Architects of Intelligent Design Creationism, Then and Now
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Vocal.Media
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09
“The ID movement itself recognizes that their view stands in opposition to science. One finds this not only in the leaked Discovery Institute “Wedge” document, which discusses overturning what they see as the anti-theistic assumptions of modernism, but throughout ID writings. I’ll just give a few examples. William Dembski writes:
The scientific picture of the world championed since the Enlightenment is not just wrong but massively wrong. Indeed entire fields of inquiry, especially in the human sciences… need to be rethought from the ground up in terms of intelligent design. (Dembski 1999, p. 224)
Another ID theorist, J. P. Moreland expressed the conviction that ID is not science by coining a new term:
If (naturalists) want to define science in naturalistic terms, then we can define a new term, creascience, that allows for the recognition of discontinuities in nature that indicate the intentional, immediate intervention of a first cause that resembles a person. Note, if God does not exist, or if he has never intervened in the world through primary causality, then science and creascience are empirically equivalent and equally adequate approaches to the study of nature. The main difference between science and creascience is that the latter allows for the possibility that primary causality has occurred and can be recognized, (Moreland 1989)
Here we see another conceptual link to creation science even in Moreland’s choice for the roots of his coined word. Whatever one calls it, IDCs themselves recognize that it is not science.”
Dr. Robert T. Pennock
“It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”
Judge John E. Jones III
“Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.”
Leviticus 19:11
“You shall not bear false witness…”
Exodus 20:16
These ethical admonitions from modern courts and their purported holy scripture frame the controversy. The first article in this newest series on the more sophisticated forms of Creationism, “Intelligent Design Creationism’s Fall from Grace,” gave the layout of the long-term failure outcomes of the Intelligent Design (ID) Creationism movement over the last several decades and then listed some of its key individuals (Jacobsen, 2025).
The ID movement, rooted in attempts to combat “scientific materialism” and guided by the Discovery Institute’s Wedge Document (National Center for Science Education, 2008), sought to advance a theistic worldview in culture, but failed due to its lack of testability and falsifiability (National Center for Science Education, 2005).
This article will cover the core architects and leaders, while the subsequent articles will cover the institutions and figures. The key architects are Dr. Michael Behe, Dr. William Dembski, Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Philip Johnson (1940-2019), and Bruce Chapman (Orr, 2005).
Dr. Michael Behe is a biochemist and professor at Lehigh University (Lehigh University, 2025a). He developed the concept of Irreducible Complexity (Paradowski, 2022; Behe, 1996). He claims certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved (Ibid.). He authored Darwin’s Black Box (1996) to describe this. He identifies the intelligent creator of ID as the Christian God for himself, as he is Catholic–while threading the argument ID does not necessarily endorse any particular designer (Paula Zahn Now, 2005).
His idea of Irreducible Complexity is thoroughly regarded as pseudoscience, heavily criticized and refuted by relevant major scientific bodies (National Center for Science Education, 2008a; Wells, 2008). He remains on the faculty of the university, but the department does not endorse the views (Lehigh University, 2025b). In the ID community, he remains a major figure (Discovery Institute, 2025a).
Dr. William Dembski is a mathematician and philosopher (Discovery Institute, 2025b). He formalized the idea of Specified Complexity in information-theoretic terms (1998). He argues certain patterns are too complex and specific to evolve (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2025a). He explicitly linked ID to Christian theology; he explained ID as Information Theory in the idiom of John’s Gospel (Williams, 2007; Dembski, 2019).
His ideas have been largely dismissed as pseudoscience (National Center for Science Education, 2008a). He is known as a historical figure significant in the Christian culture wars over evolution, particularly relating to science curricula and religion in public life.
Dr. Stephen C. Meyer is a senior fellow and director at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (Discovery Institute, 2025c). He has been a leading architect of ID. He directs DI’s Center for Science and Culture; the leaked Wedge document outlined the CSC’s strategy to ‘defeat scientific materialism’ and advance a theistic understanding of nature (National Center for Science Education, 2008b). A cultural strategy to advance ID in culture and science (Ibid.).
Meyer’s works have failed in broad and numbered peer-reviewed success, even when publishing in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in 2004; the paper was repudiated (National Center for Science Education, 2004). The journal clarified: The review process was mishandled and the paper failed to meet scientific standards (Ibid.). In addition, the scientific consensus against ID Creationism remains firm on it, i.e., its pseudoscience (National Center for Science Education, 2008a).
