Expert Witness Report - National Center for Science Education

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ID creationism conference in 2001. 128 Moreover, he sees his mission in promoting ID as central to the preservation of Christianity itself: [Johnson] continues, “When we speak of God, Jesus, the resurrection, are we speaking of things that really happened or the things that occur only in a mythical land called religious belief? If the God of the Bible really is our creator, cares about us and what we do, then our culture has made a terrible mistake in turning away from this God because we haven’t just changed a religious belief, we have repudiated reality.” Phillip Johnson has made it his mission to correct that mistake and the wrong-headed thinking that led to it. He speaks all over the country, [and] heads the Wedge (an organization dedicated to promoting the Intelligent Design theory). . . 129 (emphasis added) William A. Dembski: Wedge leader and CSC fellow. 130 William Dembski traces his involvement in the ID issue to a college experience in which he shared his Christian witness with two seminary students whose faith, according to Dembski, had been shaken by their seminary’s instructing them that modern science had undermined the Bible’s veracity. 131 Although he believes that some parts of Genesis should be read figuratively rather than literally (a reflection of his status as an old-earth creationist), Dembski rejects human evolution in favor of the special creation of humans by God. 132 In 1996, he asserted, “I do believe that organisms have undergone some change in the course of natural history (though I believe that this change has occurred within strict limits and that human beings were specially created).” 133 Dembski elaborates in detail on his rejection of human evolution in an essay for the upcoming revision of 128 Philip Johnson, “The State of the Wedge,” delivered at the Darwin, Design, and Democracy II symposium, June 29, 2001, audiocassette. On file with Barbara Forrest. See also Forrest and Gross, Creationism’s Trojan Horse, 315. 129 See Perry, “Courtly Combatant.” 130 See Dembski’s Center for Science and Culture biosketch at www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=32&isFellow=true. Accessed on March 16, 2005. See also Forrest, Creationism’s Trojan Horse, ch. 5 and 9, for more detailed discussion of Dembski. 131 See Forrest and Gross, Creationism’s Trojan Horse, 293. 132 See Peter Smith, “Seminary Site to Explore Cosmic Designer Concept,” Louisville Courier-Journal, February 20, 2005, at www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050220/NEWS01/502200431. Regarding the age of the earth, Dembski says, “There’s no need . . . to challenge the standard chronologies scientists have assigned to these events (e.g., 12 or so billion years for the age of the universe and 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth).” See William A. Dembski, “Teaching Intelligent Design—What Happened When? A Response to Eugenie Scott,” Metaviews, February 22, 2001, at www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_teachingid0201.htm. Accessed on March 29, 2005. 133 See Dembski, “What Every Theologian Should Know About Creation, Evolution, and Design.” Dembski’s acceptance of changes in organisms only within “strict limits,” i.e., microevolution, is a reference to the creationist rejection of macroevolution. This rejection reflects the biblical view that God created “kinds” of plants and animals and that changes occur only within these kinds. 32
Of Pandas and People entitled The Design of Life: “[W]hen one examines the actual data and arguments, the case for human evolution becomes less obvious. . . . [O]ne can argue . . . that our common ancestor with Australopithecus africanus is more recent than our common ancestor with Australopithecus afarensis, and that this common ancestor, in turn, is more recent than our common ancestor with Australopithecus anamensis. But, again, this reasoning is based on the assumption that humans evolved in the first place.” 134 Like Johnson, Dembski sees evolution as a threat to religious, and specifically Christian, faith. He believes defending Christianity against “Darwinism” to be his task as a Christian apologist, as he stated in 2002: “The job of apologetics is to clear the ground, to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ. . . . And if there’s anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ [and] the free reign of the Spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view. . . . It’s important that we understand the world. God has created it; Jesus is incarnate in the world.” 135 In 2005, Dembski reiterated the importance of ID to Christianity in responding to criticism from YEC Henry Morris that ID, as Dembski paraphrased Morris, “was not faithful to the full Christian revelation.” 136 He defends ID as “part of God’s general revelation” even while asserting that “no one in the ID movement claims that ID is the Gospel.” (Dembski actually did, in effect, say this when he asserted that ID is the “Logos of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.” See IV. E.) Despite his declaration that ID “can be understood apart from the Bible,” Dembski then stresses ID’s value as a “ground-clearing operation” which, once it “rid[s] us of this ideology [of materialism], . . . opens the path for people to come to Christ.” 137 Finally, defending ID against Morris’s charge that ID is “ineffective” at convincing evolutionists of their errors, Dembski cites ID’s power to bring about religious conversions: “Take, for instance, the well-known former atheist Antony Flew, whose conversion to theism (albeit a weak form of it) recently made international news. What did Flew cite as a key factor in his conversion? Not creationism but rather designtheoretic arguments for the intelligent origin of life.” 138 134 See William A. Dembski, “Reflections on Human Origins,” version 2.1, August 18, 2004, 2-3, at www.designinference.com/documents/2004.06.Human_Origins.pdf. Forthcoming in The Design of Life (revised version of Pandas). 135 See Steve Benen, “The Discovery Institute: Genesis of ‘Intelligent Design,’” Church and State, May 2002, at www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5582&abbr=cs_. Accessed on March 15, 2005. 136 See William A. Dembski, “Intelligent Design’s Contribution to the Debate over Evolution: A Reply to Henry Morris,” at www.designinference.com/documents/2005.02.Reply_to_Henry_Morris.htm. See also Morris’s criticisms of ID in Jonathan Sarfati, “ID Theorist Blunders on Bible,” Answers in Genesis, February 7, 2005, at www.answersingenesis.org/docs2005/0207dembski.asp. Accessed on March 15, 2005. 137 See Dembski, “Intelligent Design’s Contribution to the Debate over Evolution.” 138 There is some uncertainty as to the precise status of Flew’s conversion, mostly because of Flew’s own uncertainty about what he currently believes. The point, however, is not whether Flew’s conversion is genuine but that Dembski attributes it to ID. See Richard Carrier, “Antony Flew Considers God—Sort Of,” Secular Web Kiosk, at www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369. Accessed on March 15, 2005. 33
Page 1 and 2: Expert Witness Report Barbara Forre
Page 3 and 4: added) Recognizing the need for sup
Page 5 and 6: The CSC has established partnership
Page 7 and 8: facilitate their development of the
Page 9 and 10: 2. Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gros
Page 11 and 12: movement’s leaders are the best e
Page 13 and 14: Rivendell Institute in New Haven, C
Page 15 and 16: evolutionists are trying to find no
Page 17 and 18: how this was done. In Christian Res
Page 19 and 20: first published in 1989 as Of Panda
Page 21 and 22: cannot claim that the possibility o
Page 23 and 24: master intellect.” 88 But there i
Page 25 and 26: The enclosed projections showing re
Page 27 and 28: verse when he calls ID “the Logos
Page 29 and 30: The religious loyalties of ID leade
Page 31: The belief that evolution is the so
Page 35 and 36: theory cannot be maintained apart f
Page 37 and 38: Stephen C. Meyer, Wedge leader and
Page 39 and 40: Meyer was attracted to ID because i
Page 41 and 42: Paul Chien: Wedge member and CSC fe
Page 43 and 44: or law. The so-called fact of evolu
Page 45 and 46: ID creationists employ the same ter
Page 47 and 48: Yet ID’s complete lack of scienti
Page 49: and getting the ideas expressed the

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