How does Jerry Coyne show that intelligent design fails scientific tests, and why does religiosity predict resistance to evolution?
Jerry Coyne is an American evolutionary biologist and emeritus professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. A Harvard Ph.D. graduate under Richard Lewontin, Coyne is known for his speciation and evolutionary genetics research, focusing on Drosophila. He is a prominent public advocate for evolution, best known for his bestselling book Why Evolution Is True (2009) and Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible(2015). Coyne critiques creationism and intelligent design and maintains the influential “Why Evolution Is True“ blog. His work emphasizes the conflict between science and religious ideologies.
Coyne recounts how the 2005 Dover trial drew him into analyzing intelligent design, leading him to study Michael Behe, William Dembski, and the Discovery Institute. He argues intelligent design is religion styled as science and legally untenable. Coyne explains that resistance to evolution stems from religious commitments, not evidence, and that critiquing creationism is inseparable from presenting evolutionary facts. He praises Judge John E. Jones III’s ruling, reflects on H. L. Mencken’s acerbic legacy, and assesses pushback, from U.S. courts to Adnan Oktar. Coyne honors Daniel Dennett while affirming science and religion remain fundamentally incompatible.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with prominent humanist Jerry Coyne, who has done an outstanding job combating creationism, intelligent design, and related issues. Here’s a question: What was your first encounter with intelligent design and creationism and their assertions about the origin and evolution of life?
Prof. Jerry Coyne: It was around the time the Dover trial began. That was in 2005 when the book Of Pandas and People, an intelligent design textbook, was used in the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania. I had been battling creationism for a long time, ever since I started teaching evolution in the mid-1980s. Still, I hadn’t paid much attention to intelligent design. Suddenly, it was all over the news, and a significant trial was underway—the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case.
I started reading up on it. I read Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box, followed by other works by William Dembski and other proponents of intelligent design. That’s how I educated myself on the subject. Although I use the word “educated” loosely, I don’t think there’s much genuine knowledge there. That’s how I learned about it. Soon after, I began writing on the topic. I wrote a comprehensive piece for The New Republic, which gained significant attention, and then I covered the trial for them.
I didn’t participate in the trial itself; they reserved participation for religious scientists to make a better impression, allowing them to say, “Yes, I believe in God, but I also accept evolution.” So, I wasn’t directly involved in the trial. I was pleased when Judge John E. Jones III issued his decision, stating that intelligent design is not science, which is true. His ruling was thorough and eloquent.
Jacobsen: This issue has a long and contentious legal history concerning creationism and teaching evolution in schools in the United States. My first introduction to this history was likely reading H. L. Mencken’s commentary on the Scopes Trial, which took place in 1925. His observations were sharp, intelligent, sarcastic, and sometimes mean-spirited. Still, disregarding the mean part, he was an astute observer of the trial’s conditions.
Coyne: They don’t write like that anymore. You rarely see journalists willing to be as ascerbic as Mencken. I’m an admirer of Mencken, too.
Jacobsen: So, when considering the legal history of science versus religious ideology in the U.S. court systems, why does this issue remain resolved in court rather than public opinion?
The reason is simple: it’s all about religion. As Jack Nicholson might say, “It’s religion, Jake.” I have never met a creationist who wasn’t motivated by religious beliefs—not one, with the possible exception of David Berlinski, an intelligent-design advocate who claims to be a nonbeliever. However, I’m not sure I believe that. He has a Jewish background, but every other creationist and creationist organization I’ve encountered have had religious motivations at its core.
As long as religion remains influential, it will continue to push for the inclusion of creationism in public education. A recent Gallup poll showed that the proportion of people who believe in naturalistic evolution, as taught in schools, is still only about one in four Americans, although that number gradually increases. The remainder is split, with approximately 32% supporting theistic evolution and 40% adhering to biblical creationism.
So that’s the way America stands. As long as people hold those opinions, they’re going to be offended if their children are being taught evolution in schools, and they’re going to take it to the courts. The Supreme Court has not ruled on intelligent design. The whole effort is dying in the courts because there has been no decision supporting the teaching of creationism.
It was struck down when they started teaching scientific creationism or promoting “equal time” for both. Finally, Judge Jones struck down the most sophisticated version of creationism, intelligent design. The Dover School District lost about $1,000,000 in legal fees defending its case. That’s why it hasn’t resurfaced in the courts—schools know they will lose. With the current Supreme Court, I’m a bit worried.
