008/01/wedge-documentso-what.html )

So apparently ID is a tool that can overthrow materialistic science and "replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.". This wording is vague to the point that it is possible for the Discovery Institute to argue that the term "consonant" shows that ID proponents do not have a certain deity in mind when they use the term "Designer". However, statements such as that from Wells quoted above make that argument extremely weak. It is fairly obvious, that, whether implicitly or not, the Christian God is the Intelligent Designer.

Now, onto another quote from the Amicus brief:

"Intelligent Design theorists have written many technical articles which rely entire upon empirically-based arguments and make no appeal to the supernatural. Rather, technical literature explicating the scientific theory of intelligent design consistently uses observation-based scientific methods to detect the prior action of an unspecified designing intelligence"

First, it is obvious that the "unspecified designing intelligence" is the Christian God, as established above. Also, the claim that ID proponents have published peer-reviewed journal articles has been discussed on a previous blog ( http://deardiscoveryinstitute.blogspot.com/2008/03/peer-reviewed-id-publications.html ), so I won't waste my time re-discussing this subject here. On to another piece of the document, discussing religion:

"Theorists who have formulated the scientific theory of intelligent design have been consistent in stating that design theory does not postulate a supernatural creator, nor does it try to speculate on the basis of science about the nature or identity of the designing intelligence, even when writing before technical religious journals or popular religious audiences via religious publishing companies"

Well they're right here to a degree. Most of the claims that Intelligent Design supports the CHRISTIAN GOD are found in private documents such as the Wedge Document. However, some ID advocates (see Wells and Dembski) have been quite open in public about the religious nature of their work (Wells quote above). Now we'll look at a short statement from an interview by William Dembski:

"I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.The focus of my writings is not to try to understand the Christian doctrine of creation; it’s to try to develop intelligent design as a scientific program.

There’s a big question within the intelligent design community: “How did the design get in there?” We’re very early in this game in terms of understanding the history of how the design got implemented. I think a lot of this is because evolutionary theory has so misled us that we have to rethink things from the ground up. That's where we are. There are lots and lots of questions that are now open to re-examination in light of this new paradigm. "
( http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000006139.cfm )

As is evident in this statement, it is clear that Dembski "knows" that the intelligent designer is none other than the Christian God. It is clear from this, among the other topics discussed in this blog, that the claims by the Amicus brief appendix in question are extremely vague in that they are technically accurate, but only in the most technical and exact reading. Any research deeper into the issue, especially the surrounding documents (besides articles published dealing SPECIFICALLY with Intelligent Design), shows us that intelligent design is nothing more or less than an attempt to once again develop a theory of Creation in the post Edwards v. Aguilard and Mclean v. Arkansas world.

The end of this segment of the brief deals with the textbook Of Pandas and People. While I have discussed Of Pandas and People previously, I think it is worth looking at this segment of the of the brief quickly. Consider the final paragraph of this document:

"Thus even while design theory was in its infant stages, the authors of Pandas made it explicitly clear that unlike creationism, design theory does not posit a supernatural creator and cannot establish the existence of such a creator using its methods of design detection."

This may be true for the most recent versions of Of Pandas and People, but older versions of the book, as shown through the Dover trial, prove that the authors of Pandas did have a specific designer in mind...the Christian God. Pandas was initially nothing less or more than a Creationist textbook. One final quote, comparing sections of Of Pandas and People as used in the Dover trial, and a previous version:

"Intelligent Design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an abrupt agency, with their distinctive features already intact--fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc." (Of Pandas and People, Kenyon and Davis 1989)

"Creation means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact–fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc." (Biology and Creation 1986, FTE 3015, p. 2-10)
(second quote taken from http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/10/i_guess_id_real.html )

So clearly there is a Creationist heritage to Of Pandas and People. While the most recent versions of the text did not specifically identify the "designer", clearly this older version does. While it is still vague with regards to an exact identity of the Creator, judging from the fact that it was originally a Creationist textbook, it is apparent that the designer in question was the Christian God.

Clearly, this amicus brief is not as innocent as it appears. Judging from the evidence presented in this blog, there is much more to the Discovery Institute than meets the eye from this amicus brief. It leads one to question the validity of other documents published by the institute.