Intelligent Design Creationism’s Fall from Grace

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Vocal.Media

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09

“The Act impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind.”

Supreme Court of the United States (Edwards v. Aguillard, 1987)

“Creationism, intelligent design and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science.”

National Academy of Sciences (1999)

“The lack of scientific warrant for so-called ‘intelligent design theory’ makes it improper to include as a part of science education.”

American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002)

“Intelligent design is not science. It is not testable, it is not falsifiable, it does not generate hypotheses, and it does not provide explanations for the natural world.”

National Science Teachers Association

“Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance. You cannot build a program of discovery on the assumption that nobody is smart enough to figure out the answer to a problem.”

Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson

“[Intelligent design is] not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one.”

Dr. Richard Dawkins

“…[intelligent design] fails in a fundamental way to qualify as a scientific theory [and is] doing considerable damage to faith.”

Dr. Francis Collins (Leader, Human Genome Project)

When I use the term “Fall from Grace,” I mean the profound loss of academic, public, and scientific credibility experienced by Intelligent Design (ID) advocates once their pseudoscientific claims were exposed (Jacobsen, 2022a; Jacobsen, 2022b; Jacobsen, 2024; Jacobsen, 2025). ID is a religious advocacy project framed as science. Essentially, it’s evolution or bust.

ID Creationism was a political movement intended as a social change agent through a vehicle of a pseudoscientific proposition, ID Creationism or adapted traditional Creationism (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2025a). This was documented through the leaked Wedge Document (National Center for Science Education, 2008).

It did not have much academic or intellectual cache in the first place, outside of religious believer circles, who are the vast majority of the proponents of this (Scott & Branch, 2002). It’s a broad-based advocacy effort primarily rooted in Christian theological commitments (National Center for Science Education, 2008).

Most proponents were, and are, well-educated Protestant Christian men (International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, 2013). Some exceptions included Dr. David Berlinski (2025) as an agnostic Jew, Christopher Michael Langan as a self-described “reality theorist” (Langan, 2025), and Muzaffar Iqbal as a Muslim (International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, 2013), and possibly others.

ID Creationism was an adaptation of Creationism. Creationism as a “belief that the universe and the various forms of life were created by God out of nothing (ex nihilo)” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2025b). Its main sophistications are two foundational ideas: Irreducible Complexity of Dr. Michael Behe, and Specified Complexity of Dr. William Dembski (Paradowski, 2022).

Behe defines Irreducible Complexity as a “single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning” (Behe, 1996).

Dembski defines Specified Complexity as “the condition in which something is both complex (i.e., not easily produced by chance) and specified (i.e., matches an independently given pattern)” (Dembski, 1998).

Both have been thoroughly debunked. Irreducible Complexity fails to demonstrate evolutionary pathways. Specified Complexity fails due to a probability miscalculation and lacks a reproducible metric. On the propaganda for Christianity and Theism behind a veneer of intellectualism, we can quote its intellectual founders, Dembski and Behe.

Dembski said in two separate instances: “The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God” (Williams, 2007), and “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory” (Dembski, 2019). Behe stated, “I think the designer is God. I’m a Roman Catholic.” (Paula Zahn Now, 2005). These eventuated in key, definitive court battles (National Center for Science Education, 2005).

In short, ID Creationism is Christian political propaganda framed as scientific dissent based on the statements and philosophical frame provided by its founders. A scattered few were drawn to the pseudoscientific ideas. Some individuals became associated with these ideas without fully anticipating the reputational consequences, or other unforeseen consequences. As a theology program, therefore, it’s culturally ministerial in nature.

Even within Christian communities, over time, many were able to distinguish ID’s pseudoscientific veneer from legitimate inquiry. Select Christian intellectual founders of ID Creationism were candid about religious motives internally, but publicly misrepresented ID as a secular scientific alternative.

Association with the movement carried reputational costs once its scientific shortcomings were publicly established, because its public claims diverged from the internal documents and were ultimately rejected as lacking scientific support. The Wedge Document was part of this spear (National Center for Science Education, 2008).

It was produced by the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (2025). The main claim is “scientific materialism” was corrosive to culture (Ibid.). They sought to replace this perspective with a theistic comprehension of reality (Ibid.).

ID positioned various ‘pressure points’ for challenging Darwinian evolution (Ibid.).The metaphor of a wedge was about a strategy to undermine the perceived dominance of materialism in culture and science (Ibid.).

They proposed three phases for this: Research, Writing & Publication; Publicity & Opinion-making; and, Cultural Confrontation & Renewal (Ibid.). That is, a comprehensive, phased project for theistic cultural influence.

They wanted to fund and produce scholarship, promote ID in books, conferences, mass media, apologetic seminars, trainings for teachers, and think-tanks, and to pursue legal strategies and then integrate ID into public school curricula (Ibid.).

The institutional and media leadership for this was Stephen C. Meyer, Phillip Johnson, and Bruce Chapman (Ibid.). Discovery Senior Fellow Dr. Stephen Meyer directs the Center, while its original strategy came from the mindset of the late Phillip Johnson and the media expertise of Discovery President Bruce Chapman (Ibid.).

