Intelligent Design Movement

The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist campaign that arose out of the previous Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic creation science movement in the United States that calls for broad social, academic and political changes derived from the notion of "intelligent design." Chief amongst its activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this notion; the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high schools; and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it.

The overall goal of the intelligent design movement is to "overthrow materialism" and atheism. They believe that society has suffered "devastating cultural consequences" from adopting materialism and that science is the cause of this decay into materialism since science seeks only natural explanations. Science is therefore atheistic, they claim. They believe that the theory of evolution implies that humans have no spiritual nature, no moral purpose, and no intrinsic meaning. The movement's proponents seek to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution in favor of "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

To achieve their goal of defeating a materialistic world view, advocates of intelligent design take a two-pronged approach. Alongside the promotion of intelligent design, proponents also seek to "Teach the Controversy"; discredit evolution by emphasizing "flaws" in the theory of evolution, or "disagreements" within the scientific community and encourage teachers and students to explore non-scientific "alternatives" to evolution, or to "critically analyze" evolution and "the controversy". But the world's largest general scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has stated that "There is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of evolution." and that "Evolution is one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science."

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Teach the Controversy

Teach the Controversy is the name of a Discovery Institute intelligent design campaign to promote intelligent design, a variant of traditional creationism, while discrediting evolution in United States public high school science courses. A federal court, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis" due to it being the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community. An article published by the National Institutes of Health says that "99.9 percent of scientists accept evolution" whereas intelligent design has been rejected by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community. The Discovery Institute claims that fairness and equal time requires educating students about the alleged scientific controversy, and says intelligent design is a scientific alternative to evolution. The scientific community and science education organizations have replied that there is in fact no scientific controversy regarding the validity of evolution and that the controversy exists solely in terms of religion and politics.

The intelligent design movement (IDM) and the Teach the Controversy campaign are largely directed and funded by the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank based in Seattle, Washington, USA. The overall goal of the movement is to "defeat [the] materialist world view" represented by the theory of evolution and replace it with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

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