At a broad level, a Creationist is someone who believes in a god whois absolute creator of heaven and earth, out of nothing, by an act offree will. Such a deity is generally thought to be“transcendent” meaning beyond human experience, andconstantly involved (‘immanent’) in the creation, ready tointervene as necessary, and without whose constant concern thecreation would cease or disappear. Christians, Jews, and Muslims areall Creationists in this sense. Generally they are known as‘theists,’ distinguishing them from ‘deists,’that is people who believe that there is a designer who might or mightnot have created the material on which he (or she or it) is workingand who does not interfere once the designing act is finishing. Thefocus of this discussion is on a narrower sense of Creationism, thesense that one usually finds in popular writings (especially inAmerica today, but expanding world-wide rapidly). Here, Creationismmeans the taking of the Bible, particularly the early chapters ofGenesis, as literally true guides to the history of the universe andto the history of life, including us humans, down here on earth(Numbers 1992).

Creationism in this more restricted sense entails a number of beliefs.These include, first, that a short time has elapsed since thebeginning of everything. ‘Young Earth Creationists’ thinkthat Archbishop Ussher’s seventeenth-century calculation ofabout 6000 years is a good estimate. Second, that there are six daysof creation – there is debate on the meaning of‘day’ in this context, with some insisting on a literaltwenty-four hours, and others more flexible. Third, that there was amiraculous creation of all life includingHomo sapiens— with scope for debate about whether Adam and Eve came togetheror if Eve came afterwards to keep Adam company. Fourth, that there wasa world-wide flood some time after the initial creation, through whichonly a limited number of humans and animals survived. Fifth, thatthere were other events such as the Tower of Babel and the turning ofLot’s wife into a pillar of salt. Creationists (in this narrowsense) have variously been known as Fundamentalists or biblicalliteralists, and sometimes – especially when they are pushingthe scientific grounds for their beliefs – as ScientificCreationists. Today’s Creationists are often marked byenthusiasm for something that is known as Intelligent Design. Becausethe relationship between Creationism in the sense of literalism andIntelligent Design is somewhat complex, examination of thisrelationship will be left until later and, until stated otherwise, thefollowing discussion focusses on literalists. (Because‘literalist’ is the common term, we continue to use it.More accurately, such people are better known as‘inerrantists,’ implying that the stress is less on theactual words and more on the interpretation, especially given theextent to which they interpret the Bible, especially when it comes toprophecies.)

With significant provisos to be noted below, Creationists are stronglyopposed to a world created by evolution, particularly to a world asdescribed by Charles Darwin in hisOrigin of Species.Creationists (certainly traditional Creationists) oppose the fact(pattern) of evolution, namely that all organisms living and dead arethe end products of a natural process of development from a few forms,perhaps ultimately from inorganic materials (‘commondescent’). Often this is known as ‘macroevolution’as opposed to ‘microevolution,’ meaning apes to humansrather than merely one species of finch to another. Creationists alsooppose claims about the total adequacy of the Darwinian version of thetheory of evolution, namely that population pressures lead to astruggle for existence; that organisms differ in random ways broughton by errors in the material of heredity (‘mutations’ inthe ‘genes’); that the struggle and variation leads to anatural form of selection, with some surviving and reproducing andothers failing; and that the end consequence of all of this isevolution, in the direction of well-adapted organisms.

• 1. History of Creationism
• 2. Creation Science
• 3. Understanding Creationism in its Cultural Context
• 4. Arkansas
• 5. The Naturalism Debate
• 6. Can an Evolutionist Be a Christian?
• 7. Intelligent Design
• 8. Is Complexity Irreducible?
• 9. The Explanatory Filter
• 10. Mutually Exclusive?
• 11. Intelligent Design and Traditional Creationism
• 12. Recent Developments
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. History of Creationism

Creationists present themselves as the true bearers and present-dayrepresentatives of authentic, traditional Christianity, buthistorically speaking this is simply not true (Ruse 1988 (ed.), 2005;Numbers 1992; McMullin 1985). The Bible has a major place in the lifeof any Christian, but it is not the case that the Bible takenliterally has always had a major place in the lives or theology ofChristians. For most, indeed, it has not (Turner 2002). Although, oneshould remember that most literalists are better known asinerrantists, because they often differ on the meaning of a literalreading! Tradition, the teachings and authority of the church, hasalways had main status for Catholics, and natural religion –approaching God through reason and argument – has long had anhonored place for both Catholics and Protestants. Catholics,especially dating back to Saint Augustine around 400 AD, and even toearlier thinkers like Origen, have always recognized that at times theBible needs to be taken metaphorically or allegorically. Augustine wasparticularly sensitive to this need, because for many years as a youngman he was a Manichean and hence denied the authenticity and relevanceof the Old Testament for salvation. When he became a Christian he knewfull well the problems of Genesis and hence was eager to help hisfellow believers from getting ensnared in the traps of literalism.

It was not until the Protestant Reformation that the Bible started totake on its unique central position, as the great Reformers –especially Luther and Calvin – stressed the need to go byscripture alone and not by what they took to be the overly richtraditions of the Catholic Church. But even they were doubtful abouttotally literalistic readings. For Luther, justification by faith wasthe keystone of his theology, and yet the Epistle of Saint James seemsto put greater stress on the need for good works. He referred to thegospel as ‘right strawy stuff.’ (Wengert 2013). Calvinlikewise spoke of the need for God to accommodate His writings to theuntutored public – especially the ancient Jews – and henceof the dangers of taking the Bible too literally in an uncriticalsense. The radical branch of the Reformation under Zwingli always putprimacy on God’s speaking directly to us through the heart, and tothis day one finds modern-day representatives like the Quakersuncomfortable with too-biblically centered an approach to religion.

It was after the religious revivals of the eighteenth and earlynineteenth century in Britain and America – revivals that led tosuch sects as the Methodists – that a more full-bloodedliteralism became a major part of the religious scene. In Americaparticularly literalism took hold, and especially after the Civil War,it took root in the evangelical sects – especially Baptists– of the South (Numbers 1998; Noll 2002). It became part of thedefining culture of the South, having (as we shall see below) as mucha role in opposing ideas and influences of the leaders and policymakers of the North as anything rooted in deeply thought-throughtheology. Note the important qualification, ‘leaders and policymakers’ of the North. Many – especially working andlower-middle-class people – living in the large cities of theNorth felt deeply threatened by the moves to industrialism, theweakening of traditional beliefs, and the large influx of immigrantsfrom Europe. They provided very fertile material for the literalistpreachers. (See the extended discussions of these happenings in Ruse2013.) Thanks to a number of factors, Creationism started to growdramatically in the early part of the twentieth century. First, therewere the first systematic attempts to work out a position that wouldtake account of modern science as well as just a literal reading ofGenesis. Particularly important in this respect were the Seventh-dayAdventists, especially the Canadian-born George McCready Price, whohad theological reasons for wanting literalism, not the least beingthe belief that the Seventh Day – the day of rest – isliterally twenty-four hours in length. Also important for theAdventists and for fellow travelers, that is people who think thatArmageddon is on its way, is the balancing and complementary earlyphenomenon of a world-wide flood. (This, as we shall see, was tobecome a major theme in twentieth-century Cold War times.) Second,there was the released energy of evangelicals (referring genericallyto Protestants whose faith was tied to the Bible, taken ratherliterally) as they succeeded in their attempts to prohibit liquor inthe United States. Flushed from one victory, they looked for otherfields to conquer. Third there was the spread of public education, andmore children being exposed to evolutionary ideas, bringing on aCreationist reaction. Fourth, there were new evangelical currentsafloat, especially the tracts theFundamentals – a series ofevangelical publications, conceived in 1909 by California businessmanLyman Stewart, the founder of Union Oil and a devout Presbyterian –that gave the literalist movement its name. And fifth, there was theidentification of evolution – Darwinism particularly –with the militaristic aspects of Social Darwinism, especially theSocial Darwinism supposed embraced by the Germans in the First WorldWar (Larson 1997; Ruse 2018a).

This battle between evolutionists and ‘Fundamentalists’came to a head in the mid 1920s in Dayton Tennessee, when a youngschool teacher John Thomas Scopes was prosecuted for teachingevolution in class, in defiance of a state law prohibiting suchteaching. Prosecuted by three-times presidential candidate WilliamJennings Bryan and defended by noted agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow,the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ caught the attention of theworld, especially thanks to the inflammatory reporting ofBaltimore Sun journalist H. L. Mencken. Matters descended tothe farcical when, denied the opportunity to introduce his own sciencewitnesses, Darrow put on the stand the prosecutor Bryan. In the end,Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. This conviction was overturnedon a technicality on appeal, but there were no more prosecutions, eventhough the Tennessee law remained on the books for another fortyyears. In the 1950s, the Scopes trial became the basis of a famousplay and then movie,Inherit the Wind. This portrays the Bryanfigure as a bigot, wedded to a crude picture of life’s past. In fact,Bryan in respects was an odd figure to be defending the Tennessee law.He thought that the days of Creation are long periods of time, and hehad little sympathy for eschatological speculations about Armageddonand so forth. It is quite possible that, humans apart, he acceptedsome form of evolution. His objections to Darwinism were more socialthan theological. He hated what he thought were the militaristicimplications that many drew from the struggle for existence at thecenter of Darwin’s thinking. The First World War, with many justifyingviolence in the name of evolutionary biology, confirmed hissuspicions. (The Pulitzer Prize winning,Summer of the Gods,Larson 1997, is definitive on the Scopes trial. It is generally agreedthatInherit the Wind is using history as a vehicle toexplore and condemn McCarthy-like attacks on uncomfortably new ordissenting-type figures in American society.)

