It will not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the literature on "Intelligent Design" (ID) that it is has not been embraced by the mainline scientific community. In fact, it has been actively rejected as had "scientific creationism" before it. In the United States, major professional scientific groups such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, various disciplinary scientific societies, and the premier American scientific body of scientists, the U.S. National Academy of Science (NAS) have all negatively evaluated the concept.

Dr. Standish suggests that ID is "an emerging field of scientific inquiry." One wonders what and who he is talking about, other than the handful of scientifically-trained authors writing for general, popular audiences, who have employed the term ID as a new designation for what really is a very old approach to traditional Christian creationist apologetics. ID concepts and lines of argument have also been taken up by some whose motivation appears to have more to do with advancing certain conservative political and social agendas rather than addressing contemporary scientific concerns and issues. In this context, one side in the so-called "culture wars" seems to have embraced ID as a "wedge strategy" directed against what they view as the hegemony of "godless" humanistic values in the contemporary Western world, citing "Darwinism" as the cause of a whole host of societal evils.

The principal reason why ID is unacceptable to most practicing scientists is, at its core, relatively simple and straightforward. Dr. Standish even quotes one of the most compelling reasons. However, the explanation does not impress him, perhaps for the same reason that it does not impress Christian fundamentalists. It is, as expressed in "Science and Creationism: The View from the National Academy of Science", that "The job of science is to provide plausible natural explanations for natural phenomena." If anyone is seriously attracted to ID arguments, it might be helpful to consult the entire text of the NAS document. It can be accessed at one of the NAS websites [http://books/nap.edu/html/creationism/].

It is not entirely clear from Dr. Standish's discussion whether he understands the words, but does not comprehend the essence of the argument, or whether he just disagrees with one or more of the implications of the argument. Simply stated, the point of the quote is to insist that contemporary normative science is a way of knowing the natural world. As the NAS document further notes, explanations about how the natural world works "are limited to those based on observations and experiments that can be substantiated by other scientists. Explanations that cannot be based on empirical evidence are not a part of science." Thus, normative science limits itself to a materialist explanation of how the world works using empirical criteria. In more technical language, science employs methodological naturalism in dealing with the natural world. Standard science has a "naturalistic bias" in the same sense that Christian theology has a "supernatural and theistic bias."

There are some scholars--including some very distinguished scientists but especially those who deal with the history and philosophy of science--who have pointed out that science is "a way of knowing" not "the way of knowing." It is a way of knowing that is of relatively recent origin. Since it is a social and cultural construct, its pursuit is subject to all the vagaries inherent in any human endeavor.

However, unlike many other human constructs--for example, some religious or theological systems immediately come to mind--the scientific world view has been extremely successful and productive in accomplishing what it said it would do--understand how the physical world works. It is that overwhelming success that may have contributed to the tendency of a small number of scientists to talk in some popular contexts as if science is "the" way of knowing. It could certainly be argued that some widely quoted scientific writers--e.g., the late Carl Sagan--crossed the line between methodological naturalism and ontological naturalism, i.e., the view that the natural world is all there is. It has been observed that those few scientists that insist forcefully that science has demonstrated that the natural world is all that really exists exhibit some of the same personality traits as the most rabid fundamentalist.

Dr. Standish states that he is addressing himself to the "thinking Christian" not the rabid fundamentalist. A thinking Christian is an informed Christian in possession of relevant and appropriate data who understands the history as well as the sometime subtle implications of various points of view. ID is certainly not about "liberating science from a restrictive philosophy that constrains it progress." Science is already very liberated from the stifling effects of a restrictive theologically-based ideology. SDA creationism would very much benefit by being liberated from a restrictive fundamentalist-based ideology.