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(See also Christine Shellska's slide presentation, a PDF document.)
Good afternoon and thank you for attending my presentation on intelligent design. I’m very privileged to be here, among such an esteemed group of speakers both past and present, and I’d like to thank Stuart Bechman and the committee who after reading a paper I submitted, decided to give me this amazing opportunity. I am certain you have never heard of me before, so please allow me to introduce myself.
[advance slide] My name is Christine Shellska and I’m a second-year PhD student in the Department of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary. Before I returned to school, I spent several years working in the field of advertising, public relations and corporate communications. This was sort of a natural fit since my father worked in advertising and I was exposed to it throughout my life. I recall being a small child, probably around four or five, and seeing a TV commercial for some sort of toy. My parents warned me that the toy wouldn’t be like it was shown in the ad, but I really, really wanted that toy. And I got it, for Christmas. And, just like my parents said, the toy fell far short of my expectations, and I was disappointed. It was at that point I learned that I should expect to be lied to from time to time, and that there were people who could convince me to behave in certain ways, such as pestering my parents to buy me toys. It was at that point that I became a skeptic.
I know that many if not most of you are non-believers, and some of you have compelling coming-out stories. I don’t. I realized I didn’t believe in God when I was six years old, so I asked my parents what they believed. They told me they were agnostic, and that it meant, “show me and I’ll believe.” I remember feeling relieved that I wouldn’t have to pretend. I am grateful that I was allowed to explore and question other belief systems without being limited in my thinking to one. This is an ongoing process of growth which has served to affirm my faith in reason.
What I am about to present to you is my proposed theoretical framework, how I’m going to conceptualize the intelligent design movement as I proceed with my research. At the end of my presentation, I welcome any questions you might have and I’ll do my best to answer them. And please feel welcome to let me know what you think of my approach. This is a learning opportunity for me, and your insights will help me to develop a strong dissertation proposal.
[advance slide] Now I’d like to say a couple of words that I hope will make most of you squirm: intelligent design.
[advance slide] In case you are not familiar with the term, proponents of intelligent design, which I’ll refer to as ID, argue that the origins of life can be better attributed to an intelligent cause rather than to evolutionary processes.
[advance slide] There are a number of variations, ranging from positions that are compatible with alternative and New Age movements, such as the belief shared by Raëlians and Scientologists that life was “seeded” by aliens, to positions which advocate a religious, specifically Christian, agenda.
[advance slide] The organization most strongly associated with the Christian variation of ID is the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank founded in 1990 and based in Seattle, Washington. This organization attempts to position ID as a valid scientific theory not only by arguing against the theory of evolution, but by attacking science itself.
The term “intelligent design” emerged during the 1987 Edwards versus Aguillard case. US Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist ruled that teaching creationism, or “creation science,” in public schools was in violation of the Constitution. It was here that the idea that life was “created by an intelligent mind” was put forward as an alternative way to describe creationism without actually using that word, and by 1989, the term “intelligent design” enjoyed its publication debut in the high-school creationist biology textbook, Of Pandas and People.
[advance slide] They obviously used a “search and replace” function, but somebody wasn’t paying attention because in one instance, the term “design proponents” didn’t quite replace the term “creation scientists” and the word “cdesign proponentsists” was “created.” As someone who has worked with the printing industry, I can tell you that before a thing is sent to press it is wise to proofread thoroughly. Nobody caught that one, and that’s how it got published. Evidence of its own creationist origins.
The most recent significant US case involving ID in public schools was Kitzmiller versus Dover in 2005, also known as the Panda Trial because the textbook blatantly showed ID’s creationist roots. Judge John E. Jones III recognized the religious basis of ID and affirmed that teaching it as science is unconstitutional.
[advance slide] Of Pandas and People is now called The Design of Life. It was published late in 2008 and is co-authored by members of the Discovery Institute.
So clearly intelligent design evolved from creationism. But is it science? My specialization is not in the sciences; I am a non-scientist, but I know that there is a lot of work going on right now that makes the case that intelligent design is not science.
[advance slide] Among others, the four horsemen, as they’re known, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, have helped to tear down the wall of reverence that has protected religious claims from rational criticism. Countless of these claims have been tested empirically, and they consistently fail to correspond with the broader scientific community’s understanding of the natural world. By contrast, evolutionary theory unifies fields as diverse as biology, chemistry, physics, geology and astronomy, and it is accepted by the vast majority of scientists.
