Is ‘intelligent design’ on the cusp of overthrowing evolutionary science?

For many of us working in science, philosophy, and education (or a combination thereof), ‘intelligent design’ (ID)—the pseudoscientific theory that purports to be an alternative to evolutionary science and which has been unkindly but not unfairly described as ‘creationism in a cheap tuxedo’—has been out of the picture for the better part of the two decades since the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005 ruled that it was not science and thus could not be taught in US high school biology classes. In short, ID was of historical interest but not to be taken seriously.

Recently, however, its champions have been making noise and turning heads. Stephen Meyer, one of the original faces of ID, has been featured on The Joe Rogan Experience and Piers Morgan Uncensored and has even dialogued with Michael Shermer. All of this new publicity has been used by ID advocates to prove that it has never been more relevant. And that is the goal of the movement: to fight for relevance and be taken seriously by academics and those in authority.

Everyone who has ever met Dr Meyer says he is a warm, genuine, nice man. He may be mistaken in his views but is respectful and courteous to those who disagree with him (something that cannot often be said for the movement as a whole). As Meyer’s newest book gave the claims of ID more media attention, this May saw the return of the claim that ID is leading a revolution in biology. On an episode of Justin Brierley’s podcast, Meyer repeated the long-since debunked claim that ID had successfully predicted that junk DNA was not junk at all and argued that this gives further credence to ID’s capabilities as a scientific theory. Listen to the key figures from the Discovery Institute (the ID-promoting think tank which Meyer helped to found) and they will tell you that scientists are leaving evolution behind in droves—and that the honest ones are beginning to catch up with what ID has been saying all along.

If one did not know better—and many podcast listeners and church attendees may not—you would think a scientific revolution was underway à la Thomas Kuhn. But this is far from the case. The halls of biology remain silent on intelligent design. There is nothing to see here at all. The ID revolution is complete fiction.

When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, ID was mentioned twice. The first time was during an evolutionary biology lecture when the bacterial flagellum came up in discussion, and our lecturer asked if anyone knew why it had gained political fame (I knew the answer—Kitzmiller v. Dover¹—but only one other student had even heard of ID). The second time was in a genetics class. We were observing what one might call ‘bad design’ and my professor remarked that if nature had a designer, this was a case where they had done a poor job. That was it—in my postgraduate studies, it never came up at all.

In June, I asked a friend of mine, a world-class virologist, if—whether in her student or professional career—ID had ever been mentioned. Perplexed, she said not once. And this is the case with everyone I have ever asked. ID is not leading any revolution, and no scientist or academic I have ever met can ever recall it coming up. It could not be less relevant right now.

But two years ago, in a debate during an episode of Premier Unbelievable? entitled ‘Is Intelligent Design advancing or in retreat?’, the Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin claimed that the movement was advancing, gaining new converts, and had never been stronger. He mentioned a conference in Israel on evolutionary genetics that he had attended when marshalling his evidence. My first thought was ‘Why is a geologist attending an evolutionary genetics conference?’ My second thought was that one of my best friends had been there, so I asked him about it. His response was that ID was not mentioned once during the event.

Something is amiss here. The data does not add up. On the one hand, ID proponents claim that biology is about to overthrow Darwinian evolution and that scientists are turning to ID by the truckload. But in science itself, it is very much business as usual, and not a sound about ID is to be heard.

But it is actually worse than that for ID, because in biology an actual revolution is underway. The biological sciences are arguably seeing the greatest boom period since the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s. Consider that since CRISPR-Cas9 burst onto the scene in 2011, genetic engineering has undergone an extraordinary transformation, becoming cheap, easy, and accurate. Even since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2019 for discovering this revolutionary gene-editing tool, base and prime editing have made it even more precise.

Then there is cancer immunotherapy, which since 2018 has transformed the landscape of oncological treatment. It may well be the future of all cancer treatment as soon as costs come down, which is inevitable. Meanwhile, molecular biology has been transformed again by AI, with the CASP competition to build systems that accurately predict protein structure from sequence data alone seeing extraordinary success from AI-based entries. AlphaFold brought the accuracy of predictive results in line with experimental data from x-ray crystallography and cryo-EM, and AlphaFold3, along with its competitors, is set to transform the prospects of personalised medicine.

Gene sequencing itself has become quicker, cheaper, and more accessible every year since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. In fact, in 2016, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins sequenced the genome of microorganisms on the International Space Station using a handheld device, showing just how far the field had come. Genomic analysis can now be done cheaply in the field, with a handheld sequencer, on any organism, and the results can be expected back in mere hours.

And what is the word from ID proponents on these extraordinary developments in the landscape of biology? Nothing. The Discovery Institute promises transformational research (yet has no laboratories), boasts predictive science (yet has published none), and claims that science is now looking to design and purposiveness as explanations for biological phenomena instead of leaning on evolution—but seems not even to be aware of what is actually happening in biology during one of its most transformational periods ever.

