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Are Darwinists chicken? [Note: This article was originally published as part of an exchange with Paul Laddis in the Stanford Review, May 13, 2005.] Let's suppose you hold two PhDs in evolutionary and theoretical biology. You edit the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington , a peer-reviewed journal affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution. You've had dozens of articles published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Morphology and the Journal of Biological Systems . You've lectured, spoken, or taught at universities across the United States , from Northern Michigan University to the University of South Carolina . You are not a proponent of intelligent design, but your research has led you to conclude neo-Darwinian mechanisms are not sufficient to account for the complexity of life. As you prepare to resign as scheduled from the Proceedings , you also approve publication of a scientific paper written by a Cambridge-trained philosopher of science theorizing that an intelligent designer played a role in the origin of animal body plans. What happens? You're asked if you're a “right-winger,” accused of being a “creationist,” and prevented from continuing research. The Biological Society of Washington quickly does damage control and publicly explains that the paper was an “inappropriate” mistake, discounting the fact that you pursued the peer-review process. Your career as a scientist hangs in the balance. Believe it or not, this actually happened to a researcher named Rick Sternberg. The paper in question was “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories” by Stephen C. Meyer. This is a classic, and scary, case of censorship by orthodox Darwinians, who are afraid of any sort of critique of their sacred methodological naturalism, the philosophical bias permeating much of the scientific community that prevents any non-natural explanation from being considered. No controversy exists, they tell us. But what of the facts? Darwinists have failed to explain how animal body plans arose, where the precursors to the Cambrian phyla are, how co-optation actually worked to produce irreducibly complex systems, and countless other problems with standard theory. Hundreds of scientists have signed petitions and letters criticizing neo-Darwinism, asserting that it cannot explain everything it pretends to. Many have written books pointing out where Darwinian mechanisms have failed to explain some aspects of biology. The peer-reviewed literature is bursting with examples of papers written by scientists who do not endorse intelligent design, but nonetheless critique aspects of evolutionary theory. If this is not a scientific controversy, what is? The attraction of intelligent design is its broad scope. Astrophysicists, for example, have explored the fine-tuning of the universe and of the Earth, theorizing that because so many aspects had to be just right that an intelligent designer is responsible. Origins of life researchers, on the other hand, can point to the decades of failures that have not shown that life can originate spontaneously by purely natural processes. Geneticists can look at “junk” DNA, ask what it does, and discover various functions for allegedly useless sequences. Development biologists can observe embryological development and conclude that generative entrenchment suggests body plans didn't evolve from a universal common ancestor. Molecular biologists can determine various biological systems are irreducibly complex. And on, and on… This is not to say that intelligent design is necessarily the truth. Years from now intelligent design may indeed be a laughable idea and its proponents relegated to the dustbin of crackpot theories, alongside the Flat Earth and Marxist-Leninist “science.” But let's wait and see. It is regrettable that so much of the work in intelligent design is kept hush-hush. There are many scientists, professors, and biology students who keep that aspect of their lives a secret, for fear of ruining their careers with a careless phrase or foolish affiliation with a controversial organization like the Discovery Institute. The cases of Rick Sternberg, Roger DeHart, Jonathan Wells, and others seem to indicate that their careers would, indeed, be at the very least adversely affected were they to come out of the closet. Which brings us to a very simple question: If the evidence is so strongly in favor of evolution, and if intelligent design is so clearly wrong, what is the Darwinian establishment afraid of? Tristan Abbey is the director of the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center (www.idurc.org).
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