Other footnotes include the Kitzmiller v. Dover (2005) court case loss. ID has failed to produce a viable scientific research program. ID is known as being incapable of uncoupling “itself from its creationist antecedents,” not a scientific research program (Jacobsen, 2025). Supernaturalism lost; naturalism was not replaced in science or in culture.
Phillip Johnson (deceased) was a law professor and early intellectual leader of the ID movement (Discovery Institute, 2025d). He was associated in shaping the Wedge Document and its overarching strategy via the Discovery Institute to challenge–what they called–“scientific materialism” while simultaneously promoting a theistic worldview (National Center for Science Education, 2008b).
Johnson’s legacy became a failure to convince courts or persuade scientists, the Dover ruling blocking ID from classrooms, exposure of the religious core of ID via the Wedge Document leak, and the maintenance of a largely secular and naturalistic science in culture.
Bruce Chapman is the Chairman of the Board of the Discovery Institute (Discovery Institute, 2025e). He is another of the core figures promoting ID via public outreach and media influence. His media expertise has been instrumental in the ID movement.
Discovery Institute under Chapman is identified largely as a religious advocacy group commonly with internal perspectives as a public-policy think tank. Regardless, it lost any potential scientific credibility or scientific research program for ID.
Its association and identity as a religious advocacy group is firmly established, and, therefore, a non-neutral producer of scholarship. Kitzmiller (M.D. Pa. 2005) is a district-court decision (binding only in that jurisdiction) as a case in point, but has been nationally influential as a persuasive authority on public education policy.
However, based on the significant decades-long failures of these men and associated intellectual communities, ironically, their failures have bolstered secular and scientific advocacy.
The next articles will cover the Discovery Institute/Center for Science & Culture (CSC), ISCID/PCID (journal), Biologic Institute (DI-affiliated lab), Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), Access Research Network (ARN), and others, and associated figures.
References
Behe, M.J. (1996). Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: Free Press.
Dembski, W. A. (1999). Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology. Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press.
Dembski, W.A. (2019, September 14). Intelligent Design and the Logos of Creation. https://billdembski.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ID-and-the-Logos-of-Creation.pdf.
Dembski, W.A. (1998). The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities. Cambridge University Press.
Discovery Institute. (2025e). Bruce Chapman. https://www.discovery.org/p/chapman/.
Discovery Institute. (2025a). Michael J. Behe. https://www.discovery.org/p/behe/.
Discovery Institute. (2025d). Philip E. Johnson. https://www.discovery.org/p/johnson/.
Discovery Institute. (2025c). Stephen C. Meyer. https://www.discovery.org/p/meyer/.
Discovery Institute. (2025b). William A. Dembski. https://www.discovery.org/p/dembski/.
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2025a). Intelligent design. https://www.britannica.com/topic/intelligent-design.
International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (2013, January 23). ISCID – Fellows. https://web.archive.org/web/20130123000307/http://www.iscid.org/fellows.php.
Jacobsen, S.D. (2025, August 19). Intelligent Design Creationism’s Fall from Grace. https://afurtherinquiry.substack.com/p/intelligent-design-creationisms-fall.
Lehigh University. (2025a). Michael Behe. https://bio.cas.lehigh.edu/faculty-staff/michael-behe.
Lehigh University. (2025b). Department position on evolution and “intelligent design”. https://bio.cas.lehigh.edu/about/department-position-evolution-intelligent-design
Moreland, J. P. (1989). Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation.
National Center for Science Education. (2008a, September 9). American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002). https://ncse.ngo/american-association-advancement-science-2002.
National Center for Science Education. (2004, October 24). BSW Strengthens Statement Repudiating Meyer Paper. https://ncse.ngo/bsw-strengthens-statement-repudiating-meyer-paper.
National Center for Science Education. (2005, December 20). Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005). https://ncse.ngo/files/pub/legal/kitzmiller/highlights/2005-12-20_Kitzmiller_decision.pdf.
National Center for Science Education. (2008b, October 14). The Wedge Document. https://ncse.ngo/wedge-document.
Orr, H.A. (2005, May 22). Devolution. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/05/30/devolution-2.
Paradowski, R.J. (2022). Intelligent design movement. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/religion-and-philosophy/intelligent-design-movement.
Paula Zahn Now. (2005, November 25). The Debate Over Intelligent Design; American Girl Doll Ignites Controversy. https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/pzn/date/2005-11-25/segment/01.
Wells, J. (2008, March 26). Darwin of the Gaps: Review of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins. https://www.discovery.org/a/4529/.
Williams, D. (2007, December 14). Friday Five: William A. Dembski. https://web.archive.org/web/20071217212817/http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000006139.cfm.
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