A new urban legend has sprung up and taken root. According to this legend, the concept of Intelligent Design was invented in 1987, shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that teaching creation science was unconstitutional. Ken Miller told this tale in his recent presentation, likening it to a shrewd marketing technique. What gives the tale traction is the analysis of the textbook, Pandas and People. As bipod explained, "As evidence that intelligent design is nothing but creationism, they point to some early drafts of Pandas and People that contained creationist wording rather than intelligent design wording. Those are facts. What's the interpretation? Of course, it must mean that intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo. We all knew that already, now didn't we?" Bipod also lays out a potent critique of this interpretation and I shed some more light here. Nevertheless, since the tale is too juicy and useful, we should expect it to persist as long as ID is primarily expressed in socio-political terms.

Yet my experience with hundreds of critics over the years has taught me that stereotypes, clichés, and conspiracy theories are recurrent themes among their complaints about ID (which is understandable, given that it is purely the politics that attracts most critics to this issue). Since the "marketing technique" explanation has the same level of intellectual sophistication as these other themes, might it just be another example of such an approach?

I did a little (albeit, limited) digging and have come up with another hypothesis that accounts for the shift in terminology and also better accounts for the "true beginnings" of intelligent design and its continued development.

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Krauze drew attention to a BBC documentary in his blog Intelligent Design on BBC's Horizon, to which I'd begun a reply that got way too long. So I'm posting this separate blog to make a point about the BBC's own claims about their documentary, and to tie that into psychological studies about the apparently innate nature of religious-type beliefs in the human psyche. First, some issues and questions about the BBC documentary:

The promotional blurb on BBC's 'Horizon' website betrays an ideological bias that obviously doesn't belong just to reporters, but indicts a certain segment biology itself, or at least indicts the way it's sold to the public. This sets up a historical review I'll post in this blog, and introduce the psychological studies in a follow-up post.

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On Exiled from Groggs, Paul has a review of BBC's documentary on intelligent design. A quote:

Of the three people speaking against ID, Miller (the American one!!) was clearly the most on top of the debate. Richard Dawkins made himself look stupid by saying nothing scientific at all "“ he is still holding the line that you can win a debate by not arguing (or rather, arguing against straw men, as he did in his own recent showcase programme). And David Attenborough showed his ignorance of the debate by failing to recognise that proponents of ID have little scientific interest in what the Bible says. He also failed to grasp the difference between being able to detect evidence for design (which is what ID proponents say they are doing) "“ which is a legitimate pursuit in many fields of science "“ and coming to a conclusion about the means of design. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that a pro-evolution programme in the UK pretty much has to have Dawkins and Attenborough, since they are pretty much icons of evolution themselves, the programme makers would have been better leaving their contributions on the editing room floor "“ they added little to the debate beyond showing that they were out of touch with the issues. Unfortunately, due to the power of television, most viewers will now inevitably think that Dawkins and Attenborough are personally involved in mortal combat with proponents of ID. If only.

We have a new blogger in our midst. Macht has blogged at Prosthesis about science, philosophy, and theology for the last couple of years, and we're glad he decided to come aboard Telic Thoughts. He will continue to write on his own blog, but will from now on also contribute here. We're looking forward to his contribution, and hope you are too.

Do you want to learn about the human metabolism in a hurry? It's easy: Go here and memorize the figure.

(With apologies to Monty Python and a hat tip to Andrew Rowell.)

You know, I really hate it when people just post a quote from somewhere, with little or no commentary. So I don't really know whether to be apologetic or self-loathing about the fact that I'm about to do the very same thing myself. But I'm pressed for time, and there really isn't much to say about this, except to say that I've blogged about it before. So here goes:

Kirschner and Gerhart propose that their new theory, "facilitated variation," provides an original solution to this longstanding puzzle of random genetic change. They show how the deep molecular biology of the cell actually fosters biological novelties when plants and animals need them most, not merely when random chance generates them. "The key is the way the organism is constructed, so that random genetic variation does not produce random phenotypic variation and the type of non-random phenoytpic variation is related to physiological variation, the kind of thing the animal uses every day to respond to the environment," explained Kirschner.
Darwin's Dilemma, my emphases

I've been too busy to blog lately, but I'm trying to allow myself at least one blog per week. The recent set of exchanges between Krauze and Jason Rosenhouse caught me eye. Krauze originally wrote:

In Ruse's terminology, evolution only gradually arose from pseudoscience, through popular science, before finally becoming a professional science in the 1930's. You could say that evolution evolved. Similarly, intelligent design has passed from being expressed in creationist pamphlets as a flimsy support for apologetics, to being expressed in popular science books. ID critcs often inquire as to why intelligent design still isn't doing any research, "10 years after Behe published Darwin's Black Box". However, they should remember the lesson taught to us by Darwin's followers: Big ideas take time."

Wow. Dems fightin' words. With extremism like that, Krauze may soon be trying to argue that not everyone who takes ID seriously is mentally ill.
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Unfortunately, I have to provide the disclaimer that I don't agree with everything Kurt Vonnegut says in this interview (no I don't think ID should be taught in science classes and no I won't tell you whether I' m a secular humanist or not), but for a sharp cultural critique…it is worth the listen.

Forward to about 4 minutes. Or, if you want to listen to a wise man, hear the whole thing.

A question to ask yourself: how much of your involvement in ID is tribal and how much is genuine interest and/or skepticism.

Jay of Ocellated has also reacted to my post about how big ideas take time, and although he has some nice words about the level of discussion here, he too disagrees with my post.

Unfortunately, Jay starts out with the misunderstanding that my claim is that "all that intelligent design needs" is time, but since I covered that in my reply to Rosenhouse, we can skip that. He argues that there are "notable differences between Darwin's theory and intelligent design", and proceeds to list three things that evolution requires to be true:

1. Inheritance or heredity - species passing on their characteristics to successive generations.
2. Variety or mutations - new features or characteristics arising.
3. Natural selection - differing rates of reproductive success for organisms better suited for their environment.

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The other day, I posted a cartoon, showing that some fear that intelligent design will destroy science and establish a theocracy. A commenter named "Aagcobb" said that it was just a "political cartoon", thus some exaggeration should be expected. Well, it seems that exaggerations are more common than I thought. Foyle from Verum Serum found this account of a recent conference on the religious right (and we all know that intelligent design is orchestrated by the religious right):

At one point, a speaker spoke about the need "to save democracy" from the "Christian Right," to which the audience broke out in applause. An associate professor of comparative studies equated the zeal of the "Christian Right" with that of "suicide bombers." A former Pentecostal minister gave a presentation titled, "Christian Jihad," while someone claimed to unveil, "The Real Hidden Religious Agenda: The Theocratic States of America." For those suffering under such delusions, evangelical Christians are indeed the biggest threat to America and the entire world for that matter.