2. Creation Science

After the Scopes Trial, general agreement is that the Creationismmovement had peaked and declined quite dramatically and quickly. Yet,it (and related anti-evolution activity) did have its lasting effects.Text-book manufacturers increasingly took evolution – Darwinismespecially – out of their books, so that schoolchildren got lessand less exposure to the ideas anyway. Whatever battles theevolutionists may have thought they had won in the court of popularopinion, in the trenches of the classroom they were losing the warbadly. Things started to move again in the late 1950s. It was thenthat, thanks to Sputnik, the Russians so effectively demonstratedtheir superiority in rocketry (with its implications for the arms raceof the Cold War), and America realized with a shudder how ineffectivewas its science training of its young. Characteristically, the countrydid something immediate and effective about this, namely pouring moneyinto the production of new science texts. In this way, with classadoption, the Federal Government could have a strong impact and yetget around the problem that education tends to be under the tightcontrol of individual states. The new biology texts gave full scope toevolution – to Darwinism – and with this the Creationismcontroversy again flared right up. Children were learning thesedreadful doctrines in schools, and something had to be done (Ruse (ed.)1988; Gilkey 1985).

Fortunately for the literalist, help was at hand. A biblical scholar,John C. Whitcomb, and a hydraulic engineer, Henry M. Morris, combinedto write what was to be the new Bible of the movement,GenesisFlood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications(1961). Following in the tradition of earlier writers,especially those from Seventh-day Adventism, they argued that everybit of the Biblical story of creation given in the early chapters ofGenesis is supported fully by the best of modern science. Six days oftwenty-four hours, organisms arriving miraculously, humans last, andsometime thereafter a massive world-wide flood that wiped mostorganisms off the face of the earth – or rather, dumped theircarcasses in the mud as the waters receded. At the same time, Whitcomband Morris argued that the case for evolution fails dismally. Theyintroduced (or revived) a number of arguments that have becomestandard parts of the Creationist repertoire against evolution. Let uslook at a number of these arguments, together with thecounter-arguments that evolutionists make in response.

First, the Creationists argue that at best evolution is only a theoryand not a fact, and that theories should never be taken as gospel (ifone might be permitted a metaphor). They claim that the very languageof evolutionists themselves show that their ideas are on shakygrounds. To which charge evolutionists respond that this is to confusetwo senses of the word ‘theory.’ Sometimes we use it tomean a body of scientific laws, as in ‘Einstein’s theory ofrelativity.’ Sometimes we use it to mean an ‘iffyhypothesis,’ as in ‘I have a theory about Kennedy’sassassination.’ These are two very different senses. There isnothing iffy about the Copernican heliocentric theory. It is true. Itis a fact. Evolutionists argue that the same is the case withevolution. When talking about the theory of evolution, one is talkingabout a body of laws. In particular, if one is following the ideas ofCharles Darwin, one is arguing that population pressures lead to astruggle for existence, this then entails a natural selection offavored forms, and evolution through shared descent is the end result.This is a body of general statements about life, since the 1930s givenin a formal version using mathematics with deductive inferencesbetween steps. In other words, we have a body of laws, and hence atheory in the first sense just given. There is no implication herethat the theory is iffy, that is in the second sense just given. Weare not necessarily talking about something inherently unreliable. Ofcourse, there are going to be additions and revisions, for instancethe possibility of much greater hybridization than someone like Darwinrealized, but that is another matter (Quammen 2018).

Second, Creationists like Whitcomb and Morris claim that the centralmechanism of modern evolutionary thought, Darwin’s natural selection,is bogus. They argue that it is not a genuine claim about the realworld but merely a truism, what philosophers call a tautology –something true by the meaning of the words like ‘bachelors areunmarried.’ In the case of natural selection, the Creationistspoint out that an alternative name for the mechanism is ‘thesurvival of the fittest.’ But, they ask, who are the fittest?They reply: Those that survive! Hence, natural selection reduces tothe tautology that those that survive are those that survive. Not areal claim of science at all. To which evolutionists respond that thisis a sleight of hand, showing ignorance of what is genuinely at stake.Natural selection is truly real, for it talks about some organismsactually surviving and reproducing in life’s struggles and othersfailing to do so. Some of our would-be ancestors lived and had babiesand others did not. There was a differential reproduction. This iscertainly not a mere truism. It could be that everyone had the samenumber of children. It could also be that there is no differenceoverall between the successful and the unsuccessful. This too isdenied by natural selection. To say that something is the fitter orfittest is to say that it has certain characteristics (what biologistscall adaptations) that other organisms do not have, and that onaverage one expects the fitter to succeed. But there is no guaranteethat this must be so or that it will always happen. An earthquakecould wipe out everyone, fit and unfit.

Before discussing the third argument Creationists level againstevolution, it is worth pausing over this second one. Most if not allprofessional evolutionists argue that sometimes natural selection isnot a significant causal factor. In this sense, it is false thatselection is something that by definition is and always is the reasonfor lasting change. The fittest do not always win. It cannot be atautology. In the 1930s, the American population geneticist SewallWright devised his hypothesis of “genetic drift,” arguingthat sometimes mere chance can lead to effects overriding the forcesof selection (Wright 1931, 1932). Although, at first, this wasembraced enthusiastically (Dobzhansky 1937), it soon became clear thatat the gross physical (phenotypic) level it is at most minor (Coyne,Barton, and Turelli 1997). However at the level of the gene(genotype), it is still thought very important. Indeed, it is apowerful tool in discovering the exact dates of key evolutionaryevents, especially those involving speciation (Ayala 2009). Moreover,as we shall see in a moment, somewhat paradoxically, as Creationismhas evolved (!), increasingly the virtues of selection working at themicroevolutionary level have become apparent. Thus can one explain thediversity of life on earth – it evolved since leaving the Ark,which contained only generic kinds. For all its supposed faults, thereis a better discussion of natural selection at the Creationist museumin Kentucky than in the Field Museum in Chicago, 300 miles north. Thebar on macroevolution remains absolute.

Third, Creationists point out that modern evolutionary theory assertsthat the raw building blocks of evolution, the genetic mutations, arerandom. But this means that there are minimal chances of evolutionproducing something that works as well and efficiently as an organism,with all of the functioning parts in place. A monkey typing lettersdoes so randomly. It could never in a million years (in a billion,billion, billion… years) type the works of Shakespeare. TheCreationists say that same is true of evolution and organisms, giventhe randomness of mutation. To which evolutionists reply that this mayall be well and true of the monkey, but in the case of evolutionthings are rather different. If a mutation works, then it is kept andthen built upon, until the next good mutation comes along. Thisshrinks considerably the odds of evolution producing organisms, eventhough the appearance of mutation is random. Suppose you take just onephrase from Shakespeare. ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend meyour ears.’ If you had to get every letter right straight off,you would be into a huge time-span. Twenty-six (the number of letters,more if you include capitals and gaps and punctuation) to the power ofthe number of spaces. But if you are allowed to keep the‘F’ as soon as you get it, and then go on to try for a‘r’, you are no longer going back to square one each timeand suddenly the task becomes much more manageable. (Dawkins 1986 hasa good discussion of these issues.) Incidentally, add evolutionists,one must take care in speaking of mutation as ‘random.’There is no implication that mutation is uncaused or something elserather peculiar. Rather is meant that mutations do not occur accordingto need. Suppose a new disease appears. Evolutionary theory does notguarantee that a new, life-protecting mutation will occur toorder.

Fourth in the litany of Creationist complaints, there is a perennialfavourite based on paleontology. Creationists agree that the fossilrecord is sequential, fish to primates moving upwards, but argue thatthis is the result of the sorting effect of the Flood. Primates areabove dinosaurs, for example, because primates are more agile andmoved further up the mountain before being caught and drowning. Theyalso argue, however, that the fossil record ought to be continuous ifevolution occurred, but in real life there are many gaps betweendifferent form – jumps from one kind of organism to another.Apes to humans would be a case in point. This spells Creation notevolution. To which the response comes that on the one hand oneexpects such gaps. Fossilization is an uncommon occurrence –most dead bodies get eaten straight away or just rot – and thewonder is that we have what we do have. On the other hand argueevolutionists, the record is not that gappy. There are lots of goodsequences – lines of fossils with little difference betweenadjacent forms, from the amphibians to the mammals for example, or (inmore detail) the evolution of the horse from Eohippus on five toes tothe modern horse on one toe. Moreover, in refutation of Creationism,we do not find fossils out of order as you might expect after a flood.For all that Creationists sometimes claim otherwise, humans are neverfound down with the dinosaurs. Those brutes of old expired long beforewe appeared on the scene and the fossil record confirms this.

