Jonathan Wells (intelligent design advocate)

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This article is about the intelligent design advocate. For other people named Jonathan Wells, see Jonathan Wells.

John Corrigan "Jonathan" Wells is an American author, a prominent promoter of intelligent design[1] who has devoted his life to "destroying Darwinism", which he describes as the theory that various species developed as a wholly natural process "without God's purposeful, creative activity."[2] The scientific community has been unimpressed by the particulars of Wells' biological theses, which they view as essentially a religiously motivated, weakly argued attack on the scientific consensus on biological evolution.[3][4]

In his book, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?, Wells says that evolution conflicts with the evidence,[5] and argues against its teaching in public school science classes.[6] Reviews describe the book as misquoting its sources and misrepresenting minor issues, basing its claims on a flawed syllogism.[7][8]

Contents

[edit] Background

After dropping out of college (where he was majoring in geology) and working as a taxi driver in New York City, Wells was drafted into the United States Army, serving from 1964 to 1966. After returning to college at UC Berkeley, he was ordered to reserve duty. Being by that time a critic of the Vietnam War, he refused to report for duty and was incarcerated for 18 months at the Leavenworth military prison.[9]

In the 1970s Wells joined Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. He graduated from the church's Unification Theological Seminary in 1978 with a Masters in Religious Education.[1]

He continued his studies at Yale University, and in 1986 Wells earned a PhD in Religious Studies there.[10] During this time he wrote extensively on Unification theology and taught from time to time at the Unification Theological Seminary.[11] Wells has written on the subject of marriage within the Unification Church [12] and has been called a "Unification Church marriage expert" by church sources.[13] Wells was on the Board of Trustees of the Unification Theological Seminary until resigning in 1997.[14]

In 1994 Wells earned another PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from Berkeley.[10] After receiving his doctorate, he worked at a position he described as "post-doctoral research biologist" in developmental biology.[15] Shortly after that Wells joined former UC Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson, father of the intelligent design movement, at the Discovery Institute.[16][10]

He is married and has two children. [17]

Wells now serves as a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, hub of the intelligent design movement, and at the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design.[18]

[edit] Opposition to evolution

Of his early student days at Unification Theological Seminary (1976-78), Wells said, "One of the things that Father [Reverend Sun Myung Moon] advised us to do at UTS was to pray to seek God's plan for our lives." He later described that plan: "To defend and articulate Unification theology especially in relation to Darwinian evolution."[19]

Wells stated that his religious doctoral studies at Yale, which were paid for by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, [20] focused on the "root of the conflict between Darwinian evolution and Christian doctrine" and encompassed the whole of Christian theology within a focus of Darwinian controversies. He said, "I learned (to my surprise) that biblical chronology played almost no role in the 19th-century controversies, since most theologians had already accepted geological evidence for the age of the earth and re-interpreted the days in Genesis as long periods of time. Instead, the central issue was design."[21]

Wells said that learning how to oppose Darwinism was his motive for seeking his second Ph.D. at Berkeley:

"Father's [Sun Myung Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle." --Jonathan Wells, Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D. [2]

Wells's statement and others like it are viewed by the scientific community as evidence that Wells lacks proper scientific objectivity and mischaracterizes evolution by ignoring and misrepresenting the evidence supporting it while pursuing an agenda promoting notions supporting his religious beliefs in its stead.[22][23][24][25][26] Massimo Pigliucci, having debated Wells, said Wells "clearly lied" during his debates and misrepresented his agenda and science.[27] Moreover, Pigliucci wrote that Wells simply does not understand some of the theories he tries to attack. The Discovery Institute responded that "Darwinists have resorted to attacks on Dr. Wells’s religion"[28].

Wells has written a large number of articles attacking evolution and defending intelligent design,[29] and is one of the signatories of the Discovery Institute's "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism", a controversial petition which the intelligent design movement uses to promote intelligent design by attempting to cast doubt on evolution.[30][31] He was one of the contributors to Natural History Magazine's 2002 debate between ID advocates and evolution supporters.[32]

[edit] Icons of Evolution

Main article: Icons of Evolution

Wells is best known [33] for his 2002 book Icons of Evolution, in which he discusses ten examples which he says show that many of the most commonly accepted arguments supporting evolution are invalid. Icons of Evolution has been called an "influential intelligent-design book."[34][dead link]

There have been a dozen detailed reviews of Icons, from scholars familiar with the subject matter, which have come to the consensus that the book's claims are a politically-motivated extreme exaggeration and misrepresentation of a scattering of minor issues.[7]

