[00:00:04] Speaker A: ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to id the future. Today, Im speaking with Daniel Reeves, director of education and outreach for Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. The topic is roots, a worldwide network of grassroots supporters promoting intelligent design in their local communities. Daniel holds a BA in biology with additional graduate studies in zoology. Before joining the Discovery Institute, Daniel had engaged in both field and laboratory research for the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture. He also has a passion for education and has taught science in both museums and public schools. Daniel, welcome to the program.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Thank you so much. It's been a while since our last conversation, so I'm happy to be back on.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, when people come across the work of the center for Science and Culture, our books, our videos, articles, research papers, events, they tend to wonder eventually how they can get involved themselves. The options, of course, include signing up for our weekly newsletter, NoTa Bene, joining the Discovery Society, sharing our resources with friends both offline and online, attending local events, purchasing our books and the like. But in the last few years, a new way to get involved has been, well, growing. It's called roots. And Daniel, you're managing this new program.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Can you first tell us what was the inspiration or impetus for the roots program?
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Sure. So it's like you said, we've had people following our work for a long time. We've been hosting conferences for over 20 years now. I personally have been involved in about seven years worth of conferences and events. And so we have people returning every year to our events and reading our books and saying, hey, I'm sold on all of this, but what can I do?
Kind of to give back or to give forward to the community to help people learn about these same things that they've been so encouraged by. And so that's kind of the impetus for the program, was to try to provide a home for those people, try to provide resources and infrastructure for this broad base of interested ID supporters.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. And why the name roots? I mean, it might be obvious to some people, but I think you have a cool way to explain this.
[00:02:32] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: There were actually, I think, three different ideas that coalesced into this name. The first one, and the most obvious, is the reference to a grassroots movement where you've got individuals at the local level all across the country and across the world who have a shared mission and are connected through that shared mission. But then a second thing that comes to mind is just the fact that the term root calls to mind the fact that you have this root question that lies at the base of many of society's most important issues today, the question of whether we are designed or whether we are the product of chance, whether it's all just matter, or whether there's also mind whether life is purposeful or futile. I mean, this question of design or chance has major implications on society. And so in that way, intelligent design is kind of the root of many issues that all of us are concerned about. And then the third thing that this makes me think about is the fact that intelligent design itself has roots in ancient thought. I think a lot of people have this misconception that intelligent design is somehow the outgrowth of the evangelical christian movement, or it's just a new form of creation science or something like this. And the truth is, intelligent design traces its roots back to early greco roman thought, arguably, certainly Judeo christian thought, even kind of modern scientists in the age of reason, people like Jefferson and Alfred, Russel Wallace and others. And so, again, it's like, you know, this is an idea that has not come up recently, but it's really been around since the beginning of time, and people have been discussing this question of what is life? Is it designed or is it the product of chance? And so it's an ongoing conversation.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Getting to the heart of some very old ideas and questions. Those are great reasons to call it roots. Well, I think it's also cool that there's no one cookie cutter format for these roots groups. They can form and meet as a book club, a campus club, a small group, or some other format. While the mission is the same for every group, the approach depends on those that come together locally. Do you see roots members enjoying this latitude with regard to formitable?
[00:04:59] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. We, you know, in the early days of our education and outreach programs, we did have an earlier program called the Science and Culture Network, and the idea was to have chapters around the country in support of intelligent design. But that program was designed with a much more kind of specific infrastructure and requirements for local groups and things like that, and it ended up being kind of a limitation that caused the program to grow very slowly. And what we heard from people in the movement was that each local group of volunteers had a different idea of what they needed to organize or contribute at a local level, and they wanted the freedom to be able to do that. And, of course, we want to empower them to pursue lots of different strategies. And so in this new program, we specifically built in flexibility so that if a local group wants to be focused on training themselves on the content, the actual content of id. So, for example, they want to read through books together and discuss them in detail, just to kind of train themselves, then they have the freedom to do that. If instead they want to get together and have a presentation series that they organize, and they invite people from the community or from their local churches or something like that, then that's another strategy. And then other people have basically gotten together and formed a committee of people that organizes conferences or things like that. And so I think it is helpful for groups to have flexibility in terms of how they operate.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Yeah, there's freedom there. Now, roots does provide what you call, or what the website calls a tool shed of tools on intelligent design that groups can utilize. Give us an example of a couple of things in the tool shed.
[00:06:48] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah. First of all, we like to stick to the theme of growing and cultivation. And so it seems appropriate to think about kind of having a tool shed of your trowel and your shovel and so forth. And so one of the ideas is to have a broad range of tools, some videos that you can show to a group, some discussion guides, some books, lots of different types of resources.
