Jonathan Wells (intelligent design advocate)

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John Corrigan "Jonathan" Wells is an author, a prominent promoter of intelligent design and an opponent of evolution, which Wells and other intelligent design proponents often refer to as "Darwinism."^[1][2][3]

Wells holds a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in Molecular and Cell Biology and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University. He is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.^[4].

In Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?, Wells argues that "Darwinian theory" conflicts with the evidence and strongly challenges the current presentation of evolution in public school science classes^[5]

Many of Wells views run counter to predominant scientific views. Wells rejects evolution:

"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 Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?^[6]

He also rejects the prevailing view of the scientific community that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).^{[7][8][9][10]} Both intelligent design and AIDS reappraisal are considered pseudoscience by the scientific community. ^{[10] [11]}

Contents 1 Background 2 Opposition to evolution 2.1 Icons of Evolution 2.2 Theory of Organismal Problem-Solving 2.3 Centrioles 2.4 Kansas evolution hearings 2.5 The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design 3 AIDS reappraisal 4 Publications 4.1 Articles in peer-reviewed journals 4.2 Books 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Background

After dropping out of school and driving a taxi in New York City, Wells was drafted into the United States Army, serving from 1964 to 1966. After returning to college (UC Berkelely), he was ordered to reserve duty. By that time a critic of the Vietnam War, he refused to report for duty, and was incarcerated for 18 months in the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Leavenworth, Kansas.^[12]

In the 1970s Wells joined the Unification Church, founded by Sun Myung Moon. Wells graduated from the church's Unification Theological Seminary in 1978 with a Masters in Religious Education.^[13]

He has written extensively on Unification theology, and since 1981 has taught from time to time at the Unification Theological Seminary^[14]. He then earned a PhD in Religious Studies at Yale University in 1986, and another PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994.^[13]

Wells has said that he was a developmental biology researcher as a post-doctorate candidate at UC Berkeley. His post-doctorate at Berkeley was an unpaid title arranged by former UC Berkeley law professor and father of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson.^[15] Shortly after receiving his doctorate Wells joined Johnson at the Discovery Institute.^[16]

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.^[17]

[edit] Opposition to evolution

Of his early student days at Unification Theological Seminary (1976-78) Wells said that "One of the things that Father advised us to do at UTS was to pray to seek God's plan for our lives." He has since gone on to describe that plan as "To defend and articulate Unification theology especially in relation to Darwinian evolution."^[18]

Wells has said that his religious doctoral studies at Yale 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."^[19]

Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church funded some of Wells' graduate studies.^[20][21] Wells has said that learning how to "destroy Darwinism," the term he and intelligent design proponents use to mean evolution^[1][2][3] which is opposed by Moon's Unification Church,^{[22][23][24][25]} 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. ^[26]

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.^{[27][28][29][30][31]} Massimo Pigliucci, having debated Wells, said Wells "clearly lied" during his debates and misrepresented his agenda and science.^[32] Moreover, Pigliucci wrote Wells simply does not understand some of the theories Wells tries to attack.The Discovery Institute has stated in response that "Darwinists have resorted to attacks on Dr. Wells’s religion"^[33].

[edit] Icons of Evolution

Main article: Icons of Evolution

In 2000, Wells wrote 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. The book's title is a reference to the famous picture "March of Progress." This drawing, by Rudolph Zallinger, was published in the Time-Life book Early Man in 1970 and shows a sequence of primates walking from left to right, starting with an ape on the left, progressing through a series of hominids, and finishing with a modern Cro-Magnon male on the right. A version of the drawing is on the cover of the book, and Wells describes it as the "ultimate icon" of evolution.

Wells's assertions and conclusion in this book, as well as in his other writings, are rejected by the scientific community.^[34]

[edit] Theory of Organismal Problem-Solving

In a 2004 paper in the intelligent design journal Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design, 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".^[35]

In the paper, Wells sought to apply this 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. This led him to centrioles. Since centrioles look like turbines under electron microscopy, Wells used the TOPS metholody to conclude that "if centrioles look like turbines they might actually be turbines".^[35]

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" and pointed out that where chromosomal translocations underlie cancer, "chromosomal instability can be traced to a mutation in a single gene".^[36]

[edit] Centrioles

Using the TOPS methodology, which assumes that intelligent design is true and "Darwinian evolution" is false, Wells revisited the issue of centrioles in a 2005 paper entitled "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?" in Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum.^[37] Wells's paper "assumes that [centrioles] are holistically designed to be turbines", and goes on to develop a hypothesis of how they work.^[38] 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."^[39] 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 and largley 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'."^[40] 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.^[41]

[edit] Kansas evolution hearings

Also in 2005, Wells attended the Kansas evolution hearings, which were boycotted by mainstream scientists. Wells said, "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."^[42]

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:^[43]

"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

Main article: 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. The book was praised by Tom Bethell, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science^[44], 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."^[45]

[edit] AIDS reappraisal

Wells, along with fellow Discovery Institute member Phillip E. Johnson, questions the mainstream scientific view that HIV has been conclusively proved to be the sole cause of AIDS and signed the The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis AIDS reappraisal petition calling for a "reappraisal of the evidence" for the connection between HIV and AIDS.^[7]

[edit] Publications

[edit] Articles in peer-reviewed journals

• Wells, J. Inertial force as a possible factor in mitosis Biosystems. 1985;17(4):301-15. - PubMed entry
• Larabell CA, Rowning BA, Wells, J, Wu M, Gerhart JC. Confocal microscopy analysis of living Xenopus eggs and the mechanism of cortical rotation. Development. 1996 Apr;122(4):1281-9.
• Rowning BA, Wells J, Wu M, Gerhart JC, Moon RT, Larabell CA. link Microtubule-mediated transport of organelles and localization of beta-catenin to the future dorsal side of Xenopus eggs. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1997 Feb 18;94(4):1224-9.

[edit] Books

• Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism: An Historical-Critical Analysis of Concepts Basic to the 19th Century Debate. Edwin Mellen Press, April 1988. ISBN 0889466718 and ISBN 978-0889466715
• Icons of Evolution. Regnery Publishing. 2000. ISBN 0-89526-276-2
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Regnery Publishing. 2006. ISBN 1-59698-013-3

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Jonathan Wells biography from the Discovery Institute
• Articles by Wells from the Discovery Institute
• Collection of Wells essays
• Wells hits a home run at Harvard
• Panelists Discuss Validity Of Evolutionary Theory at Harvard University
• FAQ on Wells
• Answers to Wells's 10 questions from National Center for Science Education
• A response to Wells hits a home run at Harvard
• Pandas Thumb's Chapter by Chapter analysis of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design
• New Mexicans for Science and Reason debate Jonathan Wells