Fifth, Creationists argue that physics disproves evolution. The secondlaw of thermodynamics claims that things always run down –entropy increases, to use the technical language. Energy gets used andconverted eventually into heat, and cannot be of further service. Butorganisms clearly keep going and seem to defy the law. This would beimpossible simply given evolution. The second law rules out the blindevolution (meaning change without direct divine guidance) of organismsfrom the initial simple blobs up to the complex higher organisms likehumans. There must therefore have been a non-natural, miraculousintervention to produce functioning life. To which argument theresponse of evolutionists is that the second law does indeed say thatthings are running down, but it does not deny that isolated pockets ofthe universe might reverse the trend for a short while by using energyfrom elsewhere. And this is what happens on planet Earth. We use theenergy from the sun to keep evolving for a while. Eventually the sunwill go out and life will become extinct. The second law will wineventually, but not just yet.

Sixth, and let us make this the final Creationist objection, it issaid that humans simply cannot be explained by blind law (that is,unguided law), especially not by blind evolutionary laws. They musthave been created. To which the response is that it is mere arbitrarysupposition to believe that humans are that exceptional. In fact,today the fossil record for humans is strong – we evolved overthe past four million years from small creatures of half our height,who had small brains and who walked upright but not as well as we.There is lots of fossil proof of these beings (known asAustralopithecus afarensis). Recently, there are otherpertinent discoveries, showing that (as one would expect) there is notonly evolution towards modern humans, but branching and sidelines, forinstance of the so-called “hobbit,”Homofloresiensis (Falk 2012). Perhaps it is true that we humans arespecial, in that (as Christians claim) we uniquely have immortalsouls, but this is a religious claim. It is not a claim of science,and hence evolution should not be faulted for not explaining souls.There is of course a lot more to be found out about human evolution,but this is the nature of science. No branch of science has all of theanswers. The real question is whether the branch of science keeps theanswers coming in, and evolutionists claim that this is certainly trueof their branch of science.

3. Understanding Creationism in its Cultural Context

Before moving on historically, it is worthwhile to stop for a momentand consider aspects of Creationism, in what one might term thecultural context. First, as a populist movement, driven as much bysocial factors – a sense of alienation from the modern world— one would expect to find that cultural changes in societywould be reflected in Creationist beliefs. This is indeed so. Take,above all, the question of racial issues and relationships. In themiddle of the nineteenth century in the South, biblical literalism wasvery popular because it was thought to justify slavery (Noll 2002).Even though one can read the Christian message as being stronglyagainst slavery — the Sermon on the Mount hardly recommendsmaking people into the property of others – the Bible elsewhereseems to endorse slavery. Remember, when the escaped slave came toSaint Paul, the apostle told him to return to his master and to obeyhim. Remnants of this kind of thinking persisted in Creationistcircles well into the twentieth century. Price, for instance, wasquite convinced that blacks are degenerate whites. By the time ofGenesis Flood, however, the civil rights movement was in fullflower, and Whitcomb and Morris trod very carefully. They explained indetail that the Bible gives no justification for treating blacks asinferior. The story of the son and grandson of Noah being banished toa dark-skinned future was not part of their reading of the HolyScriptures. Literalism may be the unvarnished word of God, butliteralism is as open to interpretation as scholarly readings of Platoor Aristotle. That is why many refer to Creationists as“inerrantists” rather than “literalists.”

Second, as noted above, both for internal and external reasons,Creationists realized that they needed to tread carefully in outrightopposition to evolution of all kinds. Could it really be that Noah’sArk carried all of the animals that we find on earth today? It wouldbe much easier if the Ark carried only the basic “kinds”of Creation, and then after the Flood the animals dispersed anddiversified. We find in fact then that although Creationists were (andare) adamantly opposed to unified common descent and to the idea ofnatural change being adequate for all the forms we see today, fromearly on they were accepting huge amounts of what can only truly becalled evolution! This said, Creationists were convinced that thischange occurs much more rapidly than most conventional evolutionistswould allow. Although it took some time to formulate, gradually we seeemerging the strategy of (what we have seen as) distinguishing betweenwhat is called “microevolution” and“macroevolution.” Supposedly, microevolution is the sortof thing that brought diversification to Darwin’s finches, and manyCreationists – notwithstanding the fact that it is supposedly atautology – are even prepared to put this down to naturalselection. Macroevolution is what makes reptiles reptiles, and mammalsmammals. This cannot be a natural process but required miracles duringthe days of Creation. Although he was a lifelong opponent ofCreationism (see below), forever committed to common descent, andthought that all changes must be natural, Creationists seized withglee on paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould’s claims that microevolutionmust be selection-fueled and macroevolution might require other causalforces (Gould 1980).

Third, and perhaps most significant of all, never think thatCreationism is purely an epistemological matter – a matter offacts and their understanding. Moral claims have always beenabsolutely fundamental. Nearly all Creationists (in the Christiancamp) are what is known theologically as premillennialists, believingthat Jesus will come soon and reign over the world before the LastJudgement. They are opposed to postmillennialists who think that Jesuswill come later, and amillennialists who are inclined to think thatperhaps we are already living in a Jesus-dominated era.Postmillennialists put a premium on our getting things ready for Jesus– hence, we should engage in social action and the like.Premillennialists think there is nothing we ourselves can do to betterthe world, so we had best get ourselves and others in a state readyfor Jesus. This means individual behavior and conversion of others.For premillennialists therefore, and this includes almost allCreationists, the great moral drives are to things like familysanctity (which today encompasses anti-abortion), sexual orthodoxy(especially anti-homosexuality), biblically sanctioned punishments(very pro-capital punishment), strong support for Israel (because ofclaims in Revelation about the Jews returning to Israel before EndTimes), and so forth. It is absolutely vital to see how this moralagenda is an integral part of American Creationism, as much as Floodsand Arks. (Ruse 2005 discusses these matters in much detail.)

4. Arkansas

Genesis Flood enjoyed massive popularity among the faithful,and led to a thriving Creation Science Movement, where Morrisparticularly and his coworkers and believers – notably Duane T.Gish, author ofEvolution: The Fossils Say No! – pushedthe literalist line. Particularly effective was their challenging ofevolutionists to debate, where they would employ every rhetoricaltrick in the book, reducing the scientists to fury and impotence, withbold statements (provocatively made most often by Gish) about thesupposed nature of the universe (Gilkey 1985; Ruse (ed.) 1988). This allculminated eventually in a court case in Arkansas. By the end of the1970s, Creationists were passing around draft bills, intended forstate legislatures, that would allow – insist on – theteaching of Creationism in state-supported public schools. In thebiology classes of such schools, that is. By this time it was realizedthat, thanks to Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment to theConstitution (that which prohibits the establishment of statereligion), it was not possible to exclude the teaching of evolutionfrom such schools. The trick was to get Creationism – somethingthatprima facie rides straight through the separation ofchurch and state – into such schools. The idea of CreationScience is to do this. The claim is that, although the scienceparallels Genesis, as a matter of scientific fact, it stands alone asgood science. Hence, these draft bills proposed what was called:‘Balanced treatment.’ If one were to teach the‘evolution model,’ then one had also to teach the‘Creation Science model.’ Sauce for the evolutionist gooseis also sauce for the Creationist gander.

In 1981, these drafts found a taker in Arkansas, where such a bill waspassed and signed into law – as it happens, by a legislature andgovernor that thought little of what they were doing until theconsequences were drawn to their attention. (William Clinton wasgovernor from 1978 to 1980, and again from 1982 to his winning of thepresidency, in 1992. The law was passed during the interregnum.) Atonce the American Civil Liberties Union sprang into action, bringingsuit on grounds of the law’s unconstitutionality. The theologianLangdon Gilkey, the geneticist Francisco Ayala, the paleontologistStephen Jay Gould, and as the philosophical representative MichaelRuse appeared as expert witnesses, arguing that Creationism has noplace in state supported biology classes. The state’s position was notexactly helped when one of its witnesses (Norman Geisler, atheologian) admitted under cross-examination to his belief in UFOs asa satanic manifestation. Hardly surprisingly, evolution won. The judgeruled firmly that Creation Science is not science, it is religion, andas such has no place in public classrooms. The judge (William Overton)ruled that the ‘essential characteristics’ of what makessomething scientific are:

1. It is guided by natural law;
2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;
3. It is testable against the empirical world;
4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the finalword; and
5. It is falsifiable.

In the judge’s opinion, Creation Science fails on all counts, and thatapparently was an end to matters. In 1987 this whole matter wasdecided decisively in the same way, by the Supreme Court, in a similarcase involving Louisiana. (See Ruse (ed.) 1988, for an editedcollection that reproduces many of the pertinent documents, includingstate bills, as well as witness testimony and the judge’sruling.)

