Intelligent design movement

The intelligent design movement is a campaign in the US that advocates far-reaching social, academic and political change. Its name and content are derived from Intelligent Design , a form of neo-creationism . It aims to raise public awareness of this term, to have the teachings it advocate included in the school curriculum through political pressure, and to defend such teaching through legal action and to remove obstacles to it. The movement's overall goal is to "reverse the stifling superiority of the materialistic worldview". Their attacks are directed primarily against Darwin's theory of evolution . A science that is in harmony with Christian theistic ideas should take its place.

The movement emerged in 1990 after the founding of its center, the Christian-conservative think tank Discovery Institute . Most of the leading intelligent design representatives, particularly its programmatic advisor, Phillip E. Johnson, belong to the organization's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). Johnson is one of the movement's most prolific and prolific writers and the architect of the wedge strategy and Teach the Controversy campaign.

history

The lawyer and Born Again Christian Phillip Johnson is often cited as the founder of the intelligent design movement, who attacked the theory of evolution and methodological naturalism in his book Darwin on Trial, published in 1991 , and in their place intelligent design as the origin of the universe and the Life propagated. However, the later typical terminology and reasoning of the movement was already used in the book Of Pandas and People published by the neo-creationist Foundation for Thought and Ethics in 1989 , so that it is regarded as an actual fundamental publication. This book, touted as scientific by the editor, was published two years after the US Supreme Court decision in the Edwards v. Aguillard , who banned the teaching of creationism from public schools.

According to P. Johnson was a conference at Southern Methodist University in 1992, the first public appearance of the intern as a wedge Movement ( Wedge Engl. For wedge) indicated movement in which contacts to later key players, such as M. Behe and W Dembski , were knotted.

A scathing criticism of Johnson's book Darwin on Trial by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould and the unsuccessful attempt by Johnson to have his essay The Religion of the Blind Watchmaker published in Scientific American in response to Gould's criticism , published in 1993 in the journal Scientific American , led to try by supporters of Johnson to gain a base in the academic field through a signature campaign. Of the several thousand scientists from various research fields at universities in the United States who were contacted, 39 were willing to sign. Nine of these undersigned scientists, none of them with a significant scientific contribution in the field of evolutionary theory, later became Fellows of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC) (now the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) ), which is the organizational The nucleus (also called The Wedge ) of the intelligent design movement is.

The Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC) was established in 1996 within the Discovery Institute , a conservative think tank in Seattle that was founded in 1990. The CRSC is mainly financed by HF Ahmanson (Fieldstaed & Company), known for his support for right-wing political organizations, as well as the Stewardship Foundation and Maclellan Foundation , which focus on evangelical Christian missionary work. Directors of the CRSC were S. Meyer and JG West; P. Johnson became an advisor to the CRSC.

After the founding of the CRSC, the movement's activity increased significantly. A variety of publications have appeared (including M. Behes Darwin's Black Box in 1996 and W. Dembski's The Design Inference in 1998) and a variety of conferences have been organized. The attempt to gain a solid foothold in the academic field failed in October 2001 when the Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor University, installed by University Rector R. Sloan and run by W. Dembski, failed after just one year after protests by the faculty the neocreationist orientation was dissolved. In 2001 the founding of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) was announced, but it was not officially registered as a non-profit organization until 2003 . Although not anchored in the academic field, the ISCID is regarded as the successor organization to the Michael Polanyi Center and is intended to largely fulfill its functions. The director of ISCID is W. Dembski. ISCID has published the quarterly journal Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design since 2002 .

In addition, the neo-creationist movement tries to anchor intelligent design as equivalent to the theory of evolution in school lessons. As early as 1998 it became known that the CRSC was involved in the case of Roger DeHart , a teacher in Washington State who had been teaching his students for years with creationist teaching material from the book Of Pandas and People and material from the official biology books, which is essential for a correct understanding of the theory of evolution, left out. Since then there have been attempts on the part of the neocreationists in many other US states to anchor intelligent design as a school subject. With the exception of the US state of Kansas , these attempts have so far failed because of the elected school supervisory bodies or were legally suppressed by the courts.

Wedge Strategy

The overall official goal of the intelligent design movement was defined by Phillip Johnson and called "Wedge Strategy": A wedge (Engl. Wedge ) is to be driven between the empirical sciences and naturalism to methodological naturalism by as Johnson Theistic realism to replace denoted alternative; this postulates that the universe and its creatures were deliberately created by God. A special point of attack in the Wedge Strategy is Darwin's theory of evolution, since in Johnson's eyes it forms the weakest link between naturalism and empirical science. The Wedge Strategy is available to the public in detail in the so-called Wedge Document.

