Intelligent Design Catches On in Brazil
Although the Darwinian establishment has made every effort to discredit intelligent design (ID), you can't keep a good idea down. In Brazil, ID is flourishing.
More than two decades ago, Brazilian historian of science Enézio E. de Almeida Filho became skeptical of Darwinism—not because of the Bible, but because of the scientific evidence against it. After reading Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial, Enézio started a blog, Desafiando a Nomenklatura Científica (Defying the Scientific Nomenclature),1 and in 1998 the Brazilian ID movement was born.
ID attracted the attention of prominent Brazilian chemist Marcos N. Eberlin.2 Marcos is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and in 2005 was a recipient of the Brazilian National Order of Scientific Merit.3 He is also a past president of the International Mass Spectrometry Foundation, which recently awarded him the prestigious Thomson Medal.4
In November 2014, Enézio and Marcos hosted the inaugural congress of the Sociedade Brasileira do Design Inteligente (the Brazilian Society for Intelligent Design) in Campinas, a city about 60 miles northwest of Sâo Paulo.5 The congress drew 370 participants from 26 Brazilian states, and the principal speaker was Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Paul Nelson.6
A Church Audience
In May 2017 Mackenzie Presbyterian University, one of the oldest institutions of higher education in Brazil, joined with the Discovery Institute to open an ID research center in Sâo Paulo.7 The Discovery-Mackenzie Center "fosters research into the scientific evidence of intelligent design in nature as well as exploring the relationship between science and culture, including the relationship between science and faith."8
In November 2017, my wife Lucy and I went to Brazil as guests of the new Discovery-Mackenzie Center. The Sunday after we arrived, I went to speak at a Presbyterian church in Sâo Paulo. With the son of the pastor translating, I spoke for a while about the distinction between empirical science (which seeks truth by testing hypotheses against evidence), naturalistic science (which seeks materialistic explanations for everything), and zombie science (which tells materialistic stories even though they don't fit the evidence and are thus empirically dead). I emphasized that empirical science poses no threat to religion, but naturalistic science (which regards the mind, soul, and God as illusions) is a threat to religion. I also spoke about ID—what it is, and how it can be tested empirically.
My translator had warned me beforehand that people in the congregation might be too shy to ask questions, but the Q&A after my talk was quite lively. One person, a teacher who was accompanied by his teenaged daughter and son, wondered how to deal with public schools that promote Darwinism but mention ID only to discredit it. I recommended that schools not be required to teach ID, but rather that they be required to teach more about Darwinism—especially the evidence against it.
Four University Audiences
At 1:00 p.m. the next day (Monday, November 6), Marcos and Enézio picked up Lucy and me and drove us to the nearby campus of Mackenzie University. Enézio and I had been corresponding by email for more than twenty years, but this was our first face-to-face meeting. At Mackenzie I lectured on "Zombie Science: How Discredited Icons of Evolution Are Used to Promote Darwinism." Before coming to Brazil, I had emailed my presentation to Enézio, and he had translated all my slides into Portuguese. So he did most of the talking by reading what was on my slides, while I inserted a few spontaneous remarks from time to time that he translated on the fly.
As at the church the day before, the Q&A was lively, well informed, and respectful. It could have continued quite a while longer, but we had to hurry across town so I could give the same talk at a large Adventist university, Centro Universitário Adventista de Sâo Paulo. Downtown Sâo Paulo is notorious for its bad traffic, but on the way Marcos and Enézio serenaded us with the Brazilian song "Maluco Beleza," or "Cool Crazy Man."9 They had made this the theme song of the Brazilian ID movement, because only "malucos belezas" are sufficiently independent-minded to stand up for ID in the face of established orthodoxy.
The lecture hall at the Adventist university was packed, with many people standing in the back. And once again the Q&A was lively, well informed, and respectful. The next day (Tuesday) we went to the Campinas campus of Mackenzie, where Enézio and I gave the same lecture. And Wednesday evening we did the same back in Sâo Paulo at the Methodist University Sâo Paulo, Santo André. All told, at the four university campuses, I lectured to almost 600 people, most of them professors and students.