Scholars quoted in the work have accused Wells' of purposely misquoting them and misleading readers. Biology Professor Jerry Coyne wrote of Icons, "Jonathan Wells' book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: ... textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction."[8]

[edit] Theory of Organismal Problem-Solving

In his 2004 paper Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research in the intelligent design journal Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design,[35] Wells proposed his "Theory of Organismal Problem-Solving" (TOPS), which was intended to provide a mechanism by which intelligent design "could lead to new hypotheses and scientific discoveries". The idea is based on two fundamental assumptions, that "Darwinian evolution" is false, and that intelligent design is true. Rather than seeking experimental verification for intelligent design, TOPS "explore[s] what happens when ID rather than evolutionary theory is used as a framework to ask research questions".[36]

[edit] Centrioles

In the paper, Wells sought to apply TOPS to cancer and centrioles. Wells stated that "cancer is not correlated with any consistent pattern of DNA mutations, but it is correlated with abnormalities at the chromosomal level -- a phenomenon called "chromosomal instability", and that many researchers see cancer as a "centrosomal disease" rather than a DNA disease. Wells used the TOPS metholody to conclude that "if centrioles look like turbines they might actually be turbines".[36]

In response to Wells's assertion that cancer was a disease of chromosomal instability and not genes, Ian Musgrave, writing in the The Panda's Thumb replied that "this knowledge seems to have eluded most researchers in the field" ... "cannot have read the references he cites in this essay very closely" and pointed out that where chromosomal translocations underlie cancer, "chromosomal instability can be traced to a mutation in a single gene".[37]

Wells revisited the issue of centrioles in a 2005 paper entitled "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?" in Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum.[38] Wells's paper "assumes that centrioles are holistically designed to be turbines", and goes on to develop a hypothesis of how they work. [39] The Discovery Institute lists this paper as a "featured article" on their list of "Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design."[40] This has been challenged by History and Philosophy of Science professor John M. Lynch, who points out that Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum is edited by Italian creationist Giuseppe Sermonti, whose own book Why Is a Fly Not a Horse? is published by the Discovery Institute,[41] and largely publishes only research outside the general scientific consensus. Lynch said of Rivista: "While there may be interesting ideas here, there is no indication that they represent mainstream thought in biology. And while this might be an 'internationally respected biology journal' within certain (anti-Darwinian) communities, it cannot be considered so among the majority." and "the influence of Rivista, we see that - as one would expect from the above - the journal is of negligible importance at best ... in the case of Rivista could not reasonable be called 'internationally respected'."[42] The Discovery Institute's statement that Wells's paper is a peer reviewed article published in scientific journal runs counter to the testimony of intelligent design proponent Michael Behe in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District and the judge's findings and ruling.[43]

[edit] Kansas evolution hearings

Main article: Kansas evolution hearings

In 2005, Wells attended the Kansas evolution hearings, which were boycotted by mainstream scientists. There Wells testifed, "I became convinced that the Darwinian theory is false because it conflicts with the evidence." When questioned about the age of the earth, he replied, "I think the earth is probably four-and-a-half billion or so years old. ... But the truth is I have not looked at the evidence. And I have become increasingly suspicious of the evidence that is presented to me and that's why at this point I would say probably it's four-and-a-half billion years old, but I haven't looked at the evidence."[44]

Prior to the evolution hearings, in December 2000 after the Pratt County, Kansas school board revised its tenth-grade biology curriculum at the urging of intelligent design proponents to include material that encourages students to question the theory of evolution, the Pratt Tribune published a letter from Jerry Coyne challenging Wells's characterization in an article of his work on peppered moths, saying that his article appended to the Pratt standards was misused and being mischaracterized:[45]

"Creationists such as Jonathan Wells claim that my criticism of these experiments casts strong doubt on Darwinism. But this characterization is false. ... My call for additional research on the moths has been wrongly characterized by creationists as revealing some fatal flaw in the theory of evolution. ... It is a classic creationist tactic (as exemplified in Wells's book, "Icons of Evolution") to assert that healthy scientific debate is really a sign that evolutionists are either committing fraud or buttressing a crumbling theory." -- Jerry Coyne, letter to the editor, Pratt Tribune.

