Wedging Creationism into the Academy

Academe, Jan/Feb 2005 by Forrest, Barbara, Branch, Glenn

Proponents of a controversial theory struggle to gain purchase within academia. A case study of the quest for academic legitimacy.

In 1999, William Dembski became director of the newly established Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor University, thanks to the support of Baylor's president Robert Sloan. The center was, as Dembski observed, "the first intelligent design think tank at a research university." As such, it fulfilled a crucial objective of the "intelligent design" movement, which aims to discredit the evolutionary sciences and to promote the notion that scientific evidence exists for intelligent design in nature.

Calling themselves "the Wedge," adherents of the movement are avidly pursuing a twenty-year plan to convince the public that intelligent design is "an accepted alternative in the sciences" and to promote "the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science." The sobriquet "the Wedge" reflects movement leader Phillip Johnson's desire to insert "the thin edge of a wedge" into "the ruling philosophy of modern culture." For Johnson, a retired professor of law from the University of California, Berkeley, the Christian gospel is what will follow the thin edge.

The group's plan, outlined in a manifesto informally called the "Wedge Document," involves cultivating "potential acadcmic allies," initiating "direct confrontation with the advocates of materialist science," and holding "challenge conferences in significant academic settings" in order to "draw scientific materialists into open debate with design theorists." Once ensconced at Baylor, a Baptist university known for its excellent science departments, Dembski was in a perfect position to advance the Wedge.

From its beginning, however, the Polanyi Center was embroiled in controversy. Baylor faculty members complained that Sloan behaved autocratically in establishing the center without soliciting their advice and consent. Moreover, especially in the science departments, faculty expressed dismay over the center's association with intelligent design, which they regarded as a thinly disguised form of creationism, likely to damage the reputation of Baylor's science and medical programs. A review committee Sloan appointed to address faculty concerns reached a conciliatory but lukewarm solution: the center was to be renamed, reconstituted within Baylor's Institute for Faith and Learning, and supervised by a faculty advisory committee.

In a press release, however, Dembski publicly celebrated what he called the committee's "unqualified affirmation" of intelligent design, gloating that his opponents "have met their Waterloo." Outraged, the faculty protested, and Sloan asked Dembski to withdraw his remarks. In a second press release, Dembski refused, accusing the administration of "intellectual McCarthyism" and Sloan himself of "the utmost of bad faith." He was removed as the center's director.

Despite this debacle, it is evident that the Wedge still envisions Baylor as a base for intelligent design. Dembski remains as an associate research professor, although he is slated to begin a new position at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in June 2005. His Polanyi Center associate Bruce Gordon remains as acting director of the Baylor Center for Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Baylor also hired two additional members of the Wedge, mechanical engineering professor Walter Bradley and philosopher Francis J. Beckwith.

Shortly after his appointment as associate director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor, Beckwith was involved in a controversy of his own, when twenty-nine members of the Dawson family complained that Bcckwith's views on church-state separation rendered him inappropriate for the post. Particularly troublesome to them was his affiliation with the Discovery Institute, the institutional home of intelligent design, which they described as promoting "the latest version of crcationist theory."

Smoke Without Fire

As the Dawson family recognized, intelligent design is the latest face of the antievolution movement, formerly dominated by "young-earth" creationists. Committed to a literal reading of the biblical book of Genesis, such creationists believe that the earth is about ten thousand years old, that species of living things were specially and separately created by God, and that speciation is possible only within biblical "kinds." Intelligent design, however, is not officially committed to such a literal reading of Genesis; in their assaults on evolution, Johnson and Dembski prefer instead to invoke the mystic language of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word." Learning from the repeated failures of young-earth creationism, subscribers to intelligent design-who include a handful of young-earth creationists-seek to distance themselves from the public image of creationism as a sectarian and retrogressive pseudoscience. They thus take no official stand on the age of the earth, common descent, and the possibility of macroevolution.