Wedge Document

origin

In addition to the official publications of the CRSC and the representatives of the intelligent design movement , the strategy paper of the CRSC, known as the Wedge Document , is particularly important for assessing the goals and strategies of the neo-creationist movement. This document appeared on the Internet on February 5, 1999 and describes the specific planning of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC) for the years 1999 to 2003, as well as long-term goals. As is known today, M. Duss, a part-time employee in a copy center in downtown Seattle , to whom the wedge document was declared as "TOP SECRET" and "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION", and his friend T. Rhodes were presented responsible for the publication.

authenticity

The authenticity of the Wedge Document was assumed to be assured outside the movement because of the many correspondences between text passages in the Wedge Document and text passages from other, official CRSC documents. The CRSC itself only admitted the authenticity in a statement in 2005.

meaning

In addition to the insight into the goals and strategies, the importance of the Wedge Document lies in the fact that it confirmed the existence of a concrete and detailed defined strategy of the intelligent design movement for the first time. In addition, it can serve as a benchmark for the success of the ID movement to date and is also the basis for criticism. In particular, the multiple references to a Creator God as the basis of Western civilization (for example in one of the two overarching goals listed: "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.") Is seen as clear evidence that the ID movement, contrary to its official statements, primarily pursues Christian-religious goals.

criticism

In the context of political discussions, the representatives of Intelligent Design are accused of spreading creationist ideas under the guise of science. Since there is a strict constitutional separation of religion and state in the United States, state-funded schools are not allowed to teach religion (i.e. not even Christian beliefs). In 1987, for example, a court in the US state of Louisiana ruled that creationism served religious, not scientific, goals. That is why the representatives of Intelligent Design avoid all creationist references and replace religious terms such as "creation" with more scientific-sounding terms such as "design", "signal recognition" etc. According to the Discovery Institute, Kansas was the fifth US state to try to doubt the theory of evolution in the classroom to integrate. In 2005 it was decided in a far-reaching ruling that intelligent design had creationist, i.e. religious roots, which is why the proclamation of its theses in school classes violated the American constitution. The organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State stated after this decision that it would be difficult for Kansas to maintain this dissenting opinion.

Based on the goals specified in the Wedge Document (such as the 20-year goal “To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.”) And other evidence (such as the connections between HF Ahmanson as one of the main financiers of the Center for Science and Culture for Christian Reconstructionism ) the charge was made that the real goal of the intelligent design movement was to abolish the separation of religion and state and to replace democracy with a theocratic state.

parody

The best-known parody of the intelligent design movement is the fun religion, the flying spaghetti monster . It was founded in 2005 by Bobby Henderson . His idea was to ask a school authority in Kansas to equate the idea of ​​the "unintelligent design" of his spaghetti monster, which is said to have created the drunk earth, with intelligent design. He wants to show that the claims of the intelligent design movement are unreal and unscientific. The fun religion quickly found a very large number of people who symbolically profess it through its spread on the Internet. It also gave rise to a number of similar imitations.

supporting documents

1. ↑ "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview" of a leaflet of the Discovery Institute from 1999 to its fundraising campaigns. Quoted in Handley P .: Evolution or design debate heats up . The Times of Oman (March 7, 2005).
2. ^ "A science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions". Quoted in Handley P .: Evolution or design debate heats up . The Times of Oman (March 7, 2005).
3. ↑ Nick Matzke: 1. Introduction: Of Pandas and People, the foundational work of the 'Intelligent Design' movement ( Memento of October 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Nick Matzke Introduction: Of Pandas and People, the foundational work of the 'Intelligent Design 'movement .
4. ↑ Stephen Jay Gould: Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge , Scientific American, 267 (1), July 1,992th
5. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Phillip Johnson, The Religion of the Blind Watchmaker 
6. ^ [1] Minutes of the Kansas Evolution Hearing by Roger DeHart in the Talk.Origin archive
7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The Wedge Document , scan of the original version, published in the Seattle Weekly  
8. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated February 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Discovery's Creation , article in Seattle Weekly  
9. ^ [2] Statement by the Discovery Institute on the Wedge Document
10. ^ Pennsylvania ruling against Intelligent Design could be important to the Kansas debate report at ArkCity.net. German translation at Forum Grenzfragen: Intelligent Design in Schools? Unconstitutional!  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ^ [3] Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial A documentation of the American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on the Dover Trial
12. ↑ B. Forrest, PRGross, Creationism's Trojan Horse, The Wedge of Intelligent Design , Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-515742-7 .