Biologic Institute, Douglas Axe, and Intelligent Design Creationism

“Biologic Institute is a non-profit research organization founded in 2005 for the purpose of developing a new approach to biology. Thanks to technological advances, the life sciences have become very effective at acquiring facts. What they need now is a theoretical foundation that makes sense of these facts. Some still claim that Darwin’s theory does just that, but the ongoing struggle to make sense of genomic data (for example) indicates otherwise.

Scientists affiliated with Biologic Institute are working from the idea that life appears to have been designed because it really was designed. That’s a hypothesis, not a theory, and while it obviously has huge philosophical implications (made even more huge by the the [sic] fact it appears to be correct) it doesn’t do much for biology if left at that.”

Biologic Institute

“The Intelligent Design creationists have also put up a simulacrum, the Biologic Institute, with fume hoods and white lab coats, from which they hope to summon scientific credibility. They’ve also been fooled into thinking the appearance is the same as the substance.

Since literal Cargo Cultists aren’t a significant presence in the US, but creationists are, I suggest we appropriate this holiday and call it Intelligent Design Day. Don’t worry about going to any effort to celebrate it, though—all you have to do is pretend that you are celebrating it, just as the Intelligent Design creationists pretend that they’re doing science.”

P.Z. Myers (2007)

“Big Intelligent Design may be following the path blazed by Big Tobacco.”

Reason Magazine (2007)

After the fall of The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (Jacobsen, 2025) and its journal Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID), around 2005, another institution emerged out of the Discovery Institute (DI) community for Intelligent Design (ID) Creationism research, the Biologic Institute (2025a)–a U.S. 501(c)(3).

Douglas Axe was the founding scientific lead of Biologic Institute in 2005 (Biologic Institute, 2025a; Discovery Institute, 2025). Established in 2005 and largely funded through grants associated with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture; DI materials and BI’s own pages document close organizational ties (2025). Their leadership was comprised of 17 affiliates as of last listing: Douglas Axe, Günter Bechly, Stuart Burgess, Brendan Dixon, Winston Ewert, Ann Gauger, Guillermo Gonzalez, David Keller, Matti Leisola, Philip Lu, Robert J. Marks II, Brian Miller, Colin Reeves, Mariclair Reeves, Richard Sternberg, Jonathan Wells, and Lisanne Winslow (Biologic Institute, 2025b).

The established ideological grounding was ID Creationism (Cartwright, 2006). They wanted to challenge mainstream evolutionary biology primarily with appointments (Biever, 2006). The aim was to demonstrate a design perspective as producing better science than mainstream evolutionary biology while part of a larger ID Creationism covert religious culture war movement (Forrest, 2007). This was part of the “Wedge” strategy in the promotion of ID in education, public policy, and science (National Center for Science Education, 2008).

Primarily, it was active from the founding in 2005 to about the latest date of 2019 with occasional publishing into 2025, e.g., a single article in 2025 so far; therefore, a functional research space devoted to this research seems unlikely to be supportable (Young, 2021; BIO-Complexity, 2025a; The Sensuous Curmudgeon, 2021). Reporting in 2006 (New Scientist; summarized by NCSE) raised questions about BI’s lab operations and access.

Axe and colleagues published “Stylus: A System for Evolutionary Experimentation Based on a Protein/Proteome Model with Non-Arbitrary Functional Constraints” (2008) in PLOS ONE, beginning some research.

Biologic Institute launched the ID Creationism journal BIO-Complexity in 2010 (National Center for Science Education, 2010). Since 2010, BIO-Complexity has published dozens of papers across 16 annual volumes (2010–2025); publication cadence is modest compared to PCID (BIO-Complexity, 2025a). The Editor-in-Chief was Robert J. Marks II, and the founding editor was Douglas Axe (BIO-Complexity, 2025b).

The rest of the editorial board were William Basener, Günter Bechly, Michael Behe, Walter Bradley, Stuart Burgess, Russell Carlson, William Dembski