[advance slide] Eugenie Scott and the folks at the National Center for Science Education, an American non-profit organization which defends the teaching of evolution, have been among those who have revealed intelligent design to be religion to the legal community, and helped to keep it out of US science classrooms. I will not go into detail about the scientific, philosophical and legal arguments against intelligent design. I am sure most of you have at least a passing familiarity with this issue.
The important point to take is that the scientific and legal communities overwhelmingly reject ID theory as a valid scientific alternative to evolution.
But what about the rest of us?
[advance slide] Belief in creationism, ID’s precursor, is alive and well. In 2008, Gallup reported that 44% of Americans believe “God created man in present form,” and Angus Reid reported that 22% of Canadians believe “God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years.” Any, well almost any biologist will tell you that evolution does a far better job explaining the origins of life than does creationism. Indeed, the catchphrase comes from a title of a paper by Theodosius Dobzhansky: “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” And certainly some faiths have reconciled their beliefs to accommodate evolution. So why does this belief in creationism persist?
[advance slide] And why this hostility toward evolution?
When I first thought I might like to undertake a serious academic study of ID, the approach that came to mind was rhetorical theory. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and it’s pretty clear that that’s what the Discovery Institute is up to, using rhetorical strategies to persuade people to accept ID as a scientific theory. This is not surprising.
One of the things I love about Communications Studies is that it is a broad and interdisciplinary field inspired by the social sciences and humanities, so it opens up a lot of research possibilities.
[advance slide] In my coursework last year I explored the philosophical demarcation debate, which is concerned with identifying the criteria that distinguish science from other social practices and systems of knowledge, and from pseudoscience. So what exactly is science? We do have some solid concepts to work with, and I’ll get back to a couple of those later, but it turns out that the answer is not so clear-cut.
This debate continues, with epistemologists asking about the nature of scientific knowledge. But some scholars moved the discussion from the realm of philosophy and into sociology when they began asking about the social context from which scientific knowledge emerges. Sociology of Scientific Knowledge is a branch of study that developed with contributions from fields as diverse as artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology.
[advance slide] Actor Network Theory, or ANT, as I’ll refer to it, emerged from this tradition, and observes science as it is practiced. You can probably already imagine why it might be instructive to apply ANT, just to see if what the Discovery Institute is doing has anything to do with practicing science. But before I get into that, I’ll describe some of the concepts I’ll be borrowing from ANT.
Despite its name, ANT is not a unified social theory. It is a powerful methodology that invites contributions from other theoretical traditions, and it can be applied to a broad range of social phenomena. It is frequently used to examine science from a critical perspective, but I am deviating here because in a sense I am using it to defend science. I am applying ANT to understand how claims come to be accepted as scientific knowledge.
ANT conceives of knowledge as the product of the interaction of actors in a network. To avoid certain philosophical problems that I will not get into, ANT grants both human and non-human actors agency, and looks at how knowledge emerges as a consequence of their interactions.
It is a realist approach; it describes science as it is actually practiced, and it acknowledges that human and non-human actors can fail. For example, lab technicians can misinterpret instructions, and instruments can malfunction.
Networks are not single entities. They can overlap or consolidate to form larger networks such as governments and institutions. And networks have no centre. This makes them unstable, and potentially vulnerable to confrontation and resistance. Although the goal is network stability, networks must constantly reconfigure to respond to outside challenges.
In cybernetics, the term “black box” refers to a complex process or object that is taken for granted. ANT theorists borrow the term to describe a knowledge network that has been collectively stabilized, when its validity is no longer questioned, when it is accepted as a “fact” that is available to advance further knowledge.
[advance slide] For example, the microscope has a history, a network of actors that contributed to its emergence as a tool to advance science. But nobody bothers to question the knowledge behind the microscope when they use one. Nobody questions the theory of magnification. It is simply taken for granted that the thing will do as expected, make little things look bigger, so the microscope is said to be black boxed.
Before black boxes get closed, or when they are re-opened, controversy arises. This is what ANT researchers are interested in: how controversies flare up and get settled, how relationships form between actors to stabilize and protect the network from confrontation and resistance.
[advance slide] ANT relies on the concept of translation, which means, “to make two worlds equivalent,” to take a concept and make it understandable to those outside the network. Translation involves several phases, and the ones most relevant to my discussion are problematization, enrolment and mobilization.
