After gaining a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale University, Wells became Director of the Unification Church's inter-religious outreach organization in New York City. In 1989, he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a second Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology in 1994. He became a member of several scientific associations and had published in academic journals.
In his book Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? (2000), Wells argued that a number of examples used to illustrate biology textbooks were grossly exaggerated, distorted truth, or were patently false. Wells said that this shows that evolution conflicts with the evidence, and so argued against its teaching in public education.[6][7][8] Some reviewers of Icons of Evolution have said that Wells misquoted experts cited as sources and took minor issues out of context, basing his argument on a flawed syllogism.[7][9] Wells's views on evolution had been rejected by the scientific community.[4][6][10]
Biography
Wells was born in New York City in 1942 and grew up in New Jersey, and was brought up as a Protestant Christian. He studied geology at Princeton University, where he dropped out in his junior year. Following a brief stint as a taxi driver, he was drafted into the United States Army and spent two years serving in Germany. After his discharge in 1966, he attended University of California, Berkeley, where he publicly refused to report for reserve duty. This resulted in him being arrested and being incarcerated for eighteen months at the Leavenworth military prison. Upon his release, Wells returned to Berkeley where he completed his studies with a major in geology and physics and a minor in biology.
In 1974, Wells joined the Unification Church of the United States.[11] He graduated from the Unification Church's Unification Theological Seminary in 1978 with a master's degree in religious education.[12] Wells continued his studies at Yale University, earning a PhD in religious studies in 1986, focusing on historical reactions to Darwinism.[13] During this time he wrote extensively on Unification theology and taught at the Unification Theological Seminary.[12] Wells was on the Board of Trustees of the Unification Theological Seminary until resigning in 1997 to return to teaching.[14] He also acted as the director of the International Religious Foundation, a Unification Church affiliated organization which sponsors interdenominational conferences.[15][16]
Wells had written on the subject of marriage within the Unification Church, and had been called a "Unification Church marriage expert" by church sources.[17][18][19] Wells defended Unification Church theology against what he said were unfair criticisms of it made in 1977 by the National Council of Churches.[15]
Wells appeared on a panel at Harvard with Stephen Palumbi in November 2001, which his supporters lauded as a "home run".[23][24][25][26] Other observers stated that Wells' performance was "uneventful".[27]
Wells died on September 19, 2024, his 82nd birthday.[28][29]
Of his student days at Unification Theological Seminary (1976–78), Wells said, "One of the things that Father [Reverend Sun Myung Moon] advised us to do at UTS was to pray to seek God's plan for our lives." Wells later described that plan: "To defend and articulate Unification theology especially in relation to Darwinian evolution."[30]
Wells stated that his religious doctoral studies at Yale, which were paid for by the Unification Church, focused on the "root of the conflict between Darwinian evolution and Christian doctrine" and encompassed the whole of Christian theology within a focus of Darwinian controversies.[3][31] He said:
...I learned (to my surprise) that biblical chronology played almost no role in the 19th- century controversies, since most theologians had already accepted geological evidence for the age of the earth and re-interpreted the days in Genesis as long periods of time. Instead, the central issue was design.[3]
Wells said that "destroying Darwinism" was his motive for studying Christian theology at Yale and going on to seek his second PhD at Berkeley, studying biology and in particular embryology:
Father's [Rev. Moon's] words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When Father chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to prepare myself for battle.[3]
Wells's statement and others like it are viewed by the scientific community as evidence that Wells lacks proper scientific objectivity and mischaracterizes evolution by ignoring and misrepresenting the evidence supporting it while pursuing an agenda promoting notions supporting his religious beliefs in its place.[32][33][34]
In 1999, Wells debated with the New Mexicans for Science and Reason.[37] He was one of the contributors to Natural History magazine's 2002 debate between intelligent design advocates and evolution supporters.[38] In 2005, he debated Massimo Pigliucci on the PBS talk show Uncommon Knowledge.[39] Pigliucci said that Wells "clearly lied" during his debates and misrepresented his agenda and science, as well as not understanding some of the theories he tried to attack.[40][41]
Wells is one of the signatories of the Discovery Institute's "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism," a petition which the intelligent design movement uses to promote intelligent design by attempting to cast doubt on evolution.[42][43] He is also the author of "Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution" for high school students, which is published by the Discovery Institute.[44] The National Center for Science Education has issued a list of answers to the questions.[44][45][46]