Some examples that I think are especially helpful in terms of outreach are these brief booklets that have been developed by a couple of different groups to kind of encapsulate the ideas that are typically expressed in 500 page books by Stephen Meyer, John west or these other writers. And that's really important because not everyone has the time or the motivation to pick up a 500 page book. But the ideas communicated in those books can really be distilled down to 20 to 25 pages. And so on the website for the roots program, you'll find a couple of these materials. There's one series called the Rethink books or Rethink essays. And these are little digital ebooks that can be shared easily from person to person on their cell phone or through email. And they encapsulate these really big ideas. You know, for example, there's one by John west about the three big ideas that Darwin put forward and the impact of those ideas. There's another one from Casey Luskin outlining the top ten lines of evidence for intelligent design. There's other booklets by Stephen Meyer and several other scholars. And so these are great kind of resources to share when you're starting a conversation with someone. Another series was actually produced recently by ratio Christi called the Novum Press. They have many titles in this series, but they have three titles by Stephen Meyer, each of which encapsulates the content of his three seminal signature in the cell, Darwin's doubt and return of the God hypothesis. So it's really a great tool to be able to share the thesis of those three books in these very easy to approach 2025 page booklets. And each of them also has discussion questions at the end. And so it's a great place to be able to just grab these, give a copy to each of your local group members and have a really great conversation without having to do a lot of your own personal preparation. Another one that I recommend, especially to people who are trying to reach out to their local churches or small groups or other faith communities, is Darwin's corrosive idea. This is a booklet that was produced after conducting an in depth survey of the impact of ideas on people's conceptions of faith. And so looking at how there's this very close correlation between people's adherence to Darwin's ideas and then people's faith or lack thereof, and the outcomes of that survey are really revealing and in some cases really disturbing. And so it's a great resource to be able to approach a local pastor or other faith leader and say, hey, ideas have consequences and we need to engage this question of evolution or intelligent design. So those are just some examples of a few resources that can be really helpful.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we have a lot of longer resources, you know, books of varying lengths and even long articles. But let's face it, not everybody is going to be able to read those. And so it's great that group members in roots can tap into shorter, more concise resources and be able to share those quickly and easily.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Well, what have been some of the key successes of the program so far?
[00:10:32] Speaker C: Well, first and foremost, I've been very encouraged to see the participation in the program. There are already 1700 volunteers who have placed membership in this program and they do so by filling out a form that confirms that this is, for them personally, a mission to share resources on intelligent design and advocate for id and its impacts on society. And so that alone has been encouraging 1700 volunteers. Another thing that's been really encouraging is to see that in the, I think just twelve months that we've launched this local network or local group aspect of the program, there have already been ten groups added to the program. And there are another, actually more than a dozen, almost 15 groups that are currently working through some of the basic entry requirements to onboard into the program. And so we should soon see 2025 different groups actively meeting. So it's been really encouraging and that's just the start. Programs like this always start slow and build momentum over time. So I'm really excited.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. And are they from different parts of the United States and indeed other parts of the world? What is it looking like on a global map?
[00:11:44] Speaker C: Yeah, the groups currently are across the US from east to west coast. And like I said, these dozen or so groups that are in the process of onboarding are in a lot of the kind of gaps of various places in the US. There are no groups currently in other countries, but there are already groups from Kenya and Brazil and Canada that have reached out, wanting to get involved with the roots program. And so we're in conversation with them about what that would look like. So I think there's potential in just the next few months to start expanding the network outside of the US.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: And what would you say in the year or so since this began, what would you say are some of the challenges you've had to work through? I mean, no program is immune from that. And grassroots efforts can have their challenges as well as successes.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: I think the bottom line is that grassroots movements require coordination. The picture of a grassroots movement is not that you have individuals, grass plants growing here and there, but really that their roots are connected underground, and you have this interconnected network. And so that takes coordination. It takes platforms where people can come together and have a forum. It takes platforms where people can meet online in order to share their ideas and brainstorm and that sort of thing. And as most of our listeners know, we're a pretty small team, especially when it comes to administrative staff. And so I think the biggest challenge is just using our staff to the fullest to be able to provide the support that's needed to that number of volunteers. We do have a new team member joining in about a month who will be dedicated specifically to the roots program and other education outreach initiatives. So I'm excited to see how that new staffing will allow us to provide better support. But I think that's really been the only challenge. There's no lack of excitement, no lack of engagement. It's just a matter of providing the coordination for those volunteers.
[00:13:43] Speaker B: Well, what are some of the key goals for the future? As I was browsing the Roots website, I saw a few things that are coming soon. Workshops and design challenges. It sounds like you've got some exciting things in store.
