Dan Dennett portrays Intelligent Design as a hoax in an Op-Ed piece in this morning's NYT. Toward that end he challenges the ID folks to go out and do the science they claim they are capable of doing. But, as he implies, it is not science they are really interested in at all, but public relations.

So get in line, intelligent designers. Get in line behind the hypothesis that life started on Mars and was blown here by a cosmic impact. Get in line behind the aquatic ape hypothesis, the gestural origin of language hypothesis and the theory that singing came before language, to mention just a few of the enticing hypotheses that are actively defended but still insufficiently supported by hard facts.

The Discovery Institute, the conservative organization that has helped to put intelligent design on the map, complains that its members face hostility from the established scientific journals. But establishment hostility is not the real hurdle to intelligent design. If intelligent design were a scientific idea whose time had come, young scientists would be dashing around their labs, vying to win the Nobel Prizes that surely are in store for anybody who can overturn any significant proposition of contemporary evolutionary biology.

Remember cold fusion? The establishment was incredibly hostile to that hypothesis, but scientists around the world rushed to their labs in the effort to explore the idea, in hopes of sharing in the glory if it turned out to be true.

Instead of spending more than $1 million a year on publishing books and articles for non-scientists and on other public relations efforts, the Discovery Institute should finance its own peer-reviewed electronic journal. This way, the organization could live up to its self-professed image: the doughty defenders of brave iconoclasts bucking the establishment.

For now, though, the theory they are promoting is exactly what George Gilder, a long-time affiliate of the Discovery Institute, has said it is: "Intelligent design itself does not have any content."

Since there is no content, there is no "controversy" to teach about in biology class. But here is a good topic for a high school course on current events and politics: Is intelligent design a hoax? And if so, how was it perpetrated?

It there a hoax here? Dennett also admits that "the idea that natural selection has the power to generate such sophisticated designs is deeply counterintuitive" and suggests that if you believe that design must have a designer or that a creation must have a creator, you are possibly subject to "a sort of cognitive illusion that you can feel even as you discount it." In the face of this observation, "hoax" sounds rather intentional and perhaps devious. Does this give the ID folks too much credit?

The Discovery Institute's famous Wedge Strategy includes, as the first phase, a set of goals for Scientific Research, Writing, and Publication.

Without solid scholarship, research and argument, the project would be just another attempt to indoctrinate instead of persuade. A lesson we have learned from the history of science is that it is unnecessary to outnumber the opposing establishment. Scientific revolutions are usually staged by an initially small and relatively young group of scientists who are not blinded by the prevailing prejudices and who are able to do creative work at the pressure points, that is, on those critical issues upon which whole systems of thought hinge. So, in Phase I we are supporting vital witting and research at the sites most likely to crack the materialist edifice.

Notice, however, that it is the "materialist edifice" that they want to reject, not some particular theory about macro-evolution, or the origin of life, or the nature of DNA. In fact, they are quite explicit about this.

Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature.

Although this carefully drafted public relations strategy for overthrowing materialism looks like the perpetration of a hoax, we must assume that they sincerely believe that materialism is false and that evolutionary theory (or some of part of it) is an essential component of this materialism. They are wrong about all this, but that doesn't add up to a hoax. They may be subject to a cognitive illusion. And they may be engaged in the systematically poor reasoning that often attends a defense of what we most passionately believe. The illusion and the poor reasoning are what interest me. I suspect we would find interesting evolutionary and neuroscientific explanations for these phenomena.

So, what of Dennett's challenge? Is the idea that IDers should actually try to do science, fail, and then, perhaps through some resulting cognitive dissonance, reject ID? Or will their repeated failures reveal them to be the hucksters they are, embarrasing them into a confession of their guilt? Not likely. Dennett's challenge only makes the scientists happier by highlighting what they already know: ID is not science.

The better response is to do what Dennett already, and regularly, does so well: use the best available science to reveal the mechanisms that underlie the processes behind the cognitive illusions and the faulty reasoning that supports these false conclusions. And, with a rich array of thought experiments, examples, metaphors and arguments, challenge the most basic intuitions that drive the thinking behind the ID position.

Show Me the Science - New York Times

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