Of course, in real life nothing is ever that simple, and Arkansas wascertainly not the end of matters. One of the key issues in the trialwas less theological or scientific, but philosophical. (Paradoxically,the ACLU had significant doubts about using a philosophical witness andonly decided at the last minute to bring Michael Ruse to the stand. Asit happens, as the judge’s ruling shows, the philosophical testimonyproved crucial.) Look again at the fifth of the judge’s criteria forwhat makes for good or genuine science. The Creationists had startedto refer to the ideas of the eminent, Austrian-born, British-residingphilosopherKarl Popper (1959). As is well known, Popper claimed that for something to begenuinely scientific it has to be falsifiable. By this, Popper meantthat genuine science puts itself up to check against the real world.If the predictions of the science hold true, then it lives to fightanother day. If the predictions fail, then the science must berejected – or at least revised. Popper (1974) himself expresseddoubts about whether evolutionary theory is genuinely falsifiable andhe rather inclined to think that it is less a description of realitythan a heuristic to further study, what he called a‘metaphysical research programme’ (Ruse 1977). TheCreationists seized on this and argued that they had the bestauthority to reject evolution, or at least to judge it no more of ascience than Creationism. (To his credit, Popper revised his thinkingon Darwinian evolutionary theory and grew to see and admit that it wasa genuine scientific theory; see Popper 1978).

Part of the testimony in Arkansas was designed to refute thisargument, and it was shown that in fact evolution does indeed makefalsifiable claims. As we have already seen, natural selection is notautology. If one could show that organisms did not exhibitdifferential reproduction – to take the example given above,that all proto-humans had the same number of offspring – thenselection theory would certainly be false. Likewise, if one could showthat human and dinosaur remains truly did occur in the same timestrata of the fossil record, one would have powerful proof against thethinking of modern evolutionists. This argument succeeded in court– the judge accepted that evolutionary thinking is falsifiable.Conversely, he accepted that Creation Science is never truly open tocheck. On-the-spot, ad hoc hypotheses proliferate as soon as any ofits claims are challenged. It is not falsifiable and hence not genuinescience. However, after the case a number of prominent philosophers(most notably the American Larry Laudan) objected strongly to the veryidea of using falsifiability as a ‘criterion ofdemarcation’ between science and non-science. They argued thatin fact there is no hard and fast rule for distinguishing science fromother forms of human activity, and that hence in this sense theCreationists might have a point (Ruse (ed.) 1988). Not that people likeLaudan were themselves Creationists. They thought Creationism false.Their objection was rather to trying to find some way of makingevolution and not Creationism into a genuine science.

Defenders of the anti-Creationism strategy taken in Arkansas argued,with reason and law, that the United States Constitution does not barthe teaching of false science. It bars the teaching of non-science,especially non-science which is religion by another name. Hence, ifthe objections of people like Laudan were taken seriously, theCreationists might have a case to make for the balanced treatment ofevolution and Creationism. Popperian falsifiability may be a somewhatrough and ready way of separating science and religion, but it is goodenough for the job at hand, and in law that is what counts.

5. The Naturalism Debate

Evolutionists were successful in court. Nevertheless, Laudan andfellow thinkers inspired the Creationists to new efforts, andsince the Arkansas court case, the philosophical dimension to theevolution/Creationism controversy has been much increased. Inparticular, philosophical arguments are central to the thinking of theleader of today’s creationists, Berkeley law professor, PhillipJohnson, whose reputation was made with the anti-evolutionary tractDarwin on Trial (1991). (Johnson’s influence and importanceis recognized by all and he has become leaderemeritus. As weshall see, the task of leadership then got passed to younger people,especially the biochemist Michael Behe and thephilosopher-mathematician William Dembski.) In respects, Johnson justrepeated the arguments of the Creation Scientists (those given in anearlier section) – gaps in the fossil record and so forth— but at the same time he stressed that the Creation/evolutiondebate is not just one of science versus religion or good scienceversus bad science, but rather of conflicting philosophical positions.The implication was that one philosophy is much like another, orrather the implication was that one person’s philosophy is anotherperson’s poison and that it is all a matter of personal opinion.Behind this one sees the lawyer’s mind at work that, if it is all amatter of philosophy, then there is nothing in the United StatesConstitution which bars the teaching of Creationism in schools. (Forbetter or for worse, one sees the heavy hand of Thomas Kuhn here, andhis claim in hisThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions thatthe change from one paradigm to another is akin to a politicalrevolution, not ultimately fueled by logic but more byextra-scientific factors, like emotions and simple preferences. In theArkansas trial, Kuhn was as oft mentioned by the prosecutors as wasPopper.)

Crucial to Johnson’s position are a number of fine distinctions. Hedistinguishes between what he calls “methodologicalnaturalism” and “metaphysical naturalism”. Theformer is the scientific stance of trying to explain by laws and byrefusing to introduce miracles. A methodological naturalist wouldinsist on explaining all phenomena, however strange, in natural terms.Elijah setting fire to the water-drenched sacrifice, for instance,would be explained in terms of lightning striking or some such thing.The latter is the philosophical stance that insists that there isnothing beyond the natural – no God, no supernatural, nonothing. ‘Naturalism is ametaphysical doctrine, whichmeans simply that it states a particular view of what is ultimatelyreal and unreal. According to naturalism, what is ultimately real isnature, which consists of the fundamental particles that make up whatwe call matter and energy, together with the natural laws that governhow those particles behave. Nature itself is ultimately all there is,at least as far as we are concerned’ (Johnson 1995, 37–38).

Then there is someone that Johnson calls a ‘theisticrealist.’ This is someone who believes in a God, and that thisGod can and does intervene in the natural world. ‘God always hasthe option of working through regular secondary mechanisms, and weobserve such mechanisms frequently. On the other hand, many importantquestions – including the origin of genetic information andhuman consciousness – may not be explicable in terms ofunintelligent causes, just as a computer or a book cannot be explainedthat way’ (p. 209). Johnson thinks of himself as a theisticrealist, and hence as such in opposition to metaphysical realism.Methodological realism, which he links with evolutionism, would seemto be distinct from metaphysical realism, but it is Johnson’s claimthat the former slides into the latter. Hence, the evolutionist is themethodological realist, is the metaphysical realist, is the opponentof the theistic realist – and as far as Johnson is concerned,the genuine theistic realist is one who takes a pretty literalisticreading of the Bible. So ultimately, it is all less a matter ofscience and more a matter of attitudes and philosophy. Evolution andCreationism are different world pictures, and it is conceptually,socially, pedagogically, and with good luck in the future legallywrong to treat them differently. More than this, it is incorporatedinto Johnson’s argument that Creationism (a.k.a. Theistic Realism) isthe only genuine form of Christianity.

But does any of this really follow? The evolutionist would claim not.The key notion in Johnson’s attack is clearly methodologicalnaturalism. Metaphysical naturalism, having been defined as somethingwhich precludes theism, has been set up as a philosophy with areligion-like status. It necessarily perpetuates the conflict betweenreligion and science. But as Johnson himself notes, many people thinkthat they can be methodological naturalists and theists.Methodological naturalism is not a religion equivalent. Is thispossible, at least in a consistent way with intellectual integrity? Itis Johnson’s claim that it is not, for he wants the religion/sciencewar to be absolute with no captives or compromises.

6. Can an Evolutionist Be a Christian?

To sort out this debate, let us agree (to what is surely the case)that if you are a methodological naturalist, today you are going toaccept evolution and conversely to think that evolution supports yourcause. Today, methodological naturalism and evolution are a packagedeal. Take one, and you take the other. Reject one, and you reject theother. Clearly then, if your theism is one which gets its knowledge ofGod’s actions and purposes from a literal reading of the Bible, youhave got a conflict. You cannot accept Genesis literally andevolution. That is a fact. In other words, there can be noaccommodation between Creationism and evolution. However, what if youthink that theologically speaking there is much to be said for a niceshade of grey? What if you think that much of the Bible, althoughtrue, should be interpreted in a metaphorical manner? What if youthink you can be an evolutionist, and yet take in the essential heartof the Bible? What price consistency and methodological naturalismthen? The answer depends on what you take to be the “essentialheart” of the Bible. At a minimum we can say that, to theChristian, this heart speaks of our sinful nature, of God’s sacrifice,and of the prospect of ultimate salvation. It speaks of the world as ameaningful creation of God (however caused) and of a foreground dramawhich takes place within this world. One refers particularly to theoriginal sin, Jesus’ life and death, and his resurrection and anythingwhich comes after it. And clearly at once we are plunged into thefirst of the big problems, namely that of miracles – those ofJesus himself (the turning of water into wine at the marriage atCana), his return to life on the third day, and (especially if you area Catholic) such ongoing miracles as transubstantiation and thoseassociated, in response to prayer, with the intervention of saints.