A Lively Symposium
Lucy and I then departed for Fortaleza, on the northeast coast of Brazil, and at 7:00 p.m. the next evening (Friday, November 10), we attended the opening of the Simpósio de Design Inteligente do Nordeste (Northeast Symposium on Intelligent Design), in an auditorium at the School of Law of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), the equivalent of a state university in the U.S.
Almost 400 people attended the symposium. I spoke first on the question, "Is Intelligent Design Science or Religion?" As I had done at the Presbyterian church several days earlier, I distinguished between empirical science (the search for truth by testing hypotheses against evidence) and naturalistic science (the search for materialistic explanations for everything). I also distinguished between religion as belief in God, religion as a particular form of worship (e.g., Catholicism), and religion as an ultimate commitment to some idea or activity (e.g., the Marxist view of history or the pursuit of money and power). I concluded that because inferences to design are tested against the evidence, ID is empirical science. But I quoted Harvard evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin's infamous 1997 admission that he and his colleagues have "a prior commitment to materialism," and "that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."10 I concluded that naturalistic science is religion in the third sense of the word.
Marcos spoke next, on "The Three Pillars of Intelligent Design." Although his talk was in Portuguese, my familiarity with the subject enabled me to follow his general argument. The first pillar, he said, is irreducible complexity. The second is information, which requires a mind. Marcos cited the examples of Morse code, barcodes, and ASCII code, and he concluded by analogy that the genetic code must also have originated in a mind. The third pillar is the ability to foresee the goal of a process. He illustrated this pillar with a cartoon of a mouse facing a baited mousetrap: the mouse was wearing a football helmet. The audience had a hearty laugh.
The third talk (also in Portuguese) was by Dr. Glauco Barreira Magalhâes Filho, a professor at the UFC Law School, on "Who Is the Designer According to Good Philosophy and Theology?" One of his main points, I gathered, was that ID does not tell us who the Designer is: that takes additional philosophical and/or theological arguments.
The evening concluded with a Q&A involving all three of us. Someone asked how ID could succeed against the overwhelming dominance of naturalistic science, and Marcos indicated that he wanted me to respond (with Enézio translating). I recounted how, as a boy, I used to ice skate in the wintertime on a nearby frozen pond, and how, each year as spring approached, the ice would become honeycombed with meltwater. It still looked thick and strong, but my friends and I knew that it could no longer hold our weight. I concluded by saying that naturalistic science is like spring ice: it is not as strong as it looks, and it will soon melt. The audience cheered.
The following morning (Saturday, November 11), the lectures (all in Portuguese) were given by molecular biologist Mariana Sá (on design in DNA), chemist Rodolfo Paiva (on inferences to the best explanation), neurobiologist Ricardo Marques (on the persecution of scientists such as Guillermo Gonzalez and Richard Sternberg), and Otângelo Grasso (on design in molecular machines).
After lunch, Brazilian physicist Douglas Aleodim spoke on "Twenty Years of Irreducible Complexity: Proven or Refuted?" Among other things, he rebutted Ken Miller's criticisms of Mike Behe's argument for irreducible complexity. Dr. Tassos Lycurgo then gave a hilarious talk on "Science and Its Presuppositions." Since it was in Portuguese, I didn't understand a word of it, but every few minutes the audience howled with laughter. Marcos Eberlin then gave a talk titled "Which Came First: The Egg or the Chicken?" His main point, I gathered, was the need for information.
I spoke last on a "Brief History of ID." I pointed out that the idea of intelligent design is ancient, but that the modern ID movement began with a 1984 book, The Mystery of Life's Origin,11 and a 1993 meeting organized by Phillip Johnson at Pajaro Dunes near Monterey, California. I finished with a short summary of some current ID research projects.
Growing Enthusiasm
All told, during my ten days in Brazil, I spoke to six enthusiastic audiences that comprised almost 1,000 people—most of them university professors, scientists, and students. You can't keep a good idea down.
Jonathan Wells Jonathan Wells holds Ph.D.s in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and in Religious Studies from Yale University. A Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, he is the author of Icons of Evolution (2000), The Myth of Junk DNA (2011), and other books.. Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #44, Spring 2018 Copyright © 2026 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo44/cool-crazy-idea
