The Sexual Politics of Intelligent Design

Abstract

Intelligent design is creationism for the twenty-first century. It is the view that the natural world is best explained as the product of an intentional intelligent agent rather than undirected natural forces. Although there has been much ado about its scientific status, beyond the scientific face of intelligent design is a dense discourse that brings a compelling aspect into full relief. Intelligent design is a political movement that embodies aggressive and regressive sexual politics. This article suggests that, motivated by the belief that evolutionary thought has spurred moral decay, intelligent-design advocates have compiled a sophisticated critique of science in general and evolutionary science specifically, and they have proposed intelligent design as an alternative. This critique of science is comparable to some feminist critiques that challenge traditional definitions of science as an unbiased arbiter of truth. Both camps highlight and challenge the ways in which social values infiltrate scientific knowledge, and both seek to instantiate political values into the scientific enterprise as a means of redressing problematic politics and ultimately improving science. It would be a mistake, however, to position feminism and intelligent design as natural allies. When intelligent design is examined more broadly, one finds a set of sexual politics that are antithetical to feminist politics but similar to the politics that feminists have identified in mainstream science. It would also be a mistake to presume that feminism and intelligent design are equal counterparts in the bid to inject ethical parameters into scientific endeavors. Proponents of intelligent design argue that natural law (as defined within intelligent-design discourse) determines the limits of morality, which can be discerned by noting what “works” and what does not. With this, its own criterion, intelligent design fails to substantiate the regressive sexual politics it attempts to rationalize. By extension, the intelligent-design movement itself warrants resistance.