[edit] The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

In 2006 Wells published his second major book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, which was part of a series published by Regnery Publishing. The book was praised by Tom Bethell, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science[46], but was described by Reed Cartwright of Panda's Thumb as being "not only politically incorrect but incorrect in most other ways as well: scientifically, logically, historically, legally, academically, and morally."[47]

[edit] AIDS denialism

Main article: AIDS denialism

In 1991 Wells signed a petition calling for "reappraisal of the existing evidence for this hypothesis": that "HIV causes the group diseases called AIDS".[48] The scientific and medical consensus is that HIV is the virus that causes AIDS and the call has been widely criticized as having no real scientific merit and is known as "AIDS denialism"[49] or "AIDS reappraisal."[50] [51]

[edit] Publications

[edit] Articles in peer-reviewed journals

[edit] Books

[edit] References and Notes

  1. ^ a b "NNDB:Jonathan Wells", NNDB, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-12-28. 
  2. ^ a b Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D. Jonathan Wells. The Words of the Wells Family
  3. ^ "In order to advance his thesis, Wells has to convey the idea that "Darwinism" pits itself against traditional Christianity: to allow pupils to learn it is to give them up to atheism, decadence, liberalism and to lose the culture war. Note that Wells does not wage war against evolution. In fact, he is at pains to make it (somewhat) clear that he wages war against "Darwinism", which in context might sound like the sort of thing any sensible Christian would want to guard against. Unfortunately, Wells isn’t exactly clear what he means by Darwinism as opposed to evolution. Easily, one of the prominent faults of Wells’s screed is a pervasive confusion between terms. Words, like "Darwinism" and "Traditional Christianity", seem to mean whatever Wells wants them to mean for that specific sentence. In many cases words are used without regard for his own stated definitions and usually without regard to usage elsewhere in his book. There are several possible reasons for this confusion in terms. First, Wells confusion may be by design. I have argued elsewhere that creationists intend to confuse their audiences when they argue. Second, if you review the acknowledgements page, you’ll read how Wells used many authors to help him prepare this text. It is possible that Wells’s editorship was so insufficient that he allowed a term that makes up part of the book’s very title to have a flexible meaning. My suspicion is that there was both disparity between the understanding of key terms by different authors as well as an intention to confuse." Humburg, Burt (August 26, 2006). The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Review: Why Should Words Have Meanings? (Chapter 1). The Panda's Thumb. Retrieved on 2007-02-04.
  4. ^ "As I stated earlier, Johnson, Dembski, and their associates have assumed the task of destroying 'Darwinism,' 'evolutionary naturalism,' 'scientific materialism,' 'methodological naturalism,' 'philosophical naturalism,' and other 'isms' they use as synonyms for evolution." Barbara Forrest’s Letter to Simon Blackburn Barbara Forrest. March 2000. Quoted in Rebuttal to Reports by Opposing Expert Witnesses William A. Dembski. May 14 2005
  5. ^ "Biological evolution is the theory that all living things are modified descendants of a common ancestor that lived in the distant past. It claims that you and I are descendants of ape-like ancestors, and that they in turn came from still more primitive animals...much of what we teach about evolution is wrong. This fact raises troubling questions about the status of Darwinian evolution. If the icons of evolution are supposed to be our best evidence for Darwin's theory, and all of them are false or misleading, what does that tell us about the theory? Is it science, or myth?" --Jonathan Wells, Introduction, Icons of Evolution
  6. ^ "Several of them grossly exaggerate or distort the truth, while others are patently false. Yet they are found year after year in almost all textbooks dealing with evolutionary theory, and they invariably accompany other material promoting that theory. When someone points out that the textbook examples misrepresent the facts, Darwinists don’t rush to correct them. Instead, they rush to defend them." "Critics Rave Over Icons of Evolution: A Response to Published Reviews", Jonathan Wells, June 12, 2002, posted at Discovery Institute website, accessed August 13, 2007
  7. ^ a b Creationism's Trojan Horse, Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross, p 98. Reviews specifically cited include those by David Ussery, Massimo Pigliucci, Kevin Padian and Alan Gishlick.
  8. ^ a b Creationism by Stealth Jerry Coyne. Answers In Science, Tufts University.