Problematization occurs when a problem is identified; for example, an unexpected observation or dissenting claim challenges a scientific theory. At this point actors are persuaded to adopt roles that will advance translation. For example, scientists are asked to take on their roles as scientists by taking seriously and evaluating challenges to the theory.
Enrolment occurs when alliances are formed between actors to take up a statement and enact it so that it becomes a fact. Transforming a statement to a fact is a rhetorical process. It involves bringing scientific texts such as peer-reviewed journal articles into the network, and using citations to other works to support or challenge the statement. Statements become facts when they are collectively stabilized, when they become part of the shared understanding of “how things get done” in a research programme. From the ANT perspective, a statement becomes a fact not because it is true; ANT does not concern itself with determining the truth value of claims. A statement becomes a fact because it is used as such by other actors.
There are other ways actors can enrol other actors to transform a statement into a fact. They can generate a problem for which the statement becomes the solution and attempt to stimulate interest around it. They can approach more powerful allies, appeal to their interests, join their network and leverage their power. And they can identify relevant actors from other networks and draw them in.
Finally, mobilization occurs when spokespersons are designated to represent the collective. A collective refers to the actors who have black boxed a claim. The power of the collective is determined by the number of black boxes and actors it has mobilized to support the claim. The power of the collective resides in its ability to define reality, to exert hegemony by resisting dissent.
[advance slide] When translation is successful, the network is said to be stabilized. There are a number of strategies that can be used to maintain network stability, but I’ll skip them, because we won’t get that far. Once a network is stabilized, it goes unnoticed and gets taken for granted. It is used as a resource to further the development of other black boxes. But of course, as I noted earlier, networks are always subject to dissent and confrontation, to reordering and reconfiguration, so they are never really stable.
I mentioned that ANT invites contributions from other theoretical traditions, and this is where my background in advertising and public relations kicks in, along with a little dose of the scepticism I learned after I got that toy for Christmas.
Let’s think about the scientific community as a network that has black boxed the theory of evolution. Now let’s think about the Discovery Institute and what they’re doing. The first question we might ask is whether they’re actually doing science.
[advance slide] Their mission statement says, “Discovery Institute's mission is to make a positive vision of the future practical. The Institute discovers and promotes ideas in the common sense tradition of representative government, the free market and individual liberty. Our mission is promoted through books, reports, legislative testimony, articles, public conferences and debates, plus media coverage and the Institute's own publications and Internet website.” This doesn’t sound much like scientific research to me. It sounds more like the kind of things marketing firms do.
[advance slide] Even though we may not know the subtleties of how marketing firms operate, we are all aware that they use rhetoric and the mass media to persuade consumers to do various things. We are all so familiar with what marketing firms do that I don’t even have to remind you that advertising uses communication to persuade consumers to buy things, and public relations uses communication to persuade consumers to perceive an organization favourably.
[advance slide] We have all bought the toy or whatever item it was for you, and been disappointed when we realized that the claims in the advertisement made the product sound much better than it actually was. And we have all seen companies scrambling to restore their reputation after something bad happens, using the media to do “damage control” and placate the public, sometimes by presenting misinformation. We are frequently skeptical of the claims presented in the mass media because we have been shown time and time again that they are littered with lies.
Don’t get me wrong. Marketing is sophisticated stuff and I am not claiming that we are immune to the persuasive tactics PR professionals and advertisers use. Nor am I suggesting that marketing is always deceptive and used to manipulate consumer behaviour.
Advertising can, for example, make us aware of the suffering of others and compel us to offer relief, and PR strategies can be used to introduce important social issues into public consciousness. Communication professionals are indeed trained to uphold ethical standards, but it is outside the scope of this presentation to treat marketing theory in detail. My claim here is that as a culture, we have developed strategies to deal with the pervasiveness of media in our society, and one of those strategies is to learn to examine media critically, just like I learned to do when I was a small child. The point to be taken here is that we basically know what marketers are up to. We’re onto them. And of course, they’re onto us, being onto them.
[advance slide] I’m sure most of you are familiar with this commercial. The spot is called “Billions,” and you certainly won’t see this in print, but the unstated claim is that if you use Axe body spray, within moments billions of gorgeous women in bikinis will overcome some seriously difficult terrain to get to you, baby. We recognize the humour in this commercial because the claim is such a blatant, ridiculous lie. It is the advertising industry poking fun at itself.