They provided bases for metrics, too. They had five-year aims from 1999-2003(/4) and 20-year aims too. By year five, they wanted to have ID Creationism accepted as a valid scientific alternative to evolution via natural selection, to trigger major public debate, to publish 30 books and 100 scholarly articles, and then influence major public opinion and secular national media attention. These benchmarks were never met, underscoring the project’s ultimate failure.

By year 20, they wanted to make ID Creationism the dominant perspective in science and diffused throughout the arts, humanities, law, natural sciences, and public policy. Once more, none of these goals were achieved — they failed.

Even when trying to change the opinions of the public Christian community, who are pretty discerning over enough time and getting over in-group bias, they failed to change them much either. This reflects well on Christian communities themselves, who proved discerning enough to separate sense from non-sense despite initial in-group bias.

Other aims stipulated were the creation of fellowships, research funding, media productions, alliances, and the like. In total, about 60 individuals accepted fellowships through ISCID before the organization eventually became defunct.[1]

Per statement of Judge John E. Jones III (U.S. District Court) on if ID Creationism counts as science, “ID is not science… We find that ID fails on three different levels. … Moreover, ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents” (Wired Staff, 2006).

In the end, Intelligent Design Creationism lost in the courts, in academia, and in public credibility. It remains a cultural-theological movement, not a scientific one—an instructive case study in how pseudoscience falters when exposed to rigorous scrutiny.

Next, we will examine the outcomes of the ID creationists’ failed attempt to impose a pseudoscientific, religious metanarrative on culture, focusing on the intellectual leaders and for individuals involved in these core creationist or ID Creationism initiatives.

References

Behe, M.J. (1996). Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: Free Press.

Berlinski, D. (2025). David Berlinski. https://davidberlinski.org.

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. (2025). Center for Science and Culture. https://www.discovery.org/id/

Encyclopedia Britannica. (2025b). Creationism. https://www.britannica.com/topic/creationism.

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. (2024, January 22). Canadians and Creationism. https://in-sightpublishing.com/2024/04/06/canadians-and-creationism/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2025, April 1). How Creationism and Intelligent Design Undermine Canadian Science Education: The Trinity Western University Case. https://in-sightpublishing.com/2025/04/28/how-creationism-and-intelligent-design-undermine-canadian-science-education-the-trinity-western-university-case/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2022a, January 28). On a Mission for Never: Dr. William Dembski (1960-). https://www.newsintervention.com/mission-never-william-dembski/.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2022b, January 28). What was the Professional Output of Intelligent Design?. https://in-sightpublishing.com/2022/04/06/what-was-the-professional-output-of-intelligent-design/.

Langan, C.M. (2025, June 20). What is Intelligent Design?. https://www.megafoundation.substack.com/p/what-is-intelligent-design.

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. (2008, October 14). The Wedge Document. https://ncse.ngo/wedge-document.

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.

Scott, E.C. & Branch, G. (2002, August 12). “Intelligent Design” Not Accepted by Most Scientists. https://ncse.ngo/intelligent-design-not-accepted-most-scientists.

Williams, D. (2007, December 14). Friday Five: William A. Dembski. https://web.archive.org/web/20071217212817/http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000006139.cfm.

Wired Staff. (2006, June 1). Intelligent Decision. https://www.wired.com/2006/06/jones/.

Footnotes

[1] Those individuals who accepted a fellowship position were the following:

d’Abrera, Bernard

Behe, Michael J.

Bloom, John

Bradley, Walter

Broom, Neil

Budziszewski, J.

Campbell, John Angus

Carlson, Russell W.

Chiu, David K. Y.

Collins, Robin

Craig, William Lane

de Jong, Kenneth

Dembski, William A.

Discher, Mark R.

Dix, Daniel

Field, Fred

Gonzalez, Guillermo

Gordon, Bruce L.

Humphreys, David

Hunter, Cornelius

Iqbal, Muzaffar

Jackson, Quinn Tyler

Johanson, Conrad

Kaita, Robert

Keener, James

Koons, Robert C.

Kwon, Younghun

Langan, Christopher Michael

Larmer, Robert

Leisola, Matti

Lennard, Stan

Lennox, John

LoSasso, Gina Lynne

Macosko, Jed

Mallard, Bonnie

Mims, Forrest M. III

Minnich, Scott

Nelson, Paul

Palda, Filip

Peltzer, Edward T.

Plantinga, Alvin

Poenie, Martin

Puente, Carlos E.

Ratzsch, Del

Richards, Jay Wesley

Rickard, Terry

Roche, John

Ruys, Andrew

Schaefer, Henry F.

Schwartz, Jeffrey M.

Skell, Philip

Skiff, Frederick

Stephan, Karl D.

Sternberg, Richard

Tipler, Frank

Wells, Jonathan

Zoeller-Greer, Peter

See International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (2013).

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