Arnhart provides an overview and critique of the ID movement, with attention to recent work by William Dembski and Jonathan Wells, and concludes much as he did in his Books & Culture piece. At some points Arnhart’s criticism is persuasive—as when, for example, along with many other critics, he notes ID’s failure so far to mount any sort of research program that would offer alternatives to Darwinian orthodoxy. Some criticisms misfire. For example, having summarized Dembski’s argument about analogies between everyday uses of “the design inference” (when we assess whether or not an event has occurred as a result of purposeful intent) and evidence for a “cosmic designer,” Arnhart faults Dembski for not specifying the precise manner in which the Designer has worked. But that is simply not Dembski’s brief, and his argument must be assessed on other grounds.
Much of this—much of Arnhart’s piece—will of course sound familiar to readers who have been following the ID debate in the pages of B&C and elsewhere. But one aspect of Arnhart’s treatment of this debate in the Salon piece stands out: the way in which he frames ID as an arm of the “religious right.” So for example he makes much of the fact that the Discovery Institute, which underwrites most of the work of the ID movement, is “led by conservative Republicans.” These are people, he warns, who see themselves as engaged in “something like a holy war” against the “corrosive materialism and atheism of modern scientific naturalism.”
In short, they are dangerous religious fanatics. You know the type. What will happen if, as they hope, they are able to exercise “some influence in the new presidential administration”? The consequences could be grave indeed. “American culture,” Arnhart writes, “has long, if somewhat tensely, maintained a balance among common-sense morality, democratic politics, scientific naturalism and biblical religion, but this kind of rhetoric can make the schisms in American society seem unbridgeable. It’s also unwarranted.”
What is entirely and bizarrely missing from this account is the context needed to make sense of the concerns of those who are troubled by “the corrosive materialism and atheism of modern scientific naturalism.” Such concerns, as Arnhart well knows, are by no means the exclusive property of “conservative Republicans.” They have been powerfully expressed by Pope John Paul II, among others. And of course, far from being the product of paranoid fantasy, such concerns have been a direct response to the insistent message from many of our most prominent scientists and interpreters of science that in fact science is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity and with religious belief more generally.
Now Arnhart may argue that these prominent voices of establishment science are wrong. They are not uncontested even in their own sphere. But to summarize the current state of play without taking note of their profound influence is to present a fundamentally distorted picture. In the past Arnhart has been more fair-minded. I hope he will be so again.
John Wilson is editor of Books & Culture and editor-at-large for Christianity Today.
Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere
Visit Books & Culture online at BooksandCulture.com or subscribe here.Arnhart’s Books & Culturereview of Consilience is available online for readers who missed it in the Nov/Dec 1999 issue. Other recent Books & Culture articles on Intelligent Design include:
Creation by Design | Is the intelligent-design movement asking natural scientists to work outside their proper focus? by Alan G. Padgett (Jul/Aug 2000)
Tower of Babel | The Evidence Against the New Creationism (Sep/Oct 1999)
The Unthinkable | A review of Paul Davies’s The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life by William A. Dembski (Sep/Oct 1999)
The Design Debate | Does “chance” rule out God? Does near-impossibility require him? by Michael J. Behe and Rebecca J. Flietstra (Sep/Oct 1998)
Christianity Today has also covered the Intelligent Design Movement and its controversies.
Salon.com’s “Assault on evolution | The religious right takes its best scientific shot at Darwin with “intelligent design theory” by Larry Arnhart first appeared Wednesday.
Larry Arnhart took part in an exchange with Intelligent Design supporters Michael Behe and William Dembski for the November 2000 issue of First Things.
Books & Culture Corner appears Mondays at ChristianityToday.com. Earlier Books & Culture Corners include:
Had Morse No Code? | Like much popular art, the finale of Inspector Morse functions like a dream of the collective unconscious. (Feb. 26, 2001)
Beware the Women! | A conspiracy theorist claims the church is becoming too “feminized.” (Feb. 19, 2001)
Return to the Father’s House | Touchstone magazine examines God the Father and human fatherhood. (Feb. 12, 2001)
What’s the University For? | In James Davison Hunter’s The Hedgehog Review, academics nibble on the hands that feed them. (Feb. 5, 2001)
Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary? | Experiencing Marian devotion as a Protestant (Jan. 29, 2001)
Opening the Mind of Science | Science Goes Postmodern, Part 2 (Jan. 22, 2001)
Science Goes Postmodern | David Foster Wallace creates math melodrama with his essay-review. (Jan. 15, 2001)
On Being Human, Part 3 | Did Natural History swallow an unscientific argument because it explained human experience in evolutionary terms? (Jan. 8, 2001)
On Being Human, Part 2 | Learning from information rather than instinct is often harder than it looks. (Dec. 18, 2000)
On Being Human | Natural History magazine celebrates a milestone. (Dec. 11, 2000)
Are You Re:Generated? | Inside one of the best religious publications on the planet (that’s not Christianity Today). (Dec. 4, 2000)