We’re onto them, they’re onto us, so the relationship has even become playful. Some of us try to deny it, but advertising is really a lot of fun. I am not a sports fan but I certainly enjoy the Superbowl ads. And some of it is very well done, even good enough to compete as an art form.
[advance slide] Ads can make us laugh, they can make us cry, and they can make us angry. We forward them to our friends or post them to facebook, and we spoof them and post them to youtube. We devour them. We live in a mass media society. Similar to how children learn the rules of the road by observing their parents drive, before they’re old enough to get behind the wheel, most of us develop some basic media literacy. So is there some way we can use media literacy as a tool to advance scientific literacy?
Let us return again to thinking about the scientific community as a network that has black boxed the theory of evolution, and is attempting to translate it to other networks such as public schools. But the Discovery Institute is disrupting that translation, isn’t it? Let’s think about the Discovery Institute as though it were a marketing firm, and evaluate what they’re doing in terms of their advertising and PR activities to expand their network. Let’s think about what they’ve done with the term, “intelligent design.”
[advance slide] They’ve taken creationism and “rebranded” it. They’ve repackaged creationism under the name “intelligent design,” and they’re selling it to the secular world as science. They have dropped the Godspeak, but they have also done something else that is very interesting. I mentioned earlier that some forms of ID are friendly to new-agey type religions or cults or whatever you want to call them.
Again, I am a non-scientist, but I am somewhat scientifically literate. I also mentioned earlier that even though philosophers continue to argue among themselves about what exactly science is and where its boundaries lie, there are some solid concepts to work with when it comes to defining what science is. I will introduce two, and no, falsifiability is not one of them. They are methodological naturalism and scientific materialism.
[advance slide] Methodological naturalism is the practice of acquiring knowledge by looking for natural causes and effects, and it is the foundation upon which scientific inquiry rests.
Science proceeds on the assumption that invoking supernatural causes are unnecessary or irrelevant to explain phenomena because all observable phenomena can be successfully approached from a naturalist perspective. In other words, methodological naturalism means that if you’re doing science, the rule of the game is that you can’t use the supernatural to explain the natural.
No ghosts allowed, not even holy ones. This is what makes the Discovery Institute’s rebranding of creationism interesting. They’ve welcomed into their fold, or mobilized into their network, actors who have taken up the claim that life was seeded by aliens as a fact. The universe is a big place and it is entirely possible that there is life elsewhere. Whether we were seeded by another life form might be a bit of a stretch, but it is still an empirical question. You can form a hypothesis about it without invoking a supernatural cause.
[advance slide] Even an atheist can believe in aliens. So they have not only dropped the Godspeak, they have expanded the unspoken concept of God to occupy the material realm. They have compromised the very essence of what makes God God to promote intelligent design.
[advance slide] ID proponents argue that naturalism isn’t broad enough in scope because it fails to accommodate evidence of intelligence suggested by patterns in nature, and it is biased against research that suggests evidence of a designer. Naturalism, therefore, limits the types of questions scientists can ask. And because naturalism is the dominant paradigm within the mainstream scientific community, the peer evaluation process is undemocratic. Why, it’s “viewpoint discrimination”! We need to be “sceptical” about evolution and “think critically” about how naturalism restricts “academic freedom”! “Teach the controversy”! These are terms you’re familiar with, I’m sure. Think about how the meanings of the terms “skeptic,” “critical thinking,” and “academic freedom” have changed in recent years.
I’ve oversimplified the argument, but I’m sure you get my point. When the human actors in the evolutionary network behave like they’re supposed to behave by enforcing the “no ghosts” rule, these are the sorts of arguments ID proponents toss out to attack science. They’re doing something, but whatever that is, isn’t science. And they want science to change its rules to accommodate whatever it is they’re doing. They attack science by attacking the philosophical principles guiding its methods. Which brings us to our second concept:
[advance slide] Materialism is the view that all that exists is composed of matter, and it too is at the heart of scientific inquiry.
From this view, there is no spiritual component to reality; even human cognition, such as religious experiences, can be understood as the product of the interaction of matter.
[advance slide] ID proponents will often make much of this term. They claim that materialism is a threat to morality. If all we are is matter devoid of spirituality (and worse, descendents of “monkeys”), what guides us to act as moral beings? And they capitalize on anti-science sentiments.
