Creation science As an undergraduate, Meyer had been "quite comfortable accepting the standard evolutionary story, although I put a bit of a theistic spin on it – that (evolution) is how God operated", but during his work with ARCO in Dallas, he was influenced by a conference: "I remember being especially fascinated with the origins debate at this conference. It impressed me to see that scientists who had always accepted the standard evolutionary story were now defending a theistic belief, not on the basis that it makes them feel good or provides some form of subjective contentment, but because the scientific evidence suggests an activity of mind that is beyond nature. I was really taken with this." Meyer became part of Thaxton's circle, and joined the debate with two articles published in March 1986: in one, he discussed ''The Mystery of Life's Origin'' which Thaxton had recently co-authored, commenting that the book had "done well to intimate that 'we are not alone.' Only revelation can now identify the Who that is with us." The other article discussed the 1981
McLean v. Arkansas and 1985
Aguillard v. Treen district court case rulings that teaching
creation science in public schools was unconstitutional as creationism originated in religious conviction, and its reliance on "tenets of faith" implied it was not scientific. Meyer argued that modern scientific method equally relied on "foundational assumptions" based on faith in
naturalism, which "assumed all events to be exclusively the result of physical or natural causes", so on the definition used in the court cases "science itself does not qualify as legitimate science". He proposed that "scientists and philosophers" could turn to
Biblical presupposition to explain "the ultimate source of human reason, the existence of a real and uniformly ordered universe, and the ability present in a creative and ordered human intellect to know that universe. Both the Old and New Testaments define these relationships such that the presuppositional base necessary to modern science is not only explicable but also meaningful." Meyer's argument on
epistemological presuppositions and accusation that evolution is based on an assumption of naturalism became central to the design movement. At the
University of Cambridge in England, he met theology student
Mark Labberton. In the Fall of 1987 Labberton introduced Meyer to
Phillip E. Johnson who was on a
sabbatical at
University College London, and having become "obsessed with evolution" had begun writing a book on what he saw as its problems. Meyer says "We walked around Cambridge kicking the pea gravel and talking over all the issues." An article co-authored by Meyer and Thaxton published on 27 December 1987 asserted that "human rights depend upon the Creator who made man with dignity, not upon the state." They contrasted this with "purely material, scientific" ideas which equated humans to animals, and restated their central thesis that "Only if man is (in fact) a product of special Divine purposes can his claim to distinctive or intrinsic dignity be sustained." The terminology and concepts later featured in the
Wedge strategy and
theistic realism.
Intelligent design After the 1987
Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court ruling affirmed the
Aguillard v. Treen decision against teaching
creation science,
Thaxton as academic editor of
Of Pandas and People adopted
intelligent design wording. Meyer recalls the term coming up at a June 1988 conference in Tacoma organised by Thaxton, who "referred to a theory that the presence of DNA in a living cell is evidence of a designing intelligence."
Phillip E. Johnson was drafting a book arguing against
naturalism as the basis for evolutionary science, and Meyer brought a copy of the manuscript to the conference. He met
Paul A. Nelson who found it exciting to read, and the two collaborated on a joint project. Needing a mathematician, they contacted
Dembski in 1991. Thaxton has described Meyer as "kind of like" a
Johnny Appleseed, bringing others into the movement. Meyer became one of a group of prominent young intelligent design (ID) advocates with academic degrees: Mayer, Nelson, Dembski and
Jonathan Wells. Meyer participated in the "Ad Hoc Origins Committee" defending Johnson's
Darwin on Trial in 1992 or 1993 (in response to
Stephen Jay Gould's review of it in the July 1992 issue of
Scientific American), while with the Philosophy department at
Whitworth College. He was later a participant in the first formal meeting devoted to ID, hosted at
Southern Methodist University in 1992. Kenyon had co-authored
Of Pandas and People, and in 1993 Meyer had contributed to the teacher's notes for the second edition of
Pandas. Meyer was an old friend of Discovery Institute co-founder
George Gilder, and over dinner about a year later they formed the idea of a think tank opposed to
materialism. In the summer of 1995 Chapman and Meyer met a representative of
Howard Ahmanson, Jr. Meyer, who had previously tutored Ahmanson's son in science, recalls being asked "What could you do if you had some financial backing?" In 1999, Meyer with David DeWolf and Mark DeForrest laid out a legal strategy for introducing intelligent design into public schools in their book
Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum. Meyer has co-edited
Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2000) with
John Angus Campbell and co-edited
Science and Evidence of Design in the Universe (
Ignatius Press, 2000) with
Michael J. Behe and
William A. Dembski. In 2009, his book
Signature in the Cell was released and in December of that year. Meyer has been described as "the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)" by historian
Edward Larson, who was a fellow at the Discovery Institute prior to it becoming the center of the intelligent design movement. In 2004, the DI helped introduce ID to the
Dover Area School District, which resulted in the
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case where ID was ruled to be based on religious beliefs rather than scientific evidence. Discussing ID in relation to Dover, on May 6, 2005, Meyer debated
Eugenie Scott, on
The Big Story with
John Gibson. During the debate, Meyer argued that intelligent design is critical of more than just evolutionary mechanisms like natural selection that lead to diversification, but of
common descent itself.
