Reports of ID's Death Are Exaggerated
By Douglas Groothuis
For many years, I have argued for intelligent design (ID) in my teaching and writing. I have followed the theory and defended it since its inception. Two chapters of my book, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed., are dedicated to Darwinism[1], and I have marshalled ID arguments in public lectures, debates, and articles. For example, in 2009, I was confident enough to give a lecture at Metropolitan State University of Denver called “The Deniable Darwin” that packed out the main meeting hall in the student union and was written up fairly in the student newspaper.
What is Intelligent Design?
ID is a movement of scientists, historians, and philosophers who challenge the scientific credibility of Darwinism and advance an alternative based on evidence and rational and scientific inference that claims that a designing and nonnatural intelligence is a better explanation for certain aspects of nature than Darwinian naturalism, which allows no design to explain fundamental aspects of biology.[2]
Although there are recent forerunners to ID such as A. E. Wilder-Smith, who offered scientific critiques of Darwinism, and the publication of the seminal The Mystery of Life’s Origin in 1985, which argued against abiogenesis (that life can come from non-life without a designer), ID began as a movement with the publication of Phillip Johnson’s book Darwin on Trial in 1991.[3] Johnson (1940-2019), a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, offered cogent criticisms of Darwinism based on its lack of evidence, its unwarranted conclusions, and its implicit dependence on the worldview of philosophical materialism. He then rallied a team of philosophers, scientists, and historians to the cause, which became known as ID. Among these are biochemist Michael Behe; philosopher William Dembski; embryologist Jonathan Wells (1942-2024); mathematician David Berlinski; philosopher and historian of science Stephen Meyer; and John West, a political scientist, who focuses on the unsavory political and moral ramifications of Darwinism. The institutional hub of the movement is The Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture, which produces media resources, written materials, sponsors pro-Id events around the world, and backs scientific research by people such as microbiologist Douglas Axe of the Biologic Institute.
What unified ID advocates is neither religion nor a particular view of the Bible. Rather, they argue that Darwinism is an inadequate explanation for the development of the biosphere and that materialism cannot account for the origin of life from non-life.[4] While many of the ID leaders are Christians, they do not base their arguments on any uniquely religious perspectives, but rather address the evidence at hand with an openness to inferring (not presupposing) an intelligence outside of nature. Jonathan Wells belonged to the Unification Church and David Berlinski is an agnostic Jew. ID advocates have been careful not to identify as creationists, who insist on biblical literalism (including a literal first couple not evolved from pre-human beings), a young earth, and a global flood. ID proponents may hold these beliefs, but do not integrate them into their research program. They remain agnostic or deny some of them. For example, Michael Behe accepts common descent, and no ID writer argues for a young earth as part of the ID program. The ID strategy, developed by Phillip Johnson, is to drive a “wedge” between science and materialism, such that the evidence for design is given room to speak instead of being muzzled by a philosophy of science that does not allow intelligence any primary explanatory power.[5]
A New History of ID
C. W. Howell now offers a history of ID (Designer Science: A History of Intelligent Design in America, NYU Press, 2025) which appeared thirty-five years after the start of the movement. The book describes him as “a researcher and writer based at Duke University. He holds a PhD from Duke in Religion and has taught at Duke and Elon Universities. He is also the Director of Academic Programs for the C.S. Lewis Foundation. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, Wired, and Le Grand Continent.” Before making critical comments on Howell’s approach, I must commend his thoroughness in both describing the various aspects of the movement and its critics. He ventures into the heady waters of the philosophy of science and matters of divine causation with aplomb. Some may find his work turgid. Nonetheless, even his long stretches of unbroken text are usually clearly stated and not verbose.
Evaluations of ID usually fall into four categories. (1) Defenses of ID written by ID proponents. (2) Criticism of ID by young-earth creationists who deem it too thin on theology. (3) Secular critiques that typically excoriate ID as “creationism in a cheap tuxedo,” as anti-science, as religious propaganda, or worse. (4) Attacks by theistic evolutionists, who think ID is misguided and unneeded, since Christianity can accommodate Darwinism. Howell admits to being a theistic evolutionist, but doesn’t advance that cause. Rather, he evaluates ID by its scientific standing and its relationship to religion in American politics, law, and culture more broadly.