They frequently point to pernicious scientific theories such as eugenics, and despised political regimes such as Nazism, as inevitable consequences of the materialist worldview. Unfortunately, they do have a point about eugenics. The standard response to this tired old argument is to point out the many historical examples where atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, and the logical outcome of the argument is that both sides must concede that evil can emerge from both secular and religious contexts. Call it a tie.
[advance slide] As to the charge that Darwinism led to Nazism, Christopher Hitchens says, "Darwinism was derided in Germany," and calls the accusation “a filthy slander,” for in Mein Kampf, Hitler claimed he was doing God’s work.
[advance slide] And when the Pope recently delivered the Hollyroodhouse speech, connecting Nazism to atheism, Richard Dawkins was “incandescent with rage” and called it a “despicable outrage.” By his own account, Hitler was a Roman Catholic, and support for his campaign of anti-Semitism was to be found among the church’s highest ranking members.
[advance slide] The question of how we can act as moral beings without help from a supernatural advisor is problematic for ID proponents, so they blame materialism.
It has spawned “moral relativism” and “undermined personal responsibility!” And they accuse “materialists” of falsely promising to “create heaven on earth” using scientific knowledge to “engineer the perfect society.” But don’t worry. They’ve worked out a solution. Since materialism is to blame, they’re just going to do away with it altogether.
They’re going to “overthrow materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.” Let’s just make Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud disappear. All of these great thinkers have invigorated scholarship to such an enormous extent that it’s difficult to conceive of how one can receive a proper education without being exposed to them.
And the Discovery Institute has a plan too. Public relations professionals usually do have some sort of a strategy to frame an issue, and the Discovery Institute has the Wedge document, which is where I took the quotes on this slide from.
[advance slide] It was written in 1998 and leaked in 1999. It includes leveraging “design theory” to “reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.” I will not go into the specific details about the Wedge document, but I will draw your attention to some of their stated mandates as we proceed, because they have been remarkably successful in implementing their plan.
So we can see how the term “intelligent design” has been rebranded and deployed, and how the Discovery Institute has manufactured an issue. The issue is that evolutionary theory is a threat to morality. It undermines the belief that God created the material realm for the sole benefit of humans. What if there’s not a divine plan? What if we are here simply by chance? What if we are merely evolving animals, instead of righteous mortals progressing toward some state of divinity?
But according to the vast majority of the scientific community, the theory of evolution is on solid ground. And some say there is no conflict between faith and evolution anyway.
[advance slide] For example, the Catholic church claims to have no quarrel with evolution.
[advance slide] And the late Stephen Jay Gould championed the NOMA position: science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria. Science sticks to studying life, and religion occupies itself with the meaning of it. So the Discovery Institute has opened up the black box of evolution by problematizing it as a moral crisis. They have disrupted the translation of evolutionary theory through education, and therefore the expansion of the evolutionary network into the broader public, by manufacturing an issue where many would argue none exists.
Enrollment involves persuading actors to occupy their roles. How did the Discovery Institute accomplish this? Well, they already had the creationist market cornered – there already existed a network ripe for expansion, consisting of churches and legislators and school boards and so on – so I won’t get into that.
[advance slide] But then they started getting rid of all the actors who dare utter explicitly the “C” word, or made them clean up their language, like they did to the pandas. Then they started attempting to persuade actors in the scientific community to advance ID theory. But that didn’t really fly.
So they enrolled a few actors from the scientific community, and then formed alliances between them to take up the claims of intelligent design and enact them as facts. Some of the ones who were recruited willingly have academic affiliations and are published scientists, but their published work in the natural sciences does not support ID theory. Their strategy to avoid academic criticism includes challenging the peer-review process, as we saw earlier, and self-publishing. They have criticized others’ work in biology and other fields supported by the theory of evolution, but they have not offered an alternative theory that can be tested empirically.
[advance slide] Regardless of their academic merit, all these publications were brought into the network to persuade more actors to enact ID theory as fact. They’ve expanded the network further by leveraging media, demanding “equal time” to promote a theory that only a disproportionately low number of scientists support.
[advance slide] And they’ve arranged “creationist affairs”: organized PR events held on university campuses, but not sanctioned by them, just like the one shown in Expelled. They are paid for by religious groups and framed as debates. Some defenders of evolution have left these “debates” exasperated and feeling as though their participation was exploited to position ID as even worthy of addressing.