I was also worried about Trump as president. As far as I know, he hasn’t made any statements about creationism. Both presidential candidates needed to be asked if they accept evolution as a measure of their rationality and ability to accept evidence, but they weren’t. So, it’s still ongoing.
I don’t think it’s over in the courts. There might be another case, but I’m hopeful it’s done.
Jacobsen: The two foundational figures of the more sophisticated version of intelligent design are Michael Behe, with his concept of irreducible complexity—there might still be a statement on his department’s website acknowledging but distancing themselves from him—and William Dembski, with his idea of specified complexity. Those are essentially the two main pillars.
So, if I see any papers or arguments referencing both of those concepts, in that case, it signals a direct intellectual pipeline from intelligent design and creationism. Like you, I have not encountered anyone who argues for creationism without being motivated by religious beliefs. In North America, this typically means Christians, often Catholic or evangelical.
As a personal note, I grew up near Trinity Western University. They have a “Creationism Field Trip” course—either 600 or 6000 level. It’s advanced. They also hold campus discussions between old-earth and young-earth creationists. Dennis Venema, who was initially associated with intelligent design before shifting to evolutionary biology, is an exception.
Living in that community, I became aware that Trinity Western is the largest private university in Canada with an evangelical orientation. They even went to the Supreme Court over their covenant, which required everyone to sign and was considered anti-LGBTQ. They lost that case in 2018, and it was a major scandal. That’s a significant loss. It was overwhelming. I completely understand when I see these American cases and the cultural mindset surrounding them. Growing up where I did, when people mentioned Liberty University, it resonates as an almost exact parallel.
So, when you see these cases involving Michael Behe and William Dembski, they may have the wrong idea, but they aren’t completely misguided individuals. However, the motivation behind this push is obvious. Have you seen any further attempts, aside from these two ideas and individuals, proposing other alternatives that essentially stem from the same fundamental notion of, “Oh, God did it”?
Coyne: Well, there’s the Discovery Institute. I have not looked at it recently, but both Behe and Dembski are affiliated with it and have several other members. They used to have a branch focused on conducting experiments related to intelligent design. Still, as far as I know, nothing substantial has come out of it that supports their claims. It reinforces the idea that there’s no real substance there.
Behe is Catholic, and this isn’t coming from secular sources. Even on Wikipedia, you can find a statement from Dembski acknowledging that intelligent design doesn’t make sense without the concept of Jesus at its core. Although they remain silent about the designer’s identity, it’s clear that they imply it’s God. Dembski has suggested it could be a space alien, but that’s disingenuous; he has said that Jesus is central to this belief and is quite religious. Intelligent design, often called “creationism in a cheap tuxedo,” is essentially still a priest’s robe in disguise.
Jacobsen: Do you ever get pushback—not on the facts, evidence, or the validity of your arguments—but on your tone? People who position themselves as the “tone police,” saying that you come across too aggressively? H. L. Mencken might have faced this if he were writing today, perhaps to an even greater extent. People might say, “We appreciate the sophistication and flair of your language, but it’s too sharp, and you’re turning people off.” Do you get that kind of response?
Coyne: All the time, man. It’s because you cannot criticize religion, however indirectly, without it being perceived as an attack on religion itself. About 60 to 70 percent of Americans believe that God played a role in evolution, so if you make any statement about evolution, you inevitably have to touch on creationism. When I wrote my book Why Evolution Is True, I aimed for a mild tone; I didn’t want to offend religious people. But you can’t discuss the evidence for evolution without discussing the evidence against creationism.
It’s all interconnected. In the “one long argument” in On the Origin of Species, Darwin repeatedly addresses creationist ideas, acknowledging creationism as the alternative hypothesis to evolution. So, if you’re defending evolution, at some point, you have to critique creationism. When you do that, you’re challenging religious belief, and no matter how mild the critique, people will accuse you of using the wrong tone.
What they’re essentially saying is that you should shut up. One example is when I point out the existence of dead genes—we have, for example, three genes for making egg-yolk proteins in the human genome that are nonfunctional because we don’t make egg yolk anymore—so they’re remnants from our reptilian ancestors. Suppose you mention this to convince people that evolution is true. In that case, you must also ask why a creator would put nonfunctional genes in our genomes. Making this argument is thus a quasi-scientific discussion.