  9. ^ "I eventually dropped out of school and drove a taxicab in New York City until receiving my draft notice in 1964. After spending two years in the U. S. Army, I transferred to the University of California at Berkeley. By then I was a critic of the Vietnam War, and when the Army called me back as a reservist in 1967 I refused. I was arrested by military police, court-martialed, and sent to Leavenworth. All together, I spent a year and half in prison." Jonathan Wells Then, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design website
  10. ^ a b c Jonathan Wells, Notable Names Database
  11. ^ Jonathan Wells (1997) Theological Witch-Hunt: The NCC Critique of the Unification Church, Journal of Unification Studies hosted at www.tparents.org
  12. ^ Marriage and the Family: The Unification Church Blessing
  13. ^ Unificationist Photos from 1997 and 1998
  14. ^ Board of Trustees Meeting notes posted at tparents.org, a Unification Church website
  15. ^ Why I Went for a Second PhD (1996). Retrieved on 2007-08-10. “I have taught embryology at a state college and am now a post-doctoral research biologist at Berkeley, writing articles critical of Darwinism.”
  16. ^ An Introduction to Intelligent Design Peter Gegenheimer. Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Kansas-Lawrence. Associate Professor of Molecular Biosciences. Lawrence KS USA
  17. ^ Jonathan Wells
  18. ^ Biography, Jonathan Wells Discovery Institute
  19. ^ Dr. Jonathan Wells Returns to UTS Cornerstone, 1997.
  20. ^ Know Your Creationists, Daily Kos
  21. ^ Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D - Jonathan Wells, from tparents.org
  22. ^ Mything the point: Jonathan Wells’ bad faith John S. Wilkins. The Panda's Thumb March 30, 2004.
  23. ^ Jonathan Wells knows nothing about development, part I PZ Myers, Pharyngula, January 24, 2007.
  24. ^ Jonathan Wells knows nothing about development, part II PZ Myers, Pharyngula, January 25, 2007.
  25. ^ PZ Myers is such a LIAR! PZ Myers, Pharyngula, November 3, 2006.
  26. ^ Whereby Jon Wells is smacked down by an undergrad in the Yale Daily News, Tara C. Smith, Aetiology, January 31, 2007.
  27. ^ Massimo Pigliucci. Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science (Sinauer, 2002): ISBN 0878936599 page 44-45
  28. ^ The Real Truth about Jonathan Wells from the Discovery Institute.
  29. ^ List of articles by Jonathan Wells, Discovery Institute
  30. ^ Kenneth Chang (2006-02-21). Few Biologists but Many Evangelicals Sign Anti-Evolution Petition. The New York Times. Retrieved on 2008-05-05.
  31. ^ Signatories of 'A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism' (PDF). The Discovery Institute (April 2008). Retrieved on 2008-05-05.
  32. ^ Intelligent Design?, Natural History magazine
  33. ^ Discovery Institute: Scientist Exposes Evolution’s Weaknesses in Politically Incorrect Book About Darwinism and Intelligent Design
  34. ^ "The new Monkey Trial - Salon
  35. ^ Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research Jonathan Wells. Discovery Institute, May 10, 2004
  36. ^ a b Wells, Jonathan (2004). Using Intelligent Design Theory to Guide Scientific Research. Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design 3.1. 
  37. ^ Musgrave, Ian (July 6, 2005). That’s another fine mess you’ve made Jonathan!. The Panda's Thumb. Retrieved on 2007-02-05.
  38. ^ "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?"
  39. ^ Wells vs tiny flies Ian Musgrave. The Pandas Thumb, August 9, 2006.
  40. ^ Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated) by the Discovery Institute
  41. ^ Why is a Fly Not a Horse? Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture.
  42. ^ Revisiting Revista Dr. John Lynch. Stranger Fruit, June 2, 2005.
  43. ^ Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District 4: whether ID is science
  44. ^ Wells testimony Kansas evolution hearings.
  45. ^ Letter to the editor Jerry Coyne. Pratt Tribune. December 200. Also available from the Pratt Tribune's pay archive.
  46. ^ 'Politically Incorrect' Series Takes on Darwinism and Intelligent Design
  47. ^ "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Review", Panda's Thumb, August 19, 2006. Retrieved on 2006-11-04. 
  48. ^ The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis
  49. ^ "some leading lights of anti-evolution Intelligent Design theory, including ID godfather Phillip Johnson and Moonie Jonathan Wells, have joined the AIDS denialist camp." AIDS 'Denialism' Gathers Strange Bedfellows Peter McKnight. Originally published in the Vancouver Sun, June 17, 2006.
  50. ^ Is It Science Yet?: Intelligent Design Creationism And The Constitution Matthew J. Brauer, Barbara Forrest, Steven G. Gey. Washington University Law Quarterly, Volume 83, Number 1, 2005. (PDF file)
  51. ^ "His personal peculiarities include membership in the Moonies and support for AIDS reappraisal - the theory that the HIV is not the primary cause of AIDS" Undercover at the Discovery Institute Beth Quittman. Seattlest, September 8, 2006.

[edit] External links

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