[advance slide] The movement’s on-campus presence lends an air of academic legitimacy to ID, and their rhetoric has shown to be persuasive to students as well as academics. In my visual is a document entitled “A Scientific Dissent from Darwin.” The first version was published in 2001 and contains the names of 100 academics. The document was updated in January, and it is twenty pages long, about 750 names. They have had a substantial impact.
[advance slide] For example, the National Science Foundation, an American federal research funding agency, was recently criticized for removing questions pertaining to evolution and the big bang from a survey on scientific literacy.
These are standard questions which help to determine where the US ranks globally. They defended their decision by arguing that the questions blurred the distinction between belief and knowledge. Political scientist George Bishop suggested that the metric is applicable to other societies but not the US because of religious tradition. What an odd thing to suggest. What does that even mean?
Challenging the decision, Joshua Rosenau of the National Centre for Science Education stated that, “discussing American science literacy without mentioning evolution is intellectual malpractice,” and that the move served to undermine the NCSE’s ongoing mission of keeping religion out of science classrooms.
[advance slide] And a few years ago, here in Canada, Brian Alters submitted a grant application to examine the negative effects of ID theory on Canadian pedagogy to one of our three major research funding bodies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, or SSHRC. It is not unusual for grant applications to be turned down, but what was unusual is the statement that accompanied it: “Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design Theory, was correct.”
This incident provoked several articles in American and Canadian publications, prompted position statements by the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and fueled a heated response from Canadian humanists, who claimed “the actions of SSHRC have sent a message to the world that Canada is a scientifically backward nation.” Alters himself questioned whether the same demands for justification would have been placed upon him had he been discussing the theory of gravity instead of evolution.
[advance slide] And in Alberta, where I’m from, Bill 44 just came into effect this September, which allows expanded authority for parents to pull their children from classes where sexuality, sexual orientation and religion will be discussed. Initially it was explicitly stated that this included instruction on evolution, but the government quickly backtracked by excluding science courses from inclusion under the legislation.
This issue is couched in language pertaining to “parent’s rights,” but of course what is really at stake here is the rights of children to receive an education that will help them to become informed, sexually responsible citizens who are socially and academically prepared to join the global community. What justification could parents possibly have for excluding their children from discussions about sexuality, sexual orientation and religion? I think we all know the answer to that question. Bill 44 panders to the religious. What’s more, it enshrines discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community. For those of us who value the secular orientation of our public education system, and while other provinces are working toward secularizing their public education systems by ceasing public funding for religious instruction, Bill 44 is clearly a step in the wrong direction.
[advance slide] These incidents suggest that the Discovery Institute has enjoyed substantial success enrolling actors into the ID network, or “cultivat[ing] and convinc[ing] influential leaders… [such as] scientists and academics, congressional staff, college and seminary presidents and faculty… [and] potential academic allies.” And don’t think that the movement is limited to North America. Intelligent design “theory” has successfully penetrated parts of Europe, Australia, and elsewhere.
Returning to our recruiting campaign, there are some who are enrolled into the network coercively. Their words are misquoted or taken out of context, and their meaning is twisted to advance the ID argument.
[advance slide] Among those whose words have been invoked in support of creationism or ID are Albert Einstein, Sir Karl Popper, Stephen Jay Gould, and Isaac Asimov. I recently joked with some of my colleagues that God is dead again, but this time it was Stephen Hawking who killed him.
[advance slide] Back in 1988, in A Brief History of Time, Hawking made the unfortunate mistake of speaking metaphorically, stating that to know the laws of nature is to know the mind of God. His new book has a provocative title: it is called The Grand Design. We might think of what he has said during its launch as a way of insulating himself from being mobilized into the ID network against his will; in other words, he has made it clear that he does not want his work referenced in support of ID theory. And he has also taken an unambiguous stance in support of methodological naturalism. He has stated that the laws of nature are sufficient to explain the spontaneous creation of the universe, and that “it is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
[advance slide] But when God dies, someone is sure to revive him. Days later, an editorial by Robert Sibley appeared in the Ottawa Citizen. The Higgs Boson particle, often referred to as the God particle, is an important theoretical construct pivotal to explaining the origins of the universe. It is interesting that Sibley invokes Hawking’s 1988 quote about knowing the mind of God to develop his point that “somehow we have life.”
