Matt Donnelly, "The father of intelligent design" (2005)

The father of intelligent design

The modern ID movement didn’t begin with Michael Behe or William Dembski. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reminds us, it is the lesser-known scientist Charles Thaxton who, depending on your perspective, deserves either the credit or the blame:

Many of the arguments against evolution in a nationally watched lawsuit come from a soft-spoken retiree in Peachtree City [Georgia].

Charles Thaxton, 66, co-wrote two seminal books on intelligent design and edited "Of People and Pandas," [the actual title is Of Pandas and People] the anti-Darwin text offered as a resource for schoolchildren in Dover, Pa.

… "When we wrote that book, we had no idea what was going to be coming down the road following it," he said of "The Mystery of Life's Origin," a 1984 work published by Philosophical Library Inc. that introduced the phrase "intelligent design" into the contemporary debate and served as a touchstone for the movement.

Self-described creationist Phillip Johnson seized on Thaxton's book and in 1992, after many conversations with Thaxton and others, published "Darwin on Trial," which galvanized anti-Darwin forces under the intelligent design flag.

"He ... made public all these arguments about intelligent design, even though he is not a scientist," said Thaxton of Johnson. "I gave him the vocabulary."

… Thaxton was born in Dallas and attended Texas Tech. He then earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Iowa State University and studied at Harvard and Brandeis…

… He said he didn't expect it to displace Darwinism anytime soon and knew the debate would continue. "It's not going to go away."

For much more on ID, see these exclusive STNews.org reviews and essays from leading thinkers:

• William Dembski, “The problem with Darwinian solutions”
• Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross, “Intelligent design has distinctly evolutionary nature”
• Sean Carroll, “Biology’s third revolution”
• Michael Ruse, “Accessible ‘Endless Forms’ shows the evolution of evolution”

Pondering the utility of ID