There are a number of options here for the would-be methodologicalnaturalist. You might simply say that such miracles occurred, thatthey did involve violations of law, but that they are outside yourscience. They are simply exceptions to the rule. End of argument. Alittle abrupt, but not flatly inconsistent with calling yourself atheist. You say normally God works through law but, for our salvation,miracles outside law were necessary. Or you might say that miraclesoccur but that they are compatible with science, or at least notincompatible. Jesus was in a trance and the cure for cancer after theprayers to Saint Bernadette was according to rare, unknown, butgenuine laws. This position is less abrupt, although you might worrywhether this strategy is truly Christian, in letter or in spirit. Itseems a little bit of a cheat to say that the Jesus taken down fromthe cross was truly not dead, and the marriage at Cana starts to soundlike outright fraud. Of course, you can start stripping away at moreand more miracles, downgrading them to regular occurrences blown upand magnified by the Apostles, but in the end this rather defeats thewhole purpose.

The third option is simply to refuse to get into the battle at all.You argue that the law/miracle dichotomy is a false one. Miracles arejust not the sorts of things which conflict with or confirm naturallaws. Traditional Christians have always argued this in some respects.Take the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. The turning of thebread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ is simply notsomething open to empirical check. You cannot disconfirm religion orprove science by doing an analysis of the host. Likewise even with theresurrection of Jesus. After the Crucifixion, his mortal body wasirrelevant. The point was that the disciples felt Jesus in theirhearts, and were thus emboldened to go forth and preach the gospel.Something real happened to them, but it was not a physical reality– nor, for instance, was Paul’s conversion a physical event,even though it changed his life and those of countless after him.Today’s miracles also are really more a matter of the spirit than theflesh. Does one simply go to Lourdes in hope of a lucky lottery ticketto health or for the comfort that one knows one will get, even ifthere is no physical cure? In the words of the philosophers, it is acategory mistake to put miracles and laws in the same set. (Hume(1748, 1779) is the starting place for these discussions. Althoughsomewhat dated, Flew and MacIntyre (1955) is still invaluable.Paradoxically, both of these then-atheist authors came to see thelight and returned to the Christianity of their childhoods!Apparently, the “words of the philosophers” are notdefinitive.)

What has Johnson to say to all of this? Frustratingly, the answer is:“remarkably little”! In main part this stems from arefusal to spell out exactly what is meant by “theism”.What Johnson does say is more in the way of sneer or dismissal thanargument.

Persons who are sufficiently motivated to do so can find ways toresist the easy pathway from M[ethodological] N[aturalism] to atheism,agnosticism or deism. For example, perhaps God actively directs theevolutionary process but (for some inscrutable reason) does so in away that is empirically imperceptible. No one can disprove that sortof possibility, but not many people seem to regard it asintellectually impressive either. That they seem to rely on“faith” — in the sense of belief without evidence– is why theists are a marginalized minority in the academicworld and always on the defensive. Usually they protect theirreputation for good judgment by restricting their theism to privatelife and assuming for professional purposes a position that isindistinguishable from naturalism. (Johnson 1995, 211)

He adds:

Makeshift compromises between supernaturalism in religion andnaturalism in science may satisfy individuals, but they have littlestanding in the intellectual world because they are recognized as aforced accommodation of conflicting lines of thought (p. 212).

At this point, the evolutionist will probably throw up his or herhands in despair. Where did the idea of ‘makeshiftcompromise’ come from except from Johnson’s imagination? Inactual fact, many significant theologians of our age think that, withrespect to miracles, science and religion have no conflict (Barth1949; Gilkey 1985). They would add that faith without difficulty andopposition is not true faith, either. “As the Danish philosopherSøren Kierkegaard … taught us, too much objectivecertainty deadens the very soul of faith. Genuine piety is possibleonly in the face of radical uncertainty” (Haught 1995, 59). Suchthinkers, often conservative theologically, are inspired by MartinBuber to find God in the center of personal relationships, I-Thou,rather in science, I-It. For them there is something degrading in thethought of Jesus as a miracle man, a sort of fugitive from the EdSullivan Show. What happened with the five thousand? Some hokey-pokeyover a few loaves and fishes? Or did Jesus fill the multitude’s heartwith love, so there was a spontaneous outpouring of generosity andsharing, as every one in the crowd was fed by the food brought by afew? These theologians would agree fully with the first part ofJohnson’s characterization of “theism”. Things were verydifferent thanks to Jesus’ presence and actions. What they deny, hereor elsewhere, is the need to search for exception to law.

Johnson’s Creationism and evolution/naturalism are indeed in conflict.But Johnson’s Creationism is not all that there is to religion, toChristianity in particular. There are those who call themselvestheists, who think that one can be a methodological naturalist, wheretoday this would imply evolution (Ruse 2010). Johnson has not arguedagainst them.

7. Intelligent Design

Let us move on now from the more philosophical sorts of issues.Building on the more critical approach of Johnson, who is taken tohave cleared the foundations as it were, there is a group of peoplewho are trying to offer an alternative to evolution. These are theenthusiasts for so-called ‘Intelligent Design.’ Supportersof this position think that Darwinism is ineffective, at leastinasmuch as it claims to make superfluous or unnecessary a directappeal to a designer of some sort. These are people who think that afull understanding of the organic world demands the invocation of someforce beyond nature, a force which is purposeful or at least purposecreating. Often the phrase which is used is “organizedcomplexity,” a term much used by the German Romantic philosopherFriedrich Schelling, and which by invoking the intentional predicate“organized” rather gives the game away (Richards2003). For the moment, continue to defer questions about therelationship between Intelligent Design Theory and more traditionalforms of Creationism.

There are two parts to this approach: an empirical and aphilosophical. Let us take them in turn, beginning with he who hasmost fully articulated the empirical case for a designer, thealready-mentioned, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe. Focusingon something which he calls ‘irreducible complexity,’ Behewrites:

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of severalwell-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function,wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system toeffectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot beproduced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initialfunction, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight,successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursorto an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is bydefinition nonfunctional. (Behe 1996, 39)

Behe adds, surely truly, that any

irreducibly complex biological system, if there is such a thing, wouldbe a powerful challenge to Darwinian evolution. Since naturalselection can only choose systems that are already working, then if abiological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to ariseas an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection tohave anything to act on (p. 39).

Now turn to the world of biology, and in particular turn to themicro-world of the cell and of mechanisms that we find at that level.Take bacteria which use a flagellum, driven by a kind of rotary motor,to move around. Every part is incredibly complex, and so are thevarious parts, combined. The external filament of the flagellum(called ‘flagellin’), for instance, is a single proteinthat makes a kind of paddle surface contacting the liquid duringswimming. Near the surface of the cell, just as needed is athickening, so that the filament can be connected to the rotor drive.This naturally requires a connector, known as a ‘hookprotein.’ There is no motor in the filament, so that has to besomewhere else. ‘Experiments have demonstrated that it islocated at the base of the flagellum, where electron microscopy showsseveral ring structures occur’ (p. 70). All, way too complex tohave come into being in a gradual fashion. Only a one-step processwill do, and this one-step process must involve some sort of designingcause. Behe is careful not to identify this designer with theChristian God, but the implication is that it is a force from withoutthe normal course of nature. Irreducible complexity spells design.

8. Is Complexity Irreducible?

Irreducible complexity is supposedly something which could not havecome through unbroken law (meaning law that has no special divineguidance), and especially not through the agency of natural selection.Critics claim that Behe shows a misunderstanding of the very natureand workings of natural selection. No one is denying that in naturalprocesses there may well be parts which, if removed, would lead atonce to the non-functioning of the systems in which they occur. Thepoint however is not whether the parts now in place could not beremoved without collapse, but whether they could have been put inplace by natural selection. Consider an arched bridge, made from cutstone, without cement, held in place only by the force of the stonesagainst each other. If you tried to build the bridge from scratch,upwards and then inwards, you would fail – the stones would keepfalling to the ground, as indeed the whole bridge now would collapsewere you to remove the center keystone or any surrounding it. Rather,what you must do is first build a supporting structure (possibly anearthen embankment), on which you will lay the stones of the bridge,until they are all in place. At which point you can remove thestructure for it is no longer needed, and in fact is in the way.Likewise, one can imagine a biochemical sequential process withseveral stages, on the parts of which other processes piggyback as itwere. Then the hitherto non-sequential parasitic processes link up andstart functioning independently, the original sequence finally beingremoved by natural selection as redundant or inconveniently drainingof resources.

Of course, this is all pretend. But Darwinian evolutionists havehardly ignored the matter of complex processes. Indeed, it isdiscussed in detail by Darwin in theOrigin, where he refersto that most puzzling of all adaptations, the eye. At the biochemicallevel, today’s Darwinians have many examples of the most complex ofprocesses that have been put in place by selection. Take that stapleof the body’s biochemistry, the process where energy from food isconverted into a form which can be used by the cells. Rightly does astandard textbook refer to this vital organic system, the so-called‘Krebs cycle,’ as something which ‘undergoes a verycomplicated series of reactions’ (Hollum 1987, 408). Thisprocess, which occurs in the cell parts known as mitochondria,involves the production of ATP (adenosine triphosphate): a complexmolecule which is energy rich and which is degraded by the body asneeded (say in muscle action) into another less rich molecule ADP(adenosine diphosphate). The Krebs cycle remakes ATP from other energysources – an adult human male needs to make nearly 200 Kg a day— and by any measure, the cycle is enormously involved andintricate. For a start, nearly a dozen enzymes (substances whichfacilitate chemical processes) are required, as one sub-process leadson to another.