We can guess where his loyalties lie: Sibley’s description of the universe as “tailor-made for human life” is a variation of the “fine-tuned universe” argument asserted by ID proponents. It will be interesting to see who else he has attempted to recruit into the ID network, when his book entitled, A Rumour of God, is launched this month.
[advance slide] I promised you that we would not need to discuss network stability, and that is because we will not see the successful expansion of the evolution network into the broader public in this presentation, nor is that likely to occur any time soon. As the spokesperson for ID, the Discovery Institute will continue to confront and resist evolution, and the debate between science and religion will continue to rage on. We have seen in this presentation how this debate plays out in the media.
[advance slide] All too often, we read some headline like the one that appeared in the Calgary Herald and elsewhere last month: “Calgary researcher part of a team questioning Darwin's theory.” Bad science reporting that suggests the entire theory of evolution is being challenged, when what is really happening is that it is becoming better understood, and more strongly supported by evidence. What Dr. Jeremy Fox actually stated was that their findings were “completely consistent with and probably reinforces Darwin's insights... exactly what Darwin himself would have expected." But that’s not how the story was framed, and this quote appeared at the bottom of the article, where studies indicate it is least likely to get read. It is in subtle ways like this that ID has managed to successfully penetrate the secular market and reinforce their brand.
[advance slide] In this analysis I envisioned the theory of evolution as black boxed by the scientific community, and the Discovery Institute as a spokesperson for intelligent design, actively disrupting the enrolment of actors into the network of evolution through education, enrolling actors into their network, even against their will, and attempting to establish Christian hegemony by defining reality from a creationist rather than scientific perspective.
[advance slide] And I looked through the eyes of a communication practitioner to examine how the Discovery Institute is using marketing strategies such as rebranding creationism as ID, and leveraging the mass media to expand its network, and to successfully deploy “the controversy.” If you have even a brief glance at their website, it is clear that intelligent design theory is mutating, and that the Discovery Institute has evolved a marketing plan that is adaptive to the secular environment.
[advance slide] They even claim to be a “secular think tank,”
[advance slide] Even while they profess a “belief in God-given reason.”
As I proceed with my research, my task will be to identify their strategies as they unfold.
I have stated several times that I am a non-scientist. I am not qualified to evaluate the science that supports the theory of evolution but that is not my aim here. You know him as P zee Myers but I call him P zed. That work is best left to people like him. I am scientifically literate enough to know when to shut up. But I am also scientifically literate enough to know nonsense when I see it, and media literate enough to be able to identify obvious marketing ploys.
[advance slide] And I have an appreciation of what is at stake if “a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions” replaced real science, and if “design theory” really did come to “permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.”
Defenders of evolution must continue their efforts to keep ID out of classrooms, and the legal community must continue to support a system of education that promotes scientific literacy. It is mandatory for those who wish to participate in the global scientific community, and it is becoming increasingly important for informed democratic participation. And gatherings like this help to shape popular perceptions about atheism. They highlight the many contributions atheists, agnostics, humanists, secularists, and freethinkers have made to science, and to our cultural, moral and political lives. But so often we are preaching to the choir.
[advance slide] My aim here is to broaden the discussion, to find ways to engage non-scientists, and to deploy a language that enhances scientific literacy by identifying the communication strategies being used to position intelligent design as a scientific theory. My aim is to reveal the real controversy, and to mobilize more actors into the network of actors who defend science and reason.
So if you weren’t already squirming when I said the words, “intelligent design,” I hope you are now. The real controversy is how an “issue” has been entirely manufactured to cause moral panic about the theory of evolution, and how the Discovery Institute is attempting to establish a social context where a more hegemonic agenda disguised as science will prevail.
[advance slide] Again, thank you so much for attending my presentation. Not many Canadians seem to take an interest in intelligent design, and I suspect this is because we live in a rather secular society. Our creation scientists haven’t felt the need use deceptive tactics to justify their position, and Canadians don’t seem to be persuaded by their claims, so we quite successfully ignore them.
But I hope I have demonstrated that there is something a little more insidious happening here, and I thank you for your interest in this topic.
If you have any questions or comments for me, I’d be happy to take them now. And I have a prize for the best question, courtesy of the Richard Dawkins Foundation.
[advance slide] And I am interested to hear your thoughts on the subject, so I have posted some questions for you; please feel welcome to share your thoughts.