The other day, the Spectator gave a platform to Stephen Meyer, the intelligent Design guru, so he could make his case. They gave John Derbyshire the chance to reply. Most people shrug off the intelligent design people, assuming they are just the creationists with a different line of attack. Therefore only believers bother to read the arguments put forth by people like Meyer. If you read what this guy has to say, it is not hard to come away thinking these people are worse than creationists.

When writing in scientific journals, leading biologists candidly discuss the many scientific difficulties facing contemporary versions of Darwin’s theory. Yet when scientists take up the public defense of Darwinism—in educational policy statements, textbooks, or public television documentaries—that candor often disappears behind a rhetorical curtain. “There’s a feeling in biology that scientists should keep their dirty laundry hidden,” says theoretical biologist Danny Hillis, adding that “there’s a strong school of thought in biology that one should never question Darwin in public.”

The reticence that Darwin’s present day defenders feel about criticizing evolutionary theory would have likely made Charles Darwin uncomfortable. In the Origin of Species, Darwin openly acknowledged important weaknesses in his theory and professed his own doubts about key aspects of it.

In the Origin, Darwin expressed a key doubt about the ability of his theory to explain one particular event in the history of life, an event known as the Cambrian explosion. I’ve recently written a book, Darwin’s Doubt, about this in which I argue that the problem Darwin identified not only remains to this day, but that it has grown up to illustrate a more fundamental conceptual difficulty than he could have understood—a problem for all of evolutionary biology that points to the need for an entirely different understanding of the origin of animal life on Earth.

An interesting thing about the intelligent design people is they have an authoritarian mindset that is revealed in their habit of relying on appeals to authority. On the one hand, they rely on the Bible as their ultimate source of authority. That makes sense, as they are believers. They assume, however, that evolutionary biologists also rely on an authority as their god. The ID’er turn Darwin into a shaman or prophet, who they seek to discredit, assuming that will discredit the theory for which is best known.

The trouble is evolutionary biologists do not worship Darwin and are more than willing to point out his shortcomings. It is how science works. It is what makes Darwin a scientist and not a philosopher. He readily acknowledged his own shortcomings and gaps in knowledge. Attacking Darwin to discredit evolution is like attacking Blaise Pascal to disprove probability theory. A whole lot of work and a whole lot of people have built on and modified what Darwin started. Darwin’s shortcomings, real or imagined, are irrelevant.

The real problem with the ID’er is this. Let’s say they are correct and evolutionary biology is a dead end and self-refuting at that dead end. Let’s say the math of genetic mutation is so improbable that it cannot possibly explain the diversity of life. How does that validate Intelligent Design? One has nothing to do with the other. Intelligent design is built on a collection of logical fallacies. To argue that natural selection is invalid proves intelligent design is correct is a version of the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

Of course, the motivation is the argument from adverse consequences. Their particular brand of Christianity requires a more literal interpretation of creation. God created the heavens and earth just as we see it today. Natural selection says the current natural world is the result of random selection, along with other things like sexual selection. Therefore, if natural selection is true that invalidates their religious beliefs. Since they are not abandoning those beliefs, they can never accept evolution.

That’s really the irritating thing about these people. They are not honest. John is correct to call them liars. On the one hand, they swear they are not starting from a religious angle and are scientists like everyone else. Unlike real scientists, however, they make no attempt to prove their claims or even offer up a shred of data in support of their claim. Instead it is a non-stop assault on “Darwinism” as they imagine it. It really is the opposite of science when you think of it. It’s also fundamentally dishonest.