A review of Discovering Intelligent Design: A Journey into the Scientific Evidence
by Gary Kemper, Hallie Kemper, and Casey Luskin
When Hallie Kemper, a homeschool educator and science teacher, set out to locate a curriculum for intelligent design (ID), she couldn’t find one that met her needs. So she and her husband Gary, a former aerospace scientist and ID skeptic who had become a supporter after discovering academic and media misinformation on the subject, wrote one. Then they teamed up with Casey Luskin, cofounder of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center, to produce Discovering Intelligent Design: A Journey into the Scientific Evidence (“DID”) to fill the void in the curriculum market.
DID presents a current and accurate case for ID in a manner accessible to the high-school or advanced middle-school student. Section One introduces the theory of ID and the reigning competitor theory, Darwinian evolution. It also presents the scientific methodologies employed to arrive at each and, in the case of Darwinian evolution, the inherent (but often unstated) philosophical presupposition of metaphysical naturalism or materialism—the belief that matter and energy are all that exists. This section also introduces four basic critical-thinking skills required for evaluating alternative theories, not just as a matter of scientific inquiry, but in any investigative pursuit of truth: (1) Question assumptions; (2) demand evidence; (3) define terms; and (4) seek the best explanation for the evidence.
Sections Two and Three present evidence for design from cosmology and biology. Central to both is the presence of complex, specified information, a hallmark indicator of the prior activity of intelligence. Section Four uses the critical thinking skills to examine both the evidence put forth for the Darwinian tenet of common descent (the belief that all organisms are related through universal common ancestry) and the various theories offered by Darwinists to account for situations where the evidence does not support common descent. Section Five summarizes all the evidence presented thus far and weighs it against seven foundational tenets of Darwinian materialism. The result is a cumulative, positive argument for ID based on evidence and sound, accepted scientific reasoning.
If ID is in fact a viable explanation for many aspects of nature, why does it meet with such fierce opposition from the scientific establishment? That is the subject of a full chapter in the final section on academic freedom, in which four prominent objections to ID are examined and rebutted. This chapter also packs a bonus educational punch by exposing and dismantling nine oft-wielded fallacies of reasoning employed by ID critics. There’s some added fun in that the critics are quoted in their own words. “People who are confident that the evidence is on their side,” note the authors with understated panache, “don’t usually struggle so hard to muzzle opposing views.”
It’s a good lead-in point for the final chapter, where the authors respond directly to the rote objections that ID is “not science” or “is religion.” Having made the case for ID over the preceding nineteen chapters, here the authors show how the reasoning used to do so passes academic muster according to accepted scientific methodologies.
An optional companion workbook and DVD round out the DID excursion into scientific literacy. Clips from the DVD are keyed to the textbook to enhance student learning. There will continue to be committed materialists who will not “leave their materialism at the science classroom door,” but students of DID should be well-equipped to identify obfuscation tactics and counter them with sound reasoning and supporting evidence. That is what science is all about, right?
This review first appeared in Salvo 27, Winter 2013