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In a nutshell: How can an article of this importance completely ignore the scholarly labors of a mushrooming network of scientists at leading universities who have held important university-based symposia, and published over fifty books in the last decade?

It appears that we can draw a significant conclusion about defensive tactics. This "silent treatment" is how defenders of a creaking paradigm will act when it comes to the task of persuading the undereducated. Quammen's pedagogical strategy—a "dumbing-down" of the question of origins—simply sidesteps a half-dozen key flashpoints. Effectively, the ID Movement doesn't exist.

Quammen cannot be ignorant of Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box, or of his published responses to his critics. He probably is aware of Jonathan Wells' cogent criticism of the "classic proofs" of Darwinism in Icons of Evolution. Besides, the design-detection system, published by William Dembski in The Design Inference and other books, is now common knowledge among most evolutionary spokespersons, especially now that PBS stations across the US have aired the pro-ID documentary Unlocking the Mystery of Life.

Biologists may try to nurture the illusion that ID is fading, but publishing trends point the other way. Stephen Meyer published in August a pro-ID article in a refereed scientific journal (Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington), followed by a research article on proteins in another key journal by Behe and University of Pittsburgh physicist David Snoke. ID is not fading; it is advancing into crucial new territory: refereed technical journals.

Alas, National Geographic knows that it can never overwhelm the reader if such unsolved problems and blistering dissent are squarely faced. The late Stephen Jay Gould adopted the same approach in his tome, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, published shortly before his death in 2002. In the course of 1433 pages, he did not mention a single ID scholar or argument, even though he was familiar with ID, having attacked Phillip Johnson in print as early as 1992. It's the easiest strategy in facing scientific dissent: Act as if the dissenters do not exist.

There is an important lesson to be drawn from Quammen's concluding recollection of his visit with Philip Gingerich, a University of Michigan paleontologist. Gingerich is described as a "reverent empiricist" who "grew up in a conservative church in the Midwest and was not taught anything about evolution."

"The subject was clearly skirted," said Gingerich, yet that background helps him "understand the people who are skeptical about [evolution]." Now he finds the experience of discovery a spiritual one. The factual answers to his questions are in the "rocks of the ages."

Gingerich's church experience of "skirting the subject" of evolution is a tragic misstep of church leadership that need not, and should not, be duplicated today. An explosion of resources in this area have made it much easier for any follower of Christ to evaluate the issues of Darwinism and Design from all sides, and not from National Geographic's perspective that simply assumes that nature—all on its own—has the ability to craft the diversity and complexity of life.

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November (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48