Yet the cycle did not come out of nowhere. It was cobbled together outof other cellular processes which do other things. It was a‘bricolage’, that is to say it was something put togetherin a haphazard fashion. Each one of the bits and pieces of the cycleexists for other purposes and has been coopted for the new end. Thescientists who have made this connection could not have made astronger case against Behe’s irreducible complexity than if they hadhad him in mind from the first. In fact, they set up the problemvirtually in Behe’s terms: ‘The Krebs cycle has been frequentlyquoted as a key problem in the evolution of living cells, hard toexplain by Darwin’s natural selection: How could natural selectionexplain the building of a complicated structure in toto, when theintermediate stages have no obvious fitness functionality?’(Meléndez-Hervia et al 1996, 302). (Readers who want to digmore deeply into some of the technical issues should start with the entry onfitness.)

What these workers do not offer is a Behe-type answer. First, theybrush away a false lead. Could it be that we have something like theevolution of the mammalian eye, where primitive existent eyes in otherorganisms suggest that selection can and does work on proto models (asit were), refining features which have the same function if not asefficient as more sophisticated models? Probably not, for there is noevidence of anything like this. But then we are put on a morepromising track.

In the Krebs cycle problem the intermediary stages were also useful,but for different purposes, and, therefore, its complete design was avery clear case of opportunism. The building of the eye was really acreative process in order to make a new thing specifically, but theKrebs cycle was built through the process that Jacob (1977) called‘evolution by molecular tinkering,’ stating that evolutiondoes not produce novelties from scratch: It works on what alreadyexists. The most novel result of our analysis is seeing how, withminimal new material, evolution created the most important pathway ofmetabolism, achieving the best chemically possible design. In thiscase, a chemical engineer who was looking for the best design of theprocess could not have found a better design than the cycle whichworks in living cells. (p. 302)

Rounding off the response to Behe, let us note that, if his argumentsare well-taken, then in respects we are into a bigger set of problemsthan otherwise! His position seems simply not viable given what weknow of the nature of mutation and the stability of biological systemsover time. When exactly is the intelligent designer supposed to strikeand to do its work? In his major work,Darwin’s Black Box,Behe suggests that everything might have been done long ago and thenleft to its own devices. ‘The irreducibly complex biochemicalsystems that I have discussed… did not have to be producedrecently. It is entirely possible, based simply on an examination ofthe systems themselves, that they were designed billions of years agoand that they have been passed down to the present by the normalprocesses of cellular reproduction’ (Behe 1996, 227–8).

This is not a satisfactory response. We cannot ignore the history ofthe genes from the point between their origin (when they would nothave been needed) and today when they are in full use. In the words ofBrown biochemist Kenneth Miller: ‘As any student of biology willtell you, because those genes are not expressed, natural selectionwould not be able to weed out genetic mistakes. Mutations wouldaccumulate in these genes at breathtaking rates, rendering themhopelessly changed and inoperative hundreds of millions of yearsbefore Behe says that they will be needed.’ There is muchexperimental evidence showing that this is the case. Behe’s idea ofdesigner doing everything back then and then leaving matters to theirnatural fate is ‘pure and simple fantasy’ (Miller 1999,162–3).

What is the alternative strategy that Behe must take? Presumably thatthe designer is at work all of the time, producing mechanisms as andwhen needed. So, if we are lucky, we might expect to see some producedin our lifetime. Indeed, there must be a sense of disappointment amongbiologists that no such creative acts have so far been reported. Morethan this, as we turn from science towards theology, there evengreater disappointments. Most obviously, what about bad mutations (inthe sense of mutations that lead to consequences very non-helpful totheir possessors)? If the designer is needed and available for complexengineering problems, why could not the designer take some time on thesimple matters, specifically those simple matters which if unfixedlead to absolutely horrendous problems. Some of the worst geneticdiseases are caused by one little alteration in one little part of theDNA. If the designer is able and willing to do the very complexbecause it is very good, why does it not do the very simple becausethe alternative is very bad? Behe speaks of this as being part of theproblem of evil, which is true, but not very helpful. Given that theopportunity and ability to do good was so obvious and yet not taken,we need to know the reason why. (A comprehensive collection, edited byan Intelligent Design Theorist and an avid Darwinian evolutionist,contains arguments from both sides, by biologists and philosophers;see Dembski and Ruse (eds.) 2004.)

9. The Explanatory Filter

Behe is in need of help. This supposedly comes from a conceptualargument in favor of Intelligent Design due to the also-mentioned,philosopher-mathematician William Dembski (1998a, b). Let us firstlook at his argument, and then see how it helps Behe.

Dembski’s aim is two-fold. First, to give us the criteria by which wedistinguish something that we would label ‘designed’rather than otherwise. Second, to put this into context, and show howwe distinguish design from something produced naturally by law orsomething we would put down to chance. As far as inferring design isconcerned, there are three notions of importance: contingency,complexity, and specification. Design has to be something which is notcontingent. The example that Dembski uses is the message from outerspace received in the movieContact. The series of dots anddashes, zeros and ones, could not be deduced from the laws of physics.But do they show evidence of design? Suppose we can interpret theseries in a binary fashion, and the initial yield is the number group,2, 3, 5. As it happens, these are the beginning of the prime-numberseries, but with so small a yield no one is going to get very excited.It could just be chance. So no one is going to insist on design yet.But suppose now you keep going on the series, and it turns out that ityields in exact and precise order the prime numbers up to 101. Now youwill start to think that something is up, because the situation seemsjust too complex to be mere chance. It is highly improbable.‘Complexity as I am describing it here is a form ofprobability….’ (Dembski 2000, 27).

But although you are probably happy now to conclude (on the basis ofthe prime-number sequence) that there are extraterrestrials out there,in fact there is another thing needed. ‘If I flip a coin 1000times, I will participate in a highly complex (that is, highlyimprobable) event…. This sequence of coin tosses will not,however, trigger a design inference. Though complex, this sequencewill not exhibit a suitable pattern.’ Here, we have a contrastwith the prime-number sequence from 2 to 101. ‘Not only is thissequence complex, but it also embodies a suitable pattern. The SETIresearcher who in the movie Contact discovered this sequence put itthis way: “This isn’t noise, this has structure”’(pp. 27–8). What is going on here? You recognize in design somethingwhich is not just arbitrary or chance or which is given status onlyafter the experiment or discovery, but rather something that was orcould be in some way specified, insisted upon, before you set out. Youknow or could work out the sequence of prime numbers at any timebefore or after the contact from space. The random sequence of pennytosses will come only after the event. ‘The key concept is thatof “independence”. I define a specification as a matchbetween an event and an independently given pattern. Events that areboth highly complex and specified (that is, that match anindependently given pattern) indicate design.’

Dembski is now in a position to move on to the second part of hisargument where we actually detect design. Here we have what he callsan ‘Explanatory Filter’ (Dembski 1998a, b). We have aparticular phenomenon. The question is, what caused it? Is itsomething which might not have happened, given the laws of nature? Isit contingent? Or was it necessitated? The moon goes endlessly roundthe earth. We know that it does this because of (the updated versionof) Newton’s laws. End of discussion. No design here. However, now wehave some rather strange new phenomenon, the causal origin of which isa puzzle. Suppose we have a mutation, where although we can quantifyover large numbers we cannot predict at an individual level. There isno immediate subsumption beneath law, and therefore there is no reasonto think that at this level it was necessary. Let us say, assupposedly happened in the extended royal family of Europe, there wasa mutation to a gene responsible for hemophilia. Is it complex?Obviously not, for it leads to breakdown rather than otherwise. Henceit is appropriate to talk now of chance. There is no design. Thehemophilia mutation was just an accident.

Suppose now that we do have complexity. A rather intricate mineralpattern in the rocks might qualify here. Suppose we have veins ofprecious metals set in other materials, the whole being intricate andvaried – certainly not a pattern you could simply deduce fromthe laws of physics or chemistry or geology or whatever. Nor would onethink of it as being a breakdown mess, as one might a bad mutation. Isthis now design? Almost certainly not, for there is no way that onemight pre-specify such a pattern. It is all a bitad hoc, andnot something which comes across as the result of conscious intention.And then finally there are phenomena which are complex and specified.One presumes that the microscopical biological apparatuses andprocesses discussed by Behe would qualify here. They are not contingent,for they are irreducibly complex. They are design-like for they dowhat is needed for the organism in which they are to be found. That isto say they are of pre-specified form. And so, having survived theexplanatory filter, they are properly considered the product of realdesign.

