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Over the weekend, a New York Times series on Intelligent Design highlighted a rift between Intelligent Design (ID) advocates and grassroots creationists. Although the series mostly discusses ID, its proponents, and its critics, it also shows Intelligent Design advocates attempting to distance their theory from creationism.

In Sunday's article, the Times reporter Jodi Wilgoren writes that this summer's debate over intelligent design and evolution in Kansas's science curriculum exposed the differences between grassroots activists and ID theorists. "John Calvert, the managing director of the Intelligent Design Network, based in Kansas, said the [Discovery] Institute had the intellectual and financial resources to 'lead the [ID] movement' but was 'more cautious' than he would like. 'They want to avoid the discussion of religion because that detracts from the focus on the science,' he said."

The Discovery Institute, which is the driving force behind research on Intelligent Design, does not support teaching ID in public schools. After a conservative majority on the Kansas board of education decided to drop references to evolution in the state's curriculum in 1999, researchers at the Discovery Institute were appalled. "'When there are all these legitimate scientific controversies, this was silly, outlandish, counterproductive,' said John G. West, associate director of the science center, who said he and his colleagues learned of that 1999 move in Kansas from newspaper accounts. 'We began to think, Look, we're going to be stigmatized with what everyone does if we don't make our position clear.'"

Despite being called "fundamentalist Christians," ID theorists quoted in the article are portrayed as interested mostly in science. They doubt evolution, and they are attempting to provide an alternative theory.

But they are not yet ready for that theory to be taught in elementary and high school science classes. According to West, Intelligent Design is not advanced enough and there is no curriculum appropriate to teach the theory. So the Discovery Institute has opposed efforts to legislate the teaching of Intelligent Design in Pennsylvania and Utah.

The Discovery Institute "has tried to distance itself from lawsuits and legislation that seek to force schools to add Intelligent Design to curriculums, placing it in the awkward spot of trying to promote Intelligent Design as a robust frontier for scientists but not yet ripe for students," according to the Times.

This distancing of the ID movement from traditional creationism has been present from its beginning. "We weren't political," Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute told William Safire for his On Language column. "We were thinking about molecular biology and information theory. This wasn't stealth creationism. The phrase became the banner that we rallied around throughout the early '90s. We wanted to separate ourselves from the strict Darwinists and the creationists.''

Safire says traditional creationists took up the phrase Intelligent Design partly as a way of doing rhetorical battle against those who saw creationism as anti-intellectual. "Although the intelligent agent referred to is Divine with a capital D, the word's meaning also rubs off on the proponent or believer. That's why Intelligent Design appeals to not only the DNA-driven Discovery Institute complexity theorists but also the traditional God's-handiwork faithful," says Safire.

So while Intelligent Design proponents and evolutionists clash (according to another article in the Times series), other faith-informed scientists try to find a middle ground. Many scientists are speaking up, opposing the exclusion of God from science, reports Cornelia Dean. Whether or not these scientists oppose evolution, they refuse to see faith and science in opposition to each other. And they are beginning to outspokenly reject the view that science can have nothing to do with religion.

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August (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49