by Kevin Hurley

ne of the most exciting things about science is its ability to initiate new and divergent thoughts that challenge existing views of how the world operates. Clearly, if there is any group of people who can comprehend the dangers of censorship and restrictions on academic freedom, it should be scientists, who have had to fight against those very things for centuries. Yet that is sadly untrue. Max Planck once wrote, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

This quote led to an interesting comment in the November/December 2000 issue of American Outlook: “No scientist with a career invested in a scientific theory is going to relinquish it easily. And a good thing that is! The only way to make headway with a theory is to be fully invested in it.” And perhaps no one comprehends this fact more fully than the author of that quote—Bill Dembski—who has suffered continuous attacks from scientists all over the country for proposing an idea that challenges Darwinism, the theory of evolution by natural selection. In fact, he lost his position as director of the Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor University for refusing to remain silent on this issue.

Dr. Dembski is an acclaimed mathematician who has developed and worked with mathematical formulas on a theory he calls intelligent design (ID), which tries to discern whether any particular set of facts thought of as random are actually so. It is easy to understand why Darwinists would see such a theory as a threat, and Dr. Dembski has therefore been unusually meticulous in testing it. On his own initiative, Dembski sent his book on ID to seventy scholars, before passing it over to Cambridge University Press for peer review, which it subsequently passed. (For more information concerning intelligent design, see Dr. Dembski’s article in the November/December issue of American Outlook, “Shamelessly Doubting Darwin” and the follow-up discussion, “More Doubtful Than Ever,” in the March/April issue.)

Despite this willingness to have his contentions widely tested, Dembski and his research have been subjected to intense ridicule or simply ignored. Fearing that Dembski’s insights will undermine materialist philosophies and bring back superstitious notions such as that of a Divine Creator, Darwinian scientists in particular have painted him as a priest in scientist’s clothing. But according to Phillip Johnson, professor emeritus of law at the University of California at Berkeley and an acknowledged leader of the intelligent-design movement, the goal of ID advocates is nothing more than “getting the right issues on the table for unprejudiced discussion.” This type of discussion is clearly what Dembski’s detractors are trying to prevent. When Baylor University president Robert Sloan fired Dembski from his directorship of the Polanyi Center, he did so not for academic fraud or even for Dembski’s theories failing to pass peer review, but for an alleged lack of collegiality.

Dembski’s crime? Sending out an email message announcing an independent review committee’s conclusion that his work has scientific merit and that intelligent design was a valid topic for scientific research. Dembski wrote, “This is a great day for academic freedom,” little realizing that he was about to lose his director position and the research center would be closed. Other statements from the “uncollegial” email included, “I'm deeply grateful to President Sloan and Baylor University for making this possible, as well as to the peer review committee for its unqualified affirmation of my own work on intelligent design. . . . Baylor University is to be commended for remaining strong in the face of intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression.” The only passage that could possibly be seen as uncollegial was the following: “Dogmatic opponents of design who demanded the Center be shut down have met their Waterloo.” Yet far more incendiary statements are, of course, perfectly common in today’s academic milieu.

Oddly enough, one of Dembski’s faculty detractors—Dr. Michael Beaty, director of the Baylor Institute for Faith and Learning—claimed that the removal was in Dembski’s best interests, despite his protests:

There also has been a suggestion that the removal of Dr. Dembski as Director is a sign that Baylor has succumbed to political pressure to squelch work on intelligent design. Nothing could be further from the truth. Having been freed from administrative tasks, Dr. Dembski will be able to devote himself exclusively to research, which arguably is the most valuable contribution he can make to design theory.

But this rationalization fails to explain why the Michael Polanyi Center was closed soon after Dembski’s removal. If Dembski’s firing were truly for uncollegiality, the university would have replaced him with a more personable colleague as head of the center, allowing it to continue exploring intelligent design—and thereby maintain its support of academic freedom.

Such blatantly unreasoning attacks on intelligent design and its proponents are coming at a time when Darwinism is looking increasingly tenuous. Scientific evidence is casting increasing doubt on the theory of natural selection as the explanation for the origin and evolution of species, and Dembski’s work is a powerful attack at the theory’s foundation—its assumption of the power of randomness. And it is not just religious organizations or believers that are challenging evolutionary theory. Secular mathematician Stephen Wolfram has discovered several flaws in evolutionary theory which will be discussed in his forthcoming book A New Kind of Science, disproving in particular evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould’s theories of natural selection. Wolfram has said, “Biologists have never been able to really explain how things get made, how they develop, and where complicated forms come from.”

But it is the religious implications of intelligent design that are causing the most consternation among Dembski’s peers. As Johnson was quoted as saying in a recent article for the Boundless web magazine (“The Meaning of Intelligent Design,” Mark Hartwig, www.boundless.org/2000/features/a0000455.html), “With the success of intelligent design, however, we’re going to understand that, regardless of the details, the Christians have been right all along—at least on the major elements of the story, like divine creation. And that, I think, is going to change society’s understanding of what constitutes knowledge, of what things are worth knowing.” That is something committed materialists cannot allow to happen without a fight.

Through all the controversy, Dembski has doggedly continued his writing and research, thwarting those who continually try to prevent him from being heard. Ironically, driving Dembski and his challenging ideas out of the scientific community would be far more damaging to the cause of science than any philosophical discomfort his theories might incite in hard-core materialists. Science, after all, long coexisted with belief in God, but it cannot survive the suppression of new thought.

Kevin Hurley is a freelance writer in Indianapolis.

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