In 2000 Wells published his book Icons of Evolution, in which he discusses 10 examples which he says show that many of the most commonly accepted arguments supporting evolution are invalid.[47]
There have been 12 detailed reviews of Icons, from scholars familiar with the subject matter, which have come to the consensus that the book's claims are a politically motivated exaggeration and misrepresentation of a scattering of minor issues.[9] Scholars quoted in the work have accused Wells of purposely misquoting them and misleading readers.[48][49]Jerry Coyne wrote of Icons, "Wells's book rests entirely on a flawed syllogism: ... textbooks illustrate evolution with examples; these examples are sometimes presented in incorrect or misleading ways; therefore evolution is a fiction."[7][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]
I became convinced that the Darwinian theory is false because it conflicts with the evidence. ... I think the earth is probably four-and-a-half billion or so years old. But I'll tell you this, I used to-- I would have said, a few years ago, I'm convinced it's four-and-a-half billion years old. But the truth is I have not looked at the evidence. And I have become increasingly suspicious of the evidence that is presented to me and that's why at this point I would say probably it's four-and-a-half billion years old, but I haven't looked at the evidence. ... There are already scientists-- respected scientists in this country who do experiments on things that most people consider supernatural, such as prayer. When Newton proposed the theory of gravitation it was dismissed as supernaturalism because it was action at a distance. What constitutes supernaturalism in today's science may very well not be supernatural in tomorrow's science.[57]
Prior to the evolution hearings, in December 2000 after the Pratt County, Kansas, school board revised its tenth-grade biology curriculum at the urging of intelligent design proponents to include material that encourages students to question the theory of evolution, The Pratt Tribune published a letter from Jerry Coyne challenging Wells's characterization in an article of his work on peppered moths, saying that his article appended to the Pratt standards was misused and being mischaracterized:
Creationists such as Jonathan Wells claim that my criticism of these experiments casts strong doubt on Darwinism. But this characterization is false. ... My call for additional research on the moths has been wrongly characterized by creationists as revealing some fatal flaw in the theory of evolution. ... It is a classic creationist tactic (as exemplified in Wells' book, "Icons of Evolution") to assert that healthy scientific debate is really a sign that evolutionists are either committing fraud or buttressing a crumbling theory.[49]
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design
In 2006, Wells published his second major book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, which was part of a series published by Regnery Publishing. The book was praised by Tom Bethell, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science (2005),[58] but was described by Reed A. Cartwright of The Panda's Thumb weblog as being "not only politically incorrect but incorrect in most other ways as well: scientifically, logically, historically, legally, academically, and morally."[59] Cartwright also edited a chapter-by-chapter critique of the book.[59] A quote from the book linking evolution to eugenics, abortion and racism appeared on Starbucks paper cups in 2007.[60]
In 1991, Wells and his mentor Phillip E. Johnson signed an open letter which said in full:
It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes the group [of] diseases called AIDS. Many biochemical scientists now question this hypothesis. We propose that a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis be conducted by a suitable independent group. We further propose that critical epidemiological studies be devised and undertaken.[61][62][63]
Wells and Johnson have been criticized, along with others, for their questioning of the scientific and medical consensus that HIV causes AIDS.[63] In the Washington University Law Review, Matthew J. Brauer, Barbara Forrest, and Steven G. Gey faulted Wells, Johnson, and others for denying the HIV/AIDS connection and promoting denialism via a petition which did not have any scientific support.[64]
Wells, John Corrigan. 1986. CHARLES HODGE'S CRITIQUE OF DARWINISM: THE ARGUMENT TO DESIGN (EVOLUTION, THEOLOGY). Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 265 pages.
Wells, John Corrigan. 1994. A confocal microscopy study of microtubule arrays involved in cortical rotation during the first cell cycle of Xenopus embryos. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 124 pages.
^ abWells, Jonathan. "INTRODUCTION to ICONS of EVOLUTION: Science or Myth? Why much of what we teach about evolution is wrong". Icons of Evolution. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute. Archived from the original on 2013-12-29. Retrieved 2013-12-12. Biological evolution is the theory that all living things are modified descendants of a common ancestor that lived in the distant past. It claims that you and I are descendants of ape-like ancestors, and that they in turn came from still more primitive animals. [...] ...much of what we teach about evolution is wrong. This fact raises troubling questions about the status of Darwinian evolution. If the icons of evolution are supposed to be our best evidence for Darwin's theory, and all of them are false or misleading, what does that tell us about the theory? Is it science, or myth?