Now, with the conceptual argument laid out in full, we are in aposition to turn back to Behe and to see how Dembski’s explanatoryfilter is supposed to let Behe’s god off the hook with respect to theproblem of evil. Given the explanatory filter, a bad mutation wouldsurely get caught by the filter half-way down. It would be siphonedoff to the side as chance, if not indeed simply put down as necessity.It certainly would not pass the specification test. This would meanthat a dreadful genetic disease would not be the fault of thedesigner, whereas successful complex mechanisms would be to thedesigner’s credit. Dembski stresses that these are mutually exclusivealternatives. ‘To attribute an event to design is to say that itcannot plausibly be referred to either law or chance. Incharacterizing design as the set-theoretic complement of thedisjunction law-or-chance, one therefore guarantees that these threemodes of explanation will be mutually exclusive and exhaustive’(Dembski 1998b, 98).

10. Mutually Exclusive?

The key assumption being made by Dembski is that design and law andchance are mutually exclusive. This is the very essence of theexplanatory filter. But in real life does one want to make thisassumption? Suppose that something is put down to chance. Does thismean that law is ruled out? Surely not! If one argues that a Mendelianmutation is chance, what one means is with respect to that particulartheory it is chance, but one may well believe that the mutation cameabout by normal regular causes and that if these were all known, thenit would not longer be chance at all but necessity. The point is thatchance in this case is a confession of ignorance not, as one mightwell think the case in the quantum world, an assertion about the waythat things are. That is, claims about chance are not ontologicalassertions, as presumably claims about designers must be.

More than this, one might well argue that the designer always worksthrough law. This may be deism and hence no true Christianity –some Christians would insist that God does sometimes intervene in theCreation. But truly Christian or not, a deity who always works throughlaw is certainly not inconsistent with the hypothesis of a designingintelligence. The designer may prefer to have things put in motion insuch a way that his/her/its intentions unfurl and reveal themselves astime goes by. The pattern in a piece of cloth made by machine is asmuch an object of design as the pattern from cloth produced by a handloom. In other words, in a sense that would conform to the normalusage of the terms, one might want to say of something that it isproduced by laws, is chance with respect to our knowledge or theory,and fits into an overall context of design by the great orderer orcreator of things. In short, Dembski’s filter does not let Behe’sdesigner off the hook.

If the designer can make – and rightfully takes credit for— the very complex and good, then the designer could prevent— and by its failure is properly criticized for – the verysimple and awful. The problems in theology are as grim as are those inscience. (The intelligent design theorists have provided work for manyphilosophers eager to refute them. Pennock 1988 and Sober 2000 aregood places to start. See the entry onteleological notions in biology.)

11. Intelligent Design and Traditional Creationism

Let us now try to tackle the somewhat complex issue of therelationship between Intelligent Design Theory and traditionalCreationism, as discussed earlier in this essay. In significantrespects, they are clearly not the same. Most Intelligent DesignTheorists believe in a long earth history (even the scientificestimation of a universe of about 15 billion years in age) and mostaccept overall common descent. In a recent book,The Edge ofEvolution, Michael Behe has made this point very clear indeed.However, there are major overlaps, sufficient to encourage somecritics (myself included) to refer to Intelligent Design Theory as‘Creationism-lite’ (Ruse 2017, 114).

First, politically, the Creationists are more than willing at themoment to let the ID theorists do the blocking. Openly they supportthe ID movement, believing in taking one step at a time. If ID issuccessful, then is the time to ask for more. A major funding andemotional support for the ID movement is the Discovery Institute, aprivately-supported think tank in Seattle. One of its prominentmembers is University of Chicago educated philosopher Paul Nelson, whois a young-earth creationist and a strong believer in theeschatological significance of Israel.

Second, do note that both Creationists and ID enthusiasts arecommitted to some form of non-naturalist account of origins. The tiesof course are stronger. ID enthusiasts pretend to be neutral about theIntelligent Designer, but they clearly do not think that he or she isnatural. No one pretends that the earth and its denizens are a labexperiment being run by a grad student on Andromeda. In fact, in theirown correspondence and works written for followers, they make it veryclear that the Designer is the Christian God of the Gospels. They arealways quoting the first chapter of John – “In thebeginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word wasGod.” So in both cases we have an evangelical Christian motivesetting the agenda on origins. Some ID enthusiasts are quite strongliteralists. Johnson for instance thinks that Genesis Chapter Sixmight be right about their beings giants in early times – apoint made much of in Genesis Flood. (Forrest and Gross 2004 do asuperb job of ferreting out much of the unstated biblical foundationsof Intelligent Design Theory.)

Third there is the moral factor. There is a very strong streak ofanti-postmillennialism in the writings of ID theorists. They share thesame concern about the moral values of the Creationists –anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, pro-capital punishment, pro-Israel(for eschatological reasons) and so forth. Phillip Johnson feels verystrongly that the tendency to cross-dress, including apparently womenwho wear jeans, is a sign of the degenerate state of our society(Johnson 2002).

In short, while there are certainly important differences between theposition of most literalists and most ID supporters, the strongoverlap should not be ignored or downplayed.

12. Recent Developments

Creationism in the sense used in this discussion is still very much alive phenomenon in American culture today – and in other partsof the world, like the Canadian West, to which it has been exported.Popularity does not imply truth. Scientifically Creationism isworthless, philosophically it is confused, and theologically it isblinkered beyond repair. The same is true of its offspring,Intelligent Design Theory. But do not underestimate its social andpolitical power. As we move through the second decade of the newmillennium, thanks to Johnson and his fellows, there are ongoingpressures to introduce non-evolutionary ideas into science curricula,especially into the science curricula of publicly funded schools inthe United States of America. In 2004, in Dover, Pennsylvania, therewas an attempt by the school board to introduce Intelligent DesignTheory into the biology classrooms of the publicly funded schools. Asit happens, this was rejected strongly by the federal judge trying thecase – a man who was appointed by President George W. Bush noless – and the costs of the case will surely deter others fromrushing to follow the example of this board (who were incidentallythen promptly dropped by the voters.) (A lively account of this trialis by Lauri Lebo,The Devil in Dover: An Insider’sStory of Dogma v. Darwin in Small-Town America. PhilosopherRobert Pennock argued that IDT is not genuine science, and takingsomewhat of a post-modernist stance, philosopher Steven Fuller arguedthat it as good science as any other. Pennock and Ruse (eds.) 2008 isan updated version of Ruse (ed.) 1988, and includes full discussion ofDover as well as Arkansas.) The battle is not yet over and thingscould get a lot worse before they get better, if indeed they will getbetter. Already, there are members of the United States Supreme Courtwho have made it clear that they would receive sympathetically callsto push evolution from a preeminent place in science teaching, andwith its turn to the right it would be foolish to assume that if acase came its way that Creationism or ID theory would be rejected asunsuitable for public school classroom use. If additions are made,with present appointments, we could find that — nearly a centuryafter the Scopes Trial, when the Fundamentalists were perceived asfigures of fun – Creationism in one form or another finallytakes its place in the classroom.

Unfortunately at the moment, those opposed to Creationism are spendingmore of their energies quarreling among themselves than fighting theopposition. There is a crop of “new atheists”, includingthe biologist and popular writer Richard Dawkins (2006) and thephilosopher Daniel Dennett (2005) who are not only against religionbut also against those – including non-believers – who donot share their hostility. At least since the time of the Arkansastrial, many fighting Creationism (including Gould 1999, 2002; Ruse2001) have argued that true religion and science do notconflict. Hence, evolutionists (including non-believers) should makecommon cause with liberal Christians, who share their hatred ofdogmatic Christian fundamentalism. Prominent among those so arguinginclude the author of this piece, as well as Eugenie Scott of theNational Center for Science Education. They argue that in theirhostility to religion, the new atheists get close to making their ownviews quasi-religious – certainly they argue that Darwinism isincompatible with religion – and hence ripe for theCreationists’ complaint that if Creationism is not to be taught inschools (because it violates the U.S. Constitution’s separation ofChurch and State), then neither should evolution be so taught. It isto be hoped that this quarrel will soon subside.

We conclude by noting four recent developments in the Creationismdebate. First, a number of well-known philosophers have started tomake encouraging sounds about Intelligent Design Theory. Calvinistphilosopher Alvin Plantinga has long been a critic of naturalism andnow (in a work based on his 2005 Gifford Lectures at St Andrew’sUniversity in Scotland) he extends this critique to Darwinianevolutionary theory, arguing that the evidence in its favor is scanty(Plantinga 2011). He hedges somewhat on alternatives, but gives a verysympathetic reading of the thinking of Michael Behe and clearly findsmuch in such a position that meshes nicely with his own theologicalconcerns. Coming from a very different perspective, as he is openlyatheistic, Thomas Nagel (2008) likewise finds much in modern biologythat worries and disappoints him—he makes special reference towhat seems to him to be a total inability to give a naturalisticexplanation of the origin of life—and although obviously he doesnot want to endorse Intelligent Design Theory, given the suppositionthat it is God who is doing the designing, nevertheless he argues thatIntelligent Design Theory should be taught as an alternative instate-supported schools in the USA. Recently, in a full-length work,Mind and Cosmos, he has continued this attack, arguing (2011,7) that “the idea that we have in our possession the basic toolsneeded to understand [the world] is no more credible now than it wasin Aristotle’s day”, thereby implying that the work ofCopernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein and Darwin has not led toany new tools needed to understand the world. Backing Nagel, at leastin his visceral dislike of Darwinism, is another prominent Americanphilosopher Jerry Fodor, whose recent, co-authored book is titledWhat Darwin Got Wrong. Even if (with reason) Fodor mightargue that he is no Creationist, his position is grist for their mill.A more thoughtful critique of Darwinism might allay this worry.

