If intelligent design seems an increasingly reasonable response to the findings of science, why not consider the option?

Eighty years ago this summer in the small hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, the cross-fertilization of a publicity stunt and a criminal trial produced a rather odd-looking species: the legendary Scopes “Monkey” Trial.  Sponsored by the fledgling ACLU as a test-case of a newly-passed anti-evolution statute (the Butler Act), the civic proceedings of Tennessee vs. Scopes provided the forum for a public debate on the merits of evolution in American secondary education.  

While the trial was a non-starter in terms of jurisprudence — Scopes was found guilty and the Butler Act upheld — the dramatic examination of the populist orator William Jennings Bryan by the renowned trial lawyer and agnostic Clarence Darrow (of the Leopold and Loeb fame) would become the stuff of American folklore, à la the Broadway play Inherit the Wind.  Written in the wake of McCarthyism, the 1955 staging of the story was intended as a parable on the dangers of conservative dogmatism (read religious fundamentalism) and hysteria.  But in contrast to the myth, the historical record of the trial shows Bryan and Darrow both treated as celebrities, in a carnival-like atmosphere.  There was no witch-hunt in Dayton.

According to the playwright’s tale, the fundamentalist-creationists (as represented by Bryan) were shown to be way outside of the American mainstream with their literal modes of Biblical interpretation and their creationist models for the science classroom.  Then, when the Stanley Kramer film adaptation was released in 1960, the star-power of the protagonists included Spencer Tracey (as Clarence Darrow) and Gene Kelly (playing the pro-evolution journalist, a.k.a., H.L. Mencken).  With such Hollywood legends at work, it was not difficult to arouse audience sympathies for the movie’s thesis: fundamentalism and its anti-evolutionist agenda were destined for extinction, along with every other superstitious political belief.  Were you to ask the man on the street what he knows of this pivotal moment in American history, chances are you would get something like the Spencer Tracey version of events.  For such is the power of myth.

But, take a look at today’s headlines, and you will read of Scopes redux across the country.  Eighty years after the Dayton verdict, we are told that a more tactically-savvy group of creationists — known as the Intelligent Design (ID) movement — are sponsoring “monkey trials” or public hearings in more than 20 states nationwide, generating national attention from Pennsylvania to Kansas, all in an effort to promote anti-evolutionist interpretations of the origins of life.  From “Darwinism Goes On Trial” (New York Times, May 6, 2005) to “Intelligent Denials” (American Prospect, February 22, 2005), the titles seem to suggest that the spirit of William Jennings Bryan has returned to haunt the scientific establishment and the mainstream press, like some eerie ghost-tale. 

According to such august bodies as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the proponents of ID are aggressively engaged in a public debate over state standards for science education because they wish to introduce 19th century natural theology in today’s science classroom: a sort of covert 21st century Butler Act.  Clearly, the public relations campaign has reached the boiling point when the eminent science publication Nature uses the following rhetoric:

The political goals associated with intelligent design lead many scientists to reject it outright as little more than creationism in a cheap tuxedo.

This would be the establishment’s effort at a ‘dressing-down’ of ID.

But, let’s separate the facts from the story-telling in order to understand ID.  To begin, Bryan was a professional politician and orator with an amateur interest in the Bible and science; the members of ID are devoted professionals of science, philosophy, and law who have begun to question the limits and the viability of the Darwinian model as a secular creed.

Truth be told, the hard sciences have already raised their own concerns about Darwinian randomness, albeit in hushed voices.  From cosmology’s anthropic principle (where the universe is “intelligent,” to borrow an adjective from the astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle) to molecular biology’s interpretation of DNA (the “blueprint of life”) to paleontology’s fossil record (with its Cambrian “explosion” of animal life), Darwinian evolution and its natural causes of pure chance are plagued by a number of scientific problems that require an infinitely elastic version of natural selection — a sort of “Darwin of the gaps” — an irony that should not be lost on ID proponents, who have often been accused of introducing design as a “God of the gaps,” or worse, attempting to establish a theocracy (see Mark Terry’s “One Nation, Under the Designer,” Phi Delta Kappan, December 2004).

But contrary to the theocratic-fundamentalist myth, ID advocates are merely seeking to limit an overtly materialistic philosophy that has, since the middle of the 20th century, taken on the aura of dogma in the American scientific community.  They are requesting a fair and honest hearing of the evidence for and against natural selection, with a clear presentation of the presupposition and the definitions that go into the Darwinian model.

Certainly, Charles Darwin understood what was at stake with his definition of natural selection: an explanation of apparent design without reference to a Designer.  Since its inception (1859), Darwin’s theory has gone through numerous revisions — e.g., the neo-Darwinism of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins — to meet the demands of the ever-expanding scientific domain.  Such permutations suggest that the theory and its chief metaphor have taken on a life of their own: a stand-in for the Designer of an earlier era.  Natural selection has obtained near-creedal status by sheer weight of repetition — what we might call deification by reification.  And, perhaps Darwin knew as much, when he pacified his critics in the fourth chapter of the The Origin of the Species.

It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity… [Yet] every one knows what is meant by such metaphorical expressions… With a little familiarity such superficial objections will be forgotten.

Today we are more than a little familiar.  But, hopefully such fundamental objections will not be forgotten, as the metaphor of natural selection is more closely scrutinized.

In agreement with the mainstream populous, ID is promoting a theory that interprets a seemingly meaningful universe on its own terms: apparent design.  Far from being a radical notion, ID is intuitive.  So, why the resistance?  Could there be a cherished myth or metaphor behind the rhetoric of rejection? 

One is reminded of Hans Christian Anderson’s fable in which a most regal sovereign was duped by two charlatans who offered to make him fine new clothes visible only to the clever.  But of course, there were no clothes.  Everyone including the Emperor wanted to be thought clever, so they continued to pretend that they could see the new clothes.  Finally, a little child broke with the fantasy, forcing everyone to admit the Emperor’s nakedness.

If intelligent design seems an increasingly reasonable response to the findings of science, why not consider the option?  Does everyone fear being thought a fool?  Perhaps the emperor has been told.  Maybe he should consider trading in his new clothes for a cheap tuxedo.