This is not tremendously surprising, given that a glance at the Discovery Institute’s list of fellows shows that it is full of philosophers and theologians. Even among its scientists, some have published little or nothing. On the whole, ID is dominated by people who have never done a day’s scientific work in their lives. They speak of the ‘scientific community’ but rarely engage with scientists in world-class research. This is, sadly, only the tip of the iceberg, as ID continues to overstate its credentials and overplay its hand.

Do they have a case when they call evolution a theory in crisis? Not in the least. ID proponents could not be more mistaken in articulating evolutionary biology as a science that is rigid and stale. When I was an undergraduate, modern evolutionary biology was described to me as the ‘fastest growing science’ due to the advances in genomics and molecular biology and their associated data revolutions. It is very much a predictive science today, testable and measurable.

Besides, convergent evolution (something ID never talks about) is very much a grand unifying theory in biology, applicable to everything from genetics to medicine at every level. It is still as Theodosius Dobzhansky said over half a century ago: ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.’ Dobzhansky himself was a Greek Orthodox Christian, but because he was an evolutionist, ID advocates pay little attention to him. Dobzhansky is just another uncomfortable obstacle passed over in silence by ID proponents.

It is interesting to track those whom ID proponents acknowledge and those that they do not. ID arguments have not changed since the 1990s, no matter how many times they are debunked or how little serious attention they get. This is partly due to the distance between ID and real science, and partly due to ignorance. When proponents discuss ID on any platform, the same names are always trumpeted, as if being read from a script. First, the latest scientist with any publications who has joined their ranks (Günter Bechly will be named dropped a thousand times), then Thomas Nagel, Antony Flew, and anyone else remotely famous who has ever said anything nice about ID in the past 30 years. In doing so, ID advocates reveal that their arguments are empty veneers, utterly lacking in real substance. If the Discovery Institute was actually putting out research, had an active program, or was doing real science, then these appeals to authority would not be necessary.

As someone with a doctorate in philosophy of science, Meyer is certain to know the demarcation criteria which mark the scientific off from the non-scientific. Thus, great pains are taken by ID advocates to talk about active research and publication in journals (even if it is their own in-house journal BIO-Complexity, which they eagerly pitch to outsiders to publish in) while holding conferences and collaborating wherever possible. Falsifiability remains a problem, however. Whenever the latest example of ‘irreducible complexity’ is knocked down like their old favourite the bacterial flagellum was, advocates don’t seem persuaded of the falsehood of ID. Put simply, ID is not scientific.

There is also the matter of picking their battles. There is a reason why Meyer would talk to Michael Shermer: he is not a biologist, and he has a large platform. When asked why serious scientists don’t engage with their ideas, the responses usually boil down to conspiracy theories. ‘They’, the ‘scientific community’, are locked into ‘Neo-Darwinism’, and the powers that be, with their materialist agenda, are controlling science to their own nefarious ends: those masters at the gates control education and are trying to keep their dogmas alive. In reaching for conspiracy, ID evinces the dogmatism it accuses others of holding.

Recently the Discovery Institute opened a brand-new site outside Cambridge. When I discussed this with a biology professor at the university, he laughed and noted that businesses often try and build their sites in the area to benefit from the association with the university and its heritage. Artificially manufacturing illusory respectability by being a ‘Cambridge’ institute is further evidence of what is really going on here. If ID was really leading a revolution in biology, then none of this would be necessary. I have spoken with several religious scientists in Cambridge who are less than thrilled at ID moving into the neighbourhood. For them, it only makes their lives as researchers harder.

The picture is even uglier than this. In Hinxton, near Cambridge, you have the Wellcome Sanger Institute, home of the UK arm of the Human Genome Project. Next door is the European Bioinformatics Institute, home of AlphaFold and the finest of its kind on the planet. Over the motorway is the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology. All of these house dozens of Nobel laureates and pump out thousands of publications in major journals every month. And this is not to mention every other university-affiliated centre in the city, all home to scientists young and old who are changing the world. The Discovery Institute’s new site, rather than giving off an air of world-class credibility, exposes the contrast between ID and real science. Surrounded by giants, ID is revealed to be a pygmy.

To sum up: intelligent design has nothing to say about modern biology, and modern biology is certainly not talking about intelligent design.

1. The bacterial flagellum was cited in the trial as something ‘irreducibly complex’ and therefore in need of the ‘intelligent designer’ hypothesis to be explained. For more on ‘irreducible complexity’ and the bacterial flagellum, see Kenneth Miller’s detailed refutation of this old argument, once a favourite of the ID crowd before it was exposed by Miller during Kitzmiller v. Dover. ↩︎

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