[00:13:56] Speaker C: Yeah. One of the things that I think we have heard from volunteers is that having regular forums for sharing ideas and getting feedback on various outreach strategies is, is really important. And we actually just hosted the first one of those workshops last weekend. We called it the Roots Networking summit, and I'll share a little bit more about that if you'd like. But it was really encouraging time to be able to see people come together and share their ideas and challenges and work through questions that they have about id outreach. That's one thing that in the future we'd like to offer on a regular basis.
And then one of the other things that I'm really excited about is that we're planning out what we're calling design challenges. So these are basically crowdsourcing efforts where we provide some coordination to help our volunteers to use their creative abilities and talents to create new videos and lesson plans and articles and poetry and artwork and all sorts of new content related to intelligent design. And this is motivated by the fact that we've already seen many of our volunteers doing this, producing amazing animations for YouTube, or working with their students to create writing projects related to intelligent design, or talking with teachers who have created lessons plans around things like fine tuning or the fossil record or other issues like this. And so knowing that there is all of this creativity out there, we'd like to provide a way that people can participate in challenges where we put out a response or a prompt and ask people to respond with their creative submissions and then allow people to vote on them and elevate the ones that are the most impressive. And so I'm really excited about that. I think that will get a lot of people more involved and produce a lot of great content.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Yeah, that does sound exciting. Yeah. And really, it makes sense when people absorb the ideas of intelligent design and they are ready to apply them. Some of the highest forms of learning is demonstrated when you, you know, create something new, when you offer something that hasn't been seen before.
So that's an exciting way to spread the word about intelligent design. Well, tell me a little bit more about the networking summit you recently had, who was involved, and you said it was very encouraging time for those groups.
[00:16:27] Speaker C: Yeah, sure was. We met for about 4 hours over Zoom, and basically what we did was we first started out by talking about the intelligent design movement in general, kind of looking at the history of the movement and where we're at currently, and some kind of views to the future of what we expect to see happen in the next few years or so. And so John west, who's the vice president of Discovery Institute and managing director of the center for Science and Culture, presented just a really hopeful presentation on the movement and some of the exciting things happening, you know, despite being here at the center for Science and Culture engrossed in this work every day, even I was surprised to hear a lot of exciting things that are happening because the movement is so large and moving so fast that I can't even keep up with many of the exciting developments. So that was great. And then after that introduction, we broke out into various rooms, zoom rooms, to discuss various categories of intelligent design outreach. We have volunteers who are primarily focused on reaching students, maybe k twelve students, in other cases reaching college students or reaching their local faith communities.
And so we had various breakout sessions to talk about those different areas. And it was very cool to see all of the ideas that people had for outreach. And in some cases, people presented challenges. They'd say, I've been trying to reach out to my local church, but haven't received a lot of interest from the pastor. How can I help my pastor to understand why this idea has such consequence on the faith of their members, and then to hear other volunteers chime in with their own experience and ideas about how to overcome some of those barriers. It was really encouraging and helpful. The other thing that I was very excited about was that, you know, the outcome of this meeting was not simply a pat on the back, you guys are doing a great job, keep up the great work, but rather a, hey, here are some concrete next steps or ideas of things that we can develop to, you know, enhance the coordination of this grassroots movement. And so I've got a whole list of things on my plate. I know a lot of the volunteers left with ideas about things that they want to work on and develop. And so that's really what made me feel like it was time well spent and then just encouraging to see the turnout. I mean, we had well over 100 people on there, and they were all very engaged and participating in the discussion. So that was really encouraging.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: That's great. Yeah, it sounds like just what the doctor ordered for allowing these groups to flourish and grow. Well, the root sounds awesome. Daniel, how can new id supporters join the program and get involved?
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah, it's very easy. The website for the program is roots dot discovery.org, and there's a description of the program there. There's also some faqs in case people are still trying to figure out what it's all about. They can review those. And then there's a simple join form, and we're not asking for any commitment other than simply to check a box saying, yes, I am motivated to be involved at a local level and advocating for intelligent design, supporting the mission of the center for Science and Culture.
And then that subscribes them to a quarterly e newsletter that we send by email. And the newsletter is used to inform volunteers about upcoming opportunities, workshops, new resources, events, things like that, so that they're the first to know. And what we often do is we actually will pre release things to our volunteer network before it's released to the rest of our subscribers because we want them to be the most informed, the most up to date about what's available. So it's a unique opportunity for people that are really interested in being involved to get a first look at many of those things.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it sounds like a great way supporters of intelligent design can get involved at the local level. That website, again, to learn more or find a group near you or even inquire about starting a new group is roots dot discovery.org dot that's roots dot discovery.org dot Daniel, thanks so much for taking time out of your busy week to tell us about this.
[00:20:43] Speaker C: I'm glad to have the opportunity. Thank you so much.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: You're welcome. Well, listeners, roots dot discovery.org for more information. For now, I'm Andrew McDermott for id the future. Thank you for listening.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