It is difficult to know how seriously one is expected to take thesecriticisms. Let it be said that one would have a great deal morerespect for the arguments and conclusions put forward if they had beeninformed by contemporary writings on evolutionary theory, forinstance, the brilliant and painstaking work of the husband and wifeteam of Peter and Rosemary Grant (2007), who have spent decadesstudying the evolution and speciation of finches in the GalapagosArchipelago. Or the groundbreaking work of people like Francisco Ayala(2009) as they study the molecular factors involved in ongoingdevelopment and change. Not to mention the seminal studies of BrianHall (1999) and Sean Carroll (2005) on the ways in which individualdevelopment can get reflected in long-term changes (so-called“evo-devo”). Though Richard Dawkins can put people offwhen he holds forth on matters philosophical or theological, that isno good reason simply to dismiss without argument his scientificclaims, as Plantinga often does. Likewise, it is true indeed that noone yet has been able to spell out the full story of the origin oflife, but this doesn’t justify Nagel’s failure to mention that a hugeamount now is known about life’s origins, most especially about thecrucial role played by the secondary ribonucleic acid RNA (rather thanthe more familiar DNA) (Ruse and Travis (eds.) 2009). Until the criticismsput forward by Nagel, Plantinga, Fodor, etc. do start to takeseriously modern science, we might justifiably continue to take themless than seriously.

One observation to make about these criticisms is that they are putforward by philosophers in the analytic tradition, which in its earlydays involved some opposition to Darwinism (Cunningham 1996). Thisgoes back to Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein, neither of whomhad much time for the theory and (in Russell’s case at least) wasmirrored by a strong dislike of American Pragmatism, a school ofthought that did take Darwin very seriously (Ruse 2009). In both thecase of Russell and Wittgenstein this opposition is based primarily ona mistaken identification of the thinking of Charles Darwin with thatofHerbert Spencer. It was the latter who was much given to seeing evolutionary processesas justifying extraneous claims about the necessity of struggle and soforth, views that both Russell and Wittgenstein viewed with as littleenthusiasm as did William Jennings Bryan. Russell learnt his dislikeof evolution as applied to philosophy from his teacher Henry Sidgwickand Wittgenstein (like other European-born philosophers like KarlPopper) from the general culture of their youth. Significantly, thosephilosophers of the English-speaking tradition of the twentiethcentury who have had kind words for Darwin – W.V.O. Quine,Richard Rorty, and Thomas Kuhn to name three – have all beensympathetic to Pragmatism in one form or another (Ruse 2018b,2018c; see also, the entry onpragmatism).

Second among new or revived discussions of Creationism and its variousaspects, one question often asked is why evolution in particularraises such ire in evangelicals and related religionists. The Biblestates that the sun stopped for Joshua and yet no one today worriesabout the theological implications of the Copernican Revolution.Michael Ruse particularly, has argued strongly that the main reasonfor the conflict is that often evolutionists – Darwinianevolutionists – turn their secular science into a religion, withmoral imperatives and much more (Ruse forthcoming). The argument isthat, as opposed to the Christian notion of Providence, where we areentirely in the hands of God, such evolutionists are progressionists,thinking that change is in our hands and can be for the better. Intheological terms, Creationists tend to be premillennialists,believing that Jesus will return and rule for a thousand years and allwe can do is get ready for this for instance through convertingothers, as opposed to evolutionists who are postmillennialists,thinking (metaphorically) that paradise is to be made down here by us,before there is any appropriate talk of a Second Coming.

Thomas Henry Huxley, his grandson Julian S. Huxley, and today’s mosteminent Darwinian evolutionist, Edward O. Wilson of Harvard, have beenor are open in their secular religion building. Against theCreationist urge to save souls, they want to improve science education(THH), support public mega-works (JSH), and promote biodiversity(EOW). There is a strong odor of this secular religion building aroundthe New Atheists, like Richard Dawkins (2006), despite denials.Expectedly, this thesis has not gone down well with manyevolutionists, and conversely has been welcomed by Creationists whohave long made this claim. It should be noted that the arguments donot and are not intended to give comfort to Creationism as such. Theclaim by Ruse and others (for instance Miller 1999 and Pennock 1998)is that there is a good, scientific theory of evolution, based onDarwin’s mechanism of natural selection. They are not offering athesis about the science, but more one almost sociological in tryingto understand the tension. If the thesis proves true, thenevolutionists themselves are in a better position to defend themselvesand to defend their science.

Third among developments in Creationist thinking, especially since thefailure at Dover, we find somewhat of a shift in strategy by religiouscritics of Darwinism. Now it is the moral issues that are brought tothe fore. For instance, Richard Weikart (2004) claims that “nomatter how crooked the road was from Darwin to Hitler, clearlyDarwinism and eugenics smoothed the path for Nazi ideology, especiallyfrom the Nazi stress on expansion, war, racial struggle, and racialextermination.” In a similar vein, in the 2008 filmExpelled—a work very favorable to Intelligent DesignTheory—the link is drawn explicitly. Philosopher David Berlinskiis blunt: “if you open Mein Kampf and read it, especially if youcan read it in German, the correspondence between Darwinian ideas andNazi ideas just leaps from the page.” In other words, if you areinto Darwin, you are into National Socialism.

As always, as soon as one starts to look at things a little moreclosely, the story becomes more complex (Richards 2013). Let us agreethat something had to lead to Hitler and that given the racism thatinfects huge amounts of nineteenth century thinking abouthumankind—including Darwin’sDescent of Man—oneshould not give evolutionary theory a knee-jerk absolution. In fact,some early twentieth century writers on war and strife, clearlyinspired in some fashion by Darwin, give one great pause forreflection. Listen to the sometime member of the German High Command,General Friedrich von Bernhardi. Darwinism endorses war endorses thatwhich is morally good or acceptable. “Struggle is therefore auniversal law of Nature, and the instinct of self-preservation whichleads to struggle is acknowledged to be a natural condition ofexistence. ‘Man is a fighter’” (von Bernhardi 1912,13). And “might gives the right to occupy or to conquer. Mightis at once the supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right isdecided by the arbitration of war. War gives a biologically justdecision, since its decisions rest on the very nature of things”(ibid., p. 15). Hence “It may be that a growing peoplecannot win colonies from uncivilized races, and yet the State wishesto retain the surplus population which the mother-country can nolonger feed. Then the only course left is to acquire the necessaryterritory by war.”

Yet when one turns to Hitler himself, one soon sees that anysimilarities are superficial. One doubts very much that the (to begenerous) ill-educated Fuhrer had ever read Darwin, and his concernsare not that of the old English evolutionist.

All great cultures of the past perished only because the originallycreative race died out from blood poisoning. The ultimate cause ofsuch a decline was their forgetting that all culture depends on menand not conversely; hence that to preserve a certain culture the manwho creates it must be preserved. This preservation is bound up withthe rigid law of necessity and the right to victory of the best andstronger in this world. Those who want to live, let them fight, andthose who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle donot deserve to live. (Hitler 1925, 1, chapter 11)

“Blood poisoning”! The worry here is about the Jews andtheir supposed ill-effects on pure races. The Jews do not get amention in theDescent of Man (1871), and although Darwinsupposes that white races tend to wipe out others, it is not from anymental or physical superiority, but because we can tolerate theirdiseases but they cannot tolerate ours! And this is all because whiteshave had a bigger pool of variants to draw on than have others.

A final brief (fourth) comment is that increasingly the struggleagainst Creationism and its various offspring is rapidly becoming aworld-wide struggle. Leading historian of the Creationism movement,Ronald Numbers (2006), is particularly concerned about this fact. Notonly do we find Creationism on the rise in countries like theNetherlands (where, with its large conservative Protestant population,such a rise is not altogether unexpected) but we find enthusiasm innon-Christian cultures, especially in cultures where Islam is a majorfactor. The exact reasons for such a rise have, as yet, been barelyexplored, but Numbers is surely right in thinking that theologyprobably plays but a minor role, and more sociologicalfactors—dislike of the hegemony of the West and the role thatscience and technology play in such dominance—are probably verysignificant.

The fact is that, for whatever reason, if anything Creationism is onthe rise. And with that somber point, this is perhaps a good place todraw this discussion to a close. If this essay persuades even oneperson to take up the fight against so awful an outcome, then it willhave served its purpose.

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