Despite Criticism, 'Intelligent Design' Finds Powerful Backers

Aug. 10, 2005 — -- At its office in downtown Seattle, the Discovery Institute is pursuing a revolutionary mission: to convince ordinary Americans, opinion leaders and schools to consider an alternative to evolution that its advocates call "intelligent design."

The think tank is promoting an idea that all of the nation's top biologists say has no scientific basis. But the institute insists there's a raging debate among scientists on both sides of the evolutionary divide.

"When we find information embedded in DNA, in living cells, we think that we are looking at strong evidence for a prior intelligent source," says the Discovery Institute's Stephen Meyer. "The theory of intelligent design is that the appearance of intelligence is evidence of real design."

Though it seems like a new debate about evolution, Ronald Numbers, chair of the Department of the History of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, describes it as more of a sophisticated attempt by the Discovery Institute to reignite an argument settled during the 19th century.

"What they're really after is to bring the supernatural back into science itself," said Numbers, "So that the authority of science in the classroom stands behind this claim that evidence of an intelligent designer has been discovered through scientific means."

The idea of intelligent design itself evolved largely through a skillful marketing campaign that has promoted the concept of a controversy many scientists insist does not exist. In "Nightline's" own survey of the country's top 10 biology departments, the verdict was unanimous -- of the nine department chairmen who responded, all insisted no scientific evidence supports the concept of intelligent design.

But in opinion articles, books and high-gloss video productions alike, the Discovery Institute has suggested that scientists are, in fact, engaged in a raging debate.

"They've really in many ways won the public relations battle with a brilliant slogan," says Lawrence Krauss, director of the Center for Education and Research in Astrophysics at Case Western University. "It implies there is a controversy when in fact in science, there's no controversy.