[Marxism] "Critique of Intelligent Design " book review

[Jim Ferguson]

http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/26/evolution-of-intelligent-design

The strange evolution of "intelligent design"
Scott Johnson reviews a new book that traces the debate over
intelligent design--and its anti-materialist roots.

February 26, 2009

THE RALLYING cry of the intelligent design (ID) movement is that
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "only a theory" and that
schools should "teach the controversy." They then go about attempting
to poke holes in this mere "theory"--ignoring that relativity and even
Newtonian mechanics are also "theories"--with little to show for their
own theory.

Every attempt to explain a presumably unexplainable adaptation by
evoking the theory of an "intelligent designer" eventually collapses
under the weight of research that shows the evolutionary roots of the
organism or its trait.

In spite of--or probably because of--the weaknesses of their
arguments, ID supporters prefer to focus on the "gaps" in Darwinian
evolution, no matter how small, rather than talk about the background
to their own theory. Many biologists who provide brilliant and
devastating critiques of ID tend to keep the argument on this ground
as well, reluctant to take on the philosophical implications behind
either theory.

There are a number of excellent books upholding the science of natural
selection and criticizing the pseudo-science of intelligent design,
but few look the philosophy behind the ID movement square in the face
and challenge it on those terms. Critique of Intelligent Design by
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York attempts to rectify
this situation.

The modern roots of the intelligent design movement lie in the 1987
Supreme Court ruling Edwards v. Aguillard, which ruled that teaching
Biblical creation as an alternative to evolution was an
unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The vague notion of an
intelligent designer--possibly but not necessarily a God or other
supernatural force, but not requiring a religious commitment to the
Garden of Eden or Noah's Ark--suddenly became the new theory of
creationists.

A creationist book in the making called Creation Biology was renamed
Of Pandas and People, with the word "creationism" crudely substituted
with "intelligent design" throughout, a fact that would expose the
religious roots of the ID movement in a 2005 trial.

An even bigger exposé, however, occurred with the publication of the
Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document"--an explicit multi-year battle
plan documenting the actual goals of the movement's leading
think-tank. Never meant for public eyes, this document was "liberated"
in 1999 by a part-time worker entrusted with copying it and his
tech-savvy friend who posted it on the Internet.

In one key passage quoted by Bellamy et al., we find that "The
Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture
seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural
legacies." Elsewhere, the document states that their goal is to change
attitudes on "sexuality, abortion and belief in God."

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SO IT is clear that the background and purpose of ID are religious,
but a further theme of Critique of Intelligent Design is the
anti-materialist roots of the ID arguments. These neo-creationists are
opponents of all of the obvious figures in materialist philosophy and
the scientific revolution such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and
Sigmund Freud. But they also have a particular bone to pick with
Epicurus, the ancient Greek materialist philosopher who was a
contemporary of Plato and Aristotle.

According to leading ID ideologue William Dembski, "All roads lead to
Epicurus and the train of thought he set in motion." Apparently, this
is a grudge going back many centuries before Christ.

ID proponents despise Epicurus because he rejected the interference of
the Gods as explanations of the material world and even had a crude
theory of evolution to explain the development of life. While he
avoided engaging in politics in favor of contemplating philosophy in
his academic "Garden," he admitted women and slaves to study as
equals--unlike other Greek academies. Karl Marx, who was impressed by
his philosophy, would later write his doctoral dissertation on
Epicureanism.

In return for his philosophical contributions, as Critique explains,
Western thinkers have attacked and downplayed the ideas of Epicurus
for centuries. Dante's Inferno "consigned Epicurus and his followers
to an eternity of torture in open coffins in the sixth circle of
Hell."

The Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas rejected Epicurus in favor of
the idealist Plato because Epicurus "denied that there is any
providence" and "held that the world came about by chance." Aquinas
also argued that the material world was directed by some
"intelligence...like an archer giving a definite motion to an arrow to
wing its way to the end."

The book provides a specifically Marxist perspective that the authors
employ in an attempt to avoid the traps of either ceding too much
ground to religious ideas (as they argue radical paleontologist
Stephen Jay Gould did) or simply retreating to a "crude atheism" that
dismissively snubs its nose at religion:

As a materialist, Marx opted not to invest in the abstraction of God
and religion. At the same time, he did not attempt to disprove the
supernatural existence of God, since that transcended the real,
empirical world and could not be answered, or even addressed, through
reason, observation, and scientific inquiry...[A]s Marx observed in
his Theses on Feuerbach, a crude atheism that sought to establish
itself alongside traditional religion "as an independent realm in the
clouds" had relatively little to offer. The critique of religion was
therefore socially meaningful only to the extent that it...[was]
rooted in "revolutionary practice."

Much of Critique of Intelligent Design discusses this centuries-long
battle between materialists and anti-materialists. Fortunately, even
though the book is more about philosophy than science and politics, it
is not an unreadable tome of abstract ideas.

Rather, this slim volume is meant as an intervention in the discussion
around intelligent design, giving a philosophical underpinning to the
debate in a way that most scientific discussions do not. The book also
provides a valuable and brief introduction to the history of
materialist philosophy and its detractors.

What is surprising is how often the book is able to show that the
battles against materialist ideas have invoked evidence of
"intelligence" and a "designer," much like the arguments taking place
in the classrooms and courtrooms today. The authors are quite
convincing in using this fact to make the point that these arguments
are not new not, are not going away, and are about even more than
whether evolution is taught in the classroom.

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Review: Books
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York, Critique of
Intelligent Design [2]. Monthly Review Press, 2008, 240 pages, $16.95.