^Wells, Jonathan (June 12, 2002). "Critics Rave Over Icons of Evolution: A Response to Published Reviews". Center for Science and Culture. Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute. Retrieved 2007-08-13. Several of them grossly exaggerate or distort the truth, while others are patently false. Yet they are found year after year in almost all textbooks dealing with evolutionary theory, and they invariably accompany other material promoting that theory. When someone points out that the textbook examples misrepresent the facts, Darwinists don't rush to correct them. Instead, they rush to defend them.
^Humburg, Burt (August 26, 2006). Cartwright, Reed A. (ed.). "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Review: Why Should Words Have Meanings? (Chapter 1)". The Panda's Thumb (Blog). Houston, TX: The TalkOrigins Foundation, Inc. Archived from the original on November 26, 2006. Retrieved 2007-02-04. In order to advance his thesis, Wells has to convey the idea that 'Darwinism' pits itself against traditional Christianity: to allow pupils to learn it is to give them up to atheism, decadence, liberalism and to lose the culture war. Note that Wells does not wage war against evolution. In fact, he is at pains to make it (somewhat) clear that he wages war against 'Darwinism', which in context might sound like the sort of thing any sensible Christian would want to guard against. Unfortunately, Wells isn't exactly clear what he means by Darwinism as opposed to evolution. [...] Easily, one of the prominent faults of Wells's screed is a pervasive confusion between terms. Words, like 'Darwinism' and 'Traditional Christianity', seem to mean whatever Wells wants them to mean for that specific sentence. In many cases words are used without regard for his own stated definitions and usually without regard to usage elsewhere in his book. There are several possible reasons for this confusion in terms. First, Wells confusion may be by design. I have argued elsewhere that creationists intend to confuse their audiences when they argue. Second, if you review the acknowledgements page, you'll read how Wells used many authors to help him prepare this text. It is possible that Wells's editorship was so insufficient that he allowed a term that makes up part of the book's very title to have a flexible meaning. My suspicion is that there was both disparity between the understanding of key terms by different authors as well as an intention to confuse.
^ abcWells, Jonathan. "Jonathan Wells Then". The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Seattle, WA: The Discovery Institute. Retrieved 2008-07-16.
^"Society Fellows". International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design. Princeton, NJ. Archived from the original on 2013-01-16. Retrieved 2013-12-12.
^Dawkins, Richard (2006-05-14). "Why I Won't Debate Creationists". The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Archived from the original on 2013-03-12. Retrieved 2018-10-03.
^"Article Database". Discovery Institute. Seattle, WA. Archived from the original on 2011-07-26. Retrieved 2013-12-12. List of articles written by Jonathan Wells.
^Forrest & Gross 2004, p. 111. Quoting Bruce Grant: "But should we blame Ms Rider for her outrage upon learning that moths were glued to trees? No. Instead I blame Dr Wells, who wrote the article she cites as her source of information. While he has done no work on industrial mechanism, he has written [an] opinion about that work. To one outside the field, he passes as a scholar, complete with Ph.D. Unfortunately, Dr Wells is intellectually dishonest. . . . He lavishly dresses his essays in quotations from experts (including some from me) which are generally taken out of context, and he systematically omits relevant details to make our conclusions seem ill founded, flawed, or fraudulent."
^ abCoyne, Jerry (December 6, 2000). "Criticism of moth study no challenge to evolution". The Pratt Tribune (Letter to the editor). Pratt, KS: GateHouse Media. Archived from the original on January 16, 2013. Retrieved 2013-12-12. Creationists such as Jonathan Wells claim that my criticism of these experiments casts strong doubt on Darwinism. But this characterization is false. ... My call for additional research on the moths has been wrongly characterized by creationists as revealing some fatal flaw in the theory of evolution. ... It is a classic creationist tactic (as exemplified in Wells' book, 'Icons of Evolution') to assert that healthy scientific debate is really a sign that evolutionists are either committing fraud or buttressing a crumbling theory.
^"The Group". VirusMyth: A Rethinking AID$ Website. Hilversum, Netherlands: Robert Laarhoven. Retrieved 2013-12-12.
^Quittman, Beth (September 8, 2006). "Undercover at the Discovery Institute". Seattlest (Blog). New York: Gothamist LLC. Archived from the original on October 20, 2006. Retrieved 2008-07-17. Wells' "personal peculiarities include membership in the Moonies and support for AIDS reappraisal - the theory that the HIV is not the primary cause of AIDS."
