Why is intelligent design so controversial that a Hollywood film has been made about the effort to silence the design theorists? Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein, is due for release in April. (Here's the trailer).

Logan Craft, chairman of Premise Media, tried to answer the question recently for Jerry Pierce of the Southern Baptist Texan: Design challenges the philosophical assumption that underlies biology today, namely that nature looks designed but really isn't. That, he says, is

... becoming more and more implausible. Science has become captive to an overarching philosophy of scientific materialism, and we believe science became captive to that predominantly through the propagation of the theory of Darwinism, especially the theory of Darwinism resting on its mechanics, which is random mutation, chance, and purposelessness in the complexity of the development of life forms.

Intelligent design, you see, goes right for the jugular and challenges that assumption, which then shakes the foundation which science has become captive to. If there is design in nature, it does beg the metaphysical question, does it not? If it’s design, is it nature itself doing this, or is there a designer? That’s what the Darwinists who are committed atheists do not like. They hate that.

Are Darwinists committed atheists? A recent study by Graffin and Provine found that

... of 149 eminent evolutionists polled, 78% were pure naturalists (no God) and only two were clearly theists (traditional idea of God). Some were in between these poles. The authors describe most of them as deists (some sort of divinity might have got things rolling but it is not God in any sense that Christians understand). The authors note that the level of advocacy of any degree of theism among evolutionary biologists is the lowest measured so far in any poll of biologists' beliefs. They described the vast majority of their respondents as "metaphysical naturalists", "materialists", and "monists". In other words, these are people who are serious about their materialism and atheism.

So challenges to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection - for example the ones you can read about on this site - are challenges to the basic philosophy of life of most evolutionary biologists. They react by making life difficult for ID theorists. Given that even the most gifted ID theorists have suffered organized persecution for questioning Darwinism or researching design, why do they bother? Why don't they just keep quiet? Guillermo Gonzalez puts it like this: “If you’re concerned about your career, be quiet. If you have concerns about the common good and the welfare of humanity, speak up.”

Mark Mathis, formerly a TV news man, is the line producer for Expelled, and I had a few questions for him:

Next: PART TWO: Questions? Real journalists ask no questions!

Next: PART THREE: Doubts? Real scientists never have doubts!