Intelligent Design: Find a Fertile Idea

Karl Giberson, director of Gordon College’s Forum on Faith and Science, and Vice-President of The Biologos Foundation,  suggests the best ways the intelligent design movement can gain academic credibility.

Leaders of the intelligent design (ID) movement—William Dembski, Stephen C. Meyer, Michael Behe, Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells—write mainly for popular audiences and have a negligible presence—as ID theorists—in scientific literature.

To get credibility in the academy, these theorists need to engage the academy by publishing in its journals and attending its meetings. But first they need a fertile idea—one that generates new scientific knowledge.

Two decades ago, Phillip Johnson launched the ID movement with Darwin on Trial. He galvanized the search for a study of biology without evolution. Ambitious agendas were developed. Promises were made in those early days that ID would produce new scientific knowledge.

It hasn’t. ID’s ideas are no better developed now than they were in the 1990s.

For the complete article in Christianity Today go here.