When arguing for evolution, you have to present your case while addressing the alternative, which means critiquing creation. That gets people defensive and makes them criticize the tone of the argument. Sometimes, for fun, I try to write like H. L. Mencken because creationism is fundamentally as baseless as flat-earth ideas. There’s so much evidence against creationism that it’s laughable to espouse it. Usually, I am not Mencken-esque when I give evidence for evolution. I choose to either wear my atheist, anti-religious hat or my scientific hat when lecturing, but not both at the same time.
I’m going to Poland in two weeks to give two lectures. One will be about why evolution is true, which will be purely scientific. However, since Poland is a predominantly Catholic country, I’ll need to say, “A creator wouldn’t do this. “For example, a creator wouldn’t leave mammals or reptiles off oceanic islands in the middle of the ocean. They aren’t found there because they didn’t arrive there and evolve—not because a creator intended for those islands to be unique compared to the rest of the world.
The other lecture will cover why religion and science are incompatible, which ties into my other book. So, I have two books. I followed a similar path as Richard Dawkins. He wrote The God Delusion and later followed it up with The Greatest Show on Earth, a book focused on the evidence for evolution. I wrote Why Evolution Is True and then questioned why my book had yet to convince the public that evolution is true. It was a New York Times bestseller, and Dawkins had already written his book by then. So, why wasn’t everyone accepting the evidence?
It didn’t take me long to realize that people are immune to evidence because of their religious beliefs. It’s challenging to defend evolution without also critiquing creationism—impossible. When you critique creationism, you inherently critique religion.
There are indeed many religious scientists and religious people who accept science. That’s an argument I tackle in my book Faith Versus Fact. The question is, can you truly embrace both? My answer is no. Not completely.
They’re fundamentally incompatible disciplines. But, yes, you always get the tone argument. That’s the long-winded answer to your question.
Jacobsen: We’re speaking mainly about Christian-majority countries. However, according to recent census data from Statistics Canada, the total number of Christians in Canada is around 53 to 54%. If you track the trend line from the 1971 data through 2001 and 2021, Canada will fall below half-Christian in terms of its total population sometime this year. That’s a significant shift. The United Kingdom is already closer to 40%. While the United States still reports around 67%, that was different from two decades ago. So, there is a general decline. Does this mean that the acceptance of evolution—or at least theistic evolution—is likely to become more prevalent in these cultures?
Coyne: Yes, that’s what the statistics suggest. If you look at Gallup polls, you’ll see that the only steady increase is in the acceptance of naturalistic evolution. It started at about 9% in 1982 and has risen to around 25% by 2024. That’s a promising trend, but it’s important to note that more than half of Americans—nearly three-quarters—still oppose purely naturalistic evolution.
Keep in mind that 34% of Americans are theistic evolutionists. They accept evolution, but only up to a point. That point usually involves human evolution because they believe God created humans in His image. This belief skews the data, making the acceptance of evolution seem higher than it truly is. Many people struggle with the idea that what they perceive as a random, accidental process could lead to the complexity of human beings and our brains. This is a mischaracterization of natural selection, but it’s a common barrier to accepting evolution.
Jacobsen: This supernatural cosmogony, or what we could call divine creation biology, persists in Christian contexts. But it seems even trickier when it crosses into other religious contexts. I remember learning about Adnan Oktar’s Atlas of Creationthrough a Richard Dawkins lecture years ago. At first, I thought it couldn’t be real. I spoke with a cosmologist friend who identifies as a feminist Muslim, and he mentioned that Oktar often featured women he called “kittens” in his videos. We found it quite bizarre.
Some of the images and texts in Atlas of Creation were lifted from American creationist materials. It shows how these ideas can be exported and adapted, moving from a predominantly Christian cultural context to a Muslim one, spreading this misinformation across theological lines. So, there’s an export-import cycle of these anti-evolution arguments across different religious demographics.
Coyne: Absolutely. Islam, for instance, is generally anti-evolution. When my book Why Evolution Is True was translated into Arabic, navigating the sensitivities and resistance around the topic required immense effort.
And finally, it got translated by an evolutionist in Egypt with the help of an Egyptian translation service. They produced about three copies of the book. I then asked if it could be made free and distributed online. With the help of the Center for Inquiry, which has a translation project, they agreed to take the Arabic translation and put it online for free.
That will, I hope, make some impact. Regarding Adnan Oktar—also known as Harun Yahya—I still have his books on my shelf because I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away; they’re so glossy and expensive, but also quite amusing. By the way, he doesn’t have his “kittens” anymore because he’s now in jail for a long sentence.
It’s even more peculiar than you mentioned. He used images from American creationists and included a so-called picture of an insect that, when examined closely, is a fishing fly with the hook still visible.
The guy is a grifter. I don’t know why he was so deeply invested in anti-evolution propaganda, but he was. I can’t recall why he’s in jail now; it might be for drugs or fraud. He was convicted of numerous crimes.
Jacobsen: It’s quite a story. So, when you’re less active on that particular subject, such as tracking the Discovery Institute’s activities, what do you consider the enduring thread from Mencken’s era to the present regarding attempts to infiltrate school systems and advocate for a divine role in evolution? What common themes have persisted over time?
Coyne: The fact that evolution is inherently offensive to many people. Steve Stewart-Williams wrote a book about this—although I can’t recall the title—that delves into the different ways in which the concepts of evolution and natural selection challenge deeply held beliefs. It’s not just about religion. Evolution strikes the core of human exceptionalism and the belief that we are somehow separate from the rest of the natural world.
You don’t have to be religious to believe in human exceptionalism, but religion certainly reinforces it. The idea that naturalism alone is responsible for everything, including consciousness, is unsettling for many.
Some people propose supernaturalism or extranaturalism because they don’t believe naturalism can account for phenomena like consciousness. I remember talking to Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate in physics, at a meeting several years ago. My presentation was on free will and why it doesn’t truly exist—because our will originates in the brain, which is composed of molecules that follow the laws of physics. Therefore, we can’t step outside ourselves to make truly independent choices. At any given moment, the arrangement of molecules in the brain allows for only one possible action.
That idea is offensive to many people, including Weinberg. He asked, “Are you telling me I couldn’t have chosen something else when I choose what to eat at a restaurant?” I said, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” He objected, saying he didn’t believe it.
That reaction highlights how deeply unsettling naturalism can be, especially when it challenges the notion of free will. Naturalism, which underpins evolution, is inherently challenging. Evolution itself isn’t a philosophical concept, but it embodies methodological naturalism. Darwin’s work epitomized this, especially at the end of On the Origin of Species, where he wrote about the natural laws governing cosmology and biology. He drew a parallel between the laws of physics that dictate planetary motion and the laws that drive evolution, which are based on chemistry and physics.
So, yes, evolution offends people on multiple levels. Even if religion were to disappear—which it won’t, at least not in our lifetimes—people would still find reasons to object to evolution. However, it’s also true that the less people believe in God, the more likely they are to accept evolution. Suppose you graph countries based on religiosity and acceptance of evolution. In that case, you’ll see a clear trend: the more religious a country is, the less likely its population is to accept evolution. This appears to hold globally.
The least accepting countries are typically the most religious ones, such as Muslim-majority countries. Even within Europe, countries like Spain and Italy, which have strong Catholic traditions, are less accepting of evolution compared to more secular countries.
If you analyze the 50 United States similarly, you’ll also see a significant positive correlation between acceptance of evolution and atheism or lack of religiosity. The states most resistant to evolution, such as Tennessee—known for the famous Scopes Trial—are primarily in the American South. These states are also the most religious in the United States. The underlying thread is the tension between materialism and religion, which inherently rejects materialism.
Religion, by its nature, involves the supernatural. This theme has consistently run through the debate over evolution.
Jacobsen: Daniel Dennett passed away recently. What do you consider his legacy and contribution in this field?
Coyne: I knew Dan quite well and read most of his books. Just before he passed away, I received an autographed copy of his autobiography, I’ve Been Thinking if I recall correctly. I can’t speak with expertise about his accomplishments as a philosopher since I’m not one. From the perspective of evolution, though, Darwin’s Dangerous Ideawas his most influential work. In it, he described how the concept of evolution and natural selection is a “universal acid” that erodes supernatural and non-materialistic thinking. That was his major contribution to my field.
Dan was certainly an outstanding popularizer of evolution from a philosophical standpoint. Even though we disagreed about free will, I greatly respected him for his work on evolution. He wasn’t a supernaturalist; he believed in determinism and materialism, but also argued that free will could be understood as a materialistic process. He often told me, “You’re wrong,” and we’d debate it constantly.
Science and philosophy provide excellent grounds for intellectual battles, and Dan was a formidable opponent. I miss him. His passing is a great loss.
Jacobsen: Jerry, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your insights today. I appreciate it.
Coyne: Sure. Thank you.
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