Films and debates He has appeared on television and in public forums advocating intelligent design. Notably he wrote and appeared in the Discovery Institute's 2002 film
Unlocking the Mystery of Life and was interviewed in the 2008
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed movie. He has also been an active debater; in April 2006, he attended a debate with
Peter Ward, a
paleontologist from the
University of Washington who held an open online discussion on the topic of intelligent design in the Talk of the Times forum in
Seattle, WA. Meyer has also debated atheists
Peter Atkins,
Eugenie Scott and
Michael Shermer.
"Teach the controversy" campaign In March 2002, Meyer announced a "
teach the controversy" strategy, advocating that evolution is primarily politically driven, rather than scientifically driven. The presentation included submission of an annotated bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that he claimed raise significant challenges to key tenets of "Darwinian evolution". In response to this claim, the National Center for Science Education (an organisation that works in collaboration with the National Academy of Sciences, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the National Science Teachers Association to support the teaching of evolution in public schools) contacted the authors of the 44 papers listed, and 26 of them, representing 34 of the papers, responded. None of the authors considered that their research challenged any of the tenets of the theory of evolution. On March 11, 2002, during a panel discussion on evolution, Meyer falsely told the Ohio Board of Education that the
Santorum Amendment was part of the
No Child Left Behind Act and that the State of Ohio was therefore required to require the teaching of alternative theories of evolution as part of the biology curriculum. The professor of biology
Kenneth R. Miller replied that comments and not approved amendments in
conference committee reports do not carry the weight of law and that Meyer had misled the board of education in implying that they do.
Article in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington On 4 August 2004, an article by Meyer appeared in the
peer-reviewed scientific journal,
Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. On September 7, the publisher of the journal, the Council of the
Biological Society of Washington, released a statement retracting the article as not having met its scientific standards and saying that the article had been published at the discretion of the former editor
Richard Sternberg "without review by any associate editor". Critics believed that Sternberg's personal and ideological connections to Meyer suggest at least the appearance of a conflict of interest in his approval of Meyer's article. The journal's reasons for disavowing the article were rebutted by Sternberg, who says the paper underwent the standard peer-review process and that he was encouraged to publish it by a member of the Council of the BSW. A critical review of the article is available on the Panda's Thumb website. In January 2005, the Discovery Institute posted its response to the critique on their website. The
National Center for Science Education also called "the Meyer paper" pseudoscientific.
Claims of persecution Meyer claims that those who oppose the essentially unanimous international scientific consensus on
evolution are persecuted by the
scientific community and prevented from publishing their views. In 2001, he signed the statement
A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, coinciding with the launch of the PBS TV series
Evolution, saying in part: The numbers of scientists who question Darwinism is a minority, but it is growing fast. This is happening in the face of fierce attempts to intimidate and suppress legitimate dissent. Young scientists are threatened with deprivation of
tenure. Others have seen a consistent pattern of answering scientific arguments with
ad hominem attacks. In particular, the series' attempt to stigmatize all critics – including scientists – as religious "creationists" is an excellent example of
viewpoint discrimination. == Selected publications ==