I put off reading this book for review because I thought it would be another secular scorched-earth denunciation of ID, which is so common and so annoying. My initial impression was wrong. While the book is critical of ID, it is not reactionary or one-dimensional, however wrong I take it to be in several areas. If one wants a contemporary history of ID, this book covers the essential ID arguments and elements of controversy in both the scientific and political realms. In this, it updates the pro-ID history given by Thomas Woodward in Doubts About Darwin (2007). However, my praise for the book ends here.
Some of Howell’s Errors
While Howell does not caricature ID arguments, he fails to adequately develop their rational force. He states an argument, such as Behe’s irreducible complexity (the mousetrap principle), only to show that it hasn’t been accepted by the scientific establishment. Thus, it lacks credibility. This doesn’t follow, however, since we don’t determine truth by counting noses, even well-credentialed noses, but by evaluating arguments. His trump card against ID is, oddly, the 2005 Dover legal decision against allowing ID criticism of Darwinism in state schools. Howell should be credited with giving many pertinent details of the complicated cause, but his judgment of the ruling is wrong.[6]
Judge John Jones ruled that ID was religious in nature and not a bona fide scientific theory, and it so could not be taught in the schools, since this would be establishing religion through the state, something the Constitution disallows. This judgment was made by a civil judge, not by a scientist or a philosopher, and it stems from a tendentious definition of science that forbids any intelligent causation to explain anything in nature. Nevertheless, Howell deems this ruling as a decisive blow against ID from which it has never recovered. Designer Science is a kind of historical requiem or autopsy for ID, but he is not among those mourning its supposed demise. Howell later tries to illustrate this by claiming that most ID publications since then have been recapitulations of earlier arguments made by ID luminaries. This is wrong.
First, the ruling against ID at Dover was questionable at best and erroneous at worst. But even if the judge were correct that ID had a religious component, that, in itself, would not disqualify it as good science. If we remove the naturalist veto against design, then science may indeed point to a Designer and there can be such an endeavor as “designer science.”
Second, the Dover ruling did not knock ID back on its heels so badly that it could only recycle old and supposedly refuted arguments. Howell thinks that if ID advocates continue to argue against abiogenesis and against Darwinism, then it is simply recapitulating previous work. This does not follow. If ID is correct in its critiques and explanations, then we would expect the evidence for design to grow, as it has. Moreover, new writing would need to be published to defend ID against new charges. Moreover, how often do Darwinists reprise the arguments of Darwin and his Neo-Darwinist successors?
Howell charges that Stephen Meyer echoes some of his earlier works as if this indicates intellectual fatigue or even exhaustion. This is not so. Meyer keeps current on the research, as evidenced in Return of the God Hypothesis (2021), which deepens his arguments and responds to new criticisms. The same holds true of Michael Behe’s work, but Howell accuses him of rehashing old arguments. Contrariwise, since writing his pathbreaking book, Darwin’s Black Box, in 1996, Behe has refined his thesis and applied it more broadly in The Edge of Evolution (2007) and Darwin Devolves (2019). He has further monitored all the serious critiques of his work and responded to them in A Mousetrap for Darwin (2020).
Given his incorrect idea that Dover dealt ID a crippling defeat, Howell tries to explain ID’s continuing existence in two ways. First, he claims that ID taps into and feeds a general anti-expertise or anti-establishment mentality. Howell admits that unlike proponents of the creationist movement, ID leaders are more academically credentialed, but the ID movement still requires the ideological commitment of suspicion of elites. In the last chapter, Howell takes off the gloves and writes, “ID’s lasting contribution thus looks to be not its challenge to Darwin, but its post-Dover challenge to the reliability of scientific practice and its both tacit and explicit support for a host of suspicious movements are ideologically, if not practically, unmoored from any religious worldview: vaccine hesitancy, AIDS denialism, and climate change denial” (208). If Howell had offered a sound case against the intellectual cogency of the essential ID arguments, then this kind of post-mortem psychological explanation might be in order. But he has done nothing of the sort. Moreover, he is committing the fallacy of guilt by association (assuming one thinks vaccine hesitancy, AIDs denialism, and climate change denial are intellectually spurious).
Perhaps the major flaw in Howell’s work is his claim that ID’s intellectual program is motivated and guided by metaphysics more than empirical science or proper reasoning. People presuppose a Designer, then find design. This misconstrues the strategy of ID.
First, as noted, there are sharp critics of Darwinism who are open to design who are not theists at all, such as Berlinski, whose 1996 article in Commentary, “The Deniable Darwin,” set off an explosion of responses, as Howell notes.[7]
Second, the best ID work evaluates a phenomenon, such as the bacterial flagellum or the information in DNA and RNA and pursues the best explanation for what it finds. As Stephen Meyers argues, ID has no uniquely religious assumptions, but it offers implications that are friendly toward religion. Of course, turnabout is fair play. If one thinks that ID people presuppose God and then find design, then atheists may presuppose no God and find no evidence for divine handiwork in nature. But we should move past begging of the question (a logical fallacy) by either atheists or theists and pursue the best explanation. That is exactly what ID has done. Further, even if ID advocates are motivated by their religious beliefs, that is irrelevant to the reasons they give for their conclusions, as long as they don’t presuppose religious beliefs. [Editor’s note: Along these lines, see our recent article on Bulverism.]
Not Autopsy is Needed
While ID has had its ups and downs in both the academic and popular worlds, its continuing existence and achievements are a testimony to its cognitive heft and resilience. As I often tell my students, the case for ID gets stronger as time goes by. More and more and more aspects of nature are revealed that resist any kind of Darwinian explanation. ID publications continue to appear, its main website is active and innovative, and its sponsors hold conferences around the world. As Phillip Johnson said in Darwin on Trial, “sinking the battleship” of Darwinism is no small task. But that old barnacled ship is in far worse shape than it was in 1991 when Johnson spun that metaphor. Moreover, a newer vessel, Intelligent Design, continues to commend itself as the ship of choice.
Notes
[1] Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (InterVarsity Press, 2022), 267-327.
[2] Although ID proponents have developed the fine-tuning argument for a designing intelligence at the cosmic level, ID is mostly known for its work in biology. On cosmic fine-tuning, see Guillermo Gonzalez and Wesley J. Richards, Privileged Planet, 2oth anniversary ed. (Gateway Editions, 2024). See also the video of the same name by Illustra Media, which is online on YouTube. I defend this in “The Design Argument: Cosmic Fine-Tuning,” in Christian Apologetics.
[3] Although it did not get as much traction as Johnson’s work, Norman McBeth, also a lawyer, wrote a telling critique of Darwinism called Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason (Dell, 1971).
[4] Darwinism doesn’t address the supposed origin of life itself from nonlife (although Darwin speculated about it), but only the evolution of life after its first form by natural selection. However, given a materialist metaphysics, the first life on earth must be explained by non-intelligent and thoroughly natural forces and elements. Stephen C. Meyer has critiqued this view in Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2010). He reviews and updates this argument in Return of the God Hypothesis (HarperOne, 2021). See also the many videos of research scientist Dr. James Tours online.
[5] See Phillip Johnson, The Wedge of Truth (InterVarsity, 2000).
[6] The Discovery Institute published a book challenging the decision: David DeWolf, et al, Traipsing into Evolution (Discovery, 2006).
[7] I cite a number of non-Christian critics of Darwinism in Christian Apologetics, 269. See also Jerry Bergman, Slaughter of the Dissidents (Leafcutter Press, 2011) and the 2008 film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
— Douglas Groothuis is University Research Professor of Apologetics and Christian Worldview at Cornerstone University and is the author of twenty books, including, most recently, Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal (InterVarsity-Academic, 2024) and Christian Apologetics, 2nd ed. (InterVarsity-Academic, 2022).
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Great review!
I became a follower of Jesus after listening to a cassette tape(!) of Hugh Ross. I think I would agree with Howell that there is a suspicion of elite scientists. I felt lied to after receiving BS in Biology and evolution being the only hypothesis. There were Christians in the chemistry department at my university, but none in the biology department, which to me indicated worldview bias. “Trust the science” does seem like a religious statement.