[Links to the main sections of this long report on the Centre for Intelligent Design are given at the bottom of this page. If you want to disagree, discuss, add to or comment on the research, feel free to do so on our community forum. That's what it's there for.]
Centre for Intelligent Design Strategy
We have absolutely no doubt that the prime objective of C4ID is religious, to undermine the teaching of sound science in the school classroom. Get them whilst they are young.
Intelligent Design was put together as a smokescreen to hide the religious intentions of its backers and was also intended as a vehicle to re-engineer society, through education, along conservative fundamentalist evangelical religious lines. It's a product of the US culture wars.
We also perceive it as “Truth in Science Mark 2” - a successor to the all-UK young earth creationist organisation launched in 2006. Truth in Science has, from day one of its existence, used Intelligent Design as a vehicle to undermine sound science education. This is only to be expected since Truth in Science consists entirely of young earth creationists. Despite grand claims, including its intention “to expose as charlatans” anyone that disagrees with it, Truth in Science is largely perceived as a monumental failure. It basically so mishandled its launch that teaching of creationism and Intelligent Design was banned from English schools. All it's managed to do is distribute two CDs and copies of one book to state school science teachers. It's taken over half a decade to do so. It has had no impact or influence at all.
As we see elsewhere in this report, though, there are numerous links between people involved in Truth in Science and C4ID.
What we think has happened is that some in the creationist movement, possibly including the Discovery Institute, have so found Truth in Science to be wanting that they have set up C4ID as an ostensibly “religion free” vehicle to undermine education. They could well fool many members of the public.
Unlike Truth in Science, C4ID has no fundamentalist pastors on board and some of the people involved are not young earth creationists. That's easy done, though, as all three people advertised on its web site, Messrs Nevin, Galloway and Noble, are members of the Brethren church which has no pastors. At least two of them are what elsewhere would be called lay preachers. They are their own pastors!
However, nothing on C4ID's two web sites suggest it is motivated by religious objectives or backed by religious activists.
Nevertheless, it looks possible that C4ID has a more radically different strategy than the failed Truth in Science. C4ID is based in Scotland, a kingdom which has traditionally been Calvinistic and therefore (perhaps) more open to the fundamentalist Calvinism and Sola Scriptura which underpin creationism and Intelligent Design.
Moreover, C4ID's President is a well connected Northern Irishman, resident within Northern Ireland – Norman Nevin. Belief in creationism is rampant amongst Northern Ireland's Protestants. See our reports, for example, on and Paisley's Party Backs Creationism in Schools. The province's largest political party, the Democratic Unionist Party, is basically openly creationist and has also had creationist MPs for years sitting in the British Parliament. Northern Ireland's Protestants are basically Scots-Irish and Western Scotland (where C4ID is based, in Glasgow) has long been the province's hinterland.
Truth in Science's launch in 2006 did not really affect Scotland, so the Scottish state education system remains more open to creationism than does its much bigger counterpart in England.
It therefore looks plausible that C4ID's strategy is to concentrate where it can have most impact – in Scotland and Northern Ireland – before moving on to attack education in England. Such a strategy allows it to spread scarce resources more effectively but, we must add, is not consistent with the venues of Michael Behe's November 2010 tour of Britain.
In terms of gaining influence, organisations like C4ID probably need to concentrate their resources not on universities (usually a waste of space as universities are essentially liberal) but on the seminaries and theological colleges. If they are Protestant, they are often open to creationism and Intelligent design. It's through them that the creationist pastors are turned out. The creationists now appear to control the Presbyterian Union Theological College in Belfast and creationism is now rampant in that denomination.
The most frightening thing we came across, though, when researching this report occurred at one of Michael Behe's presentations (in Leamington - see Michael Behe in Britain) on behalf of C4ID. A lawyer there, acting as minder to Behe, told us that the supplementary Intelligent Design textbook Explore Evolution was being promoted in Britain to allow children to challenge their teachers when the issue of evolutionary biology came up.
If correct, the intention is to get children to disrupt science eduction (at the serious expense, of course, of all other children). It's a strategy that works in the USA - some one third of children never get taught basic evolution biology because of intimidation by creationists in the classroom and elsewhere. Pulpit bullying extended to schools in other words.
Truth in Science has recently sent a copy of Explore Evolution to every public sector school library in the UK. (Most appear to have been immediately binned.) Explore Evolution has been separately published in Britain; the version differs from that of the US version, suggesting that the British creationists are very keen on it. The UK version has not been published by one of the big publishing houses - it's been published by Hill House Publishers, owned by a well known Intelligent Design advocate, Bernard D’Abrera.
Navigate your way around this report with the following links:
First Page: Centre for Intelligent Design Executive Summary
Introduction to the Centre for Intelligent Design
How Many People are Behind the Centre for Intelligent Design?
Timing of the Centre for Intelligent Design
Who Runs and Organises the Centre for Intelligent Design?
Professor Norman Nevin OBE
Dr Alastair Noble
Dr David Galloway
John Langlois OBE, Centre for ID Guernsey
Previous Page: Peter Loose
Current Page: Centre for Intelligent Design Strategy
Next Page: The Channel Islands Connection
Centre for Intelligent Design's Headquarters
Supporting the Show – Messrs Michael Behe, Steve Fuller and Geoff Barnard
Miscellaneous Intelligence
