Jay Richards on the “Ground Clearing” Work of Jonathan Wells
Before the positive case for intelligent design can be received effectively, the case against the Darwinian evolutionary mechanism must be clearly laid out. One man who was instrumental in this initial “ground clearing operation” was biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells, our friend and colleague who passed away in 2024 at the age of 82. On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes Dr. Jay Richards to the podcast to share his memories of Dr. Wells and discuss the significance of Wells’s life and work.
The conversation highlights Wells’s early and deep understanding of biological complexity, even in the late 1990s. Richards recalls Wells explaining that the information in organisms goes “way beyond” the sequential information in DNA. Wells perceived “orders of information” and “extra sources of information” coordinating organismal development, which couldn’t simply be located in DNA. He had a sense of the immateriality of the genome and anticipated the need for new categories and theories to account for what happens in organisms.
Dr. Richards also describes his experience working closely with Wells on the classic book Icons of Evolution. Wells’s 2000 book was highly accessible and served as part of that necessary “ground clearing operation” showing that the reigning Darwinian explanation was inadequate by examining its pedagogical tools and claims, such as the infamous and long-known-inaccurate Haeckel’s embryos. Wells argued in Icons that Darwinism made predictions contrary to evidence and was a “paradigm that’s either spent or really never fit the facts.”
The episode also covers Wells’ intense work on Getting the Facts Straight, a viewer’s guide to the 2001 PBS series Evolution, which failed to accurately represent shortcomings of Darwinian theory and dismissed its critics. Wells was the primary author on the viewer’s guide, working diligently for weeks on it. The critique aimed to counter the series, especially because it was also turned into curriculum for use in public schools across America.
Dig Deeper
- Dr. Wells’s viewer’s guide Getting the Facts Straight is available for free download.
- Learn more about Dr. Jonathan Wells’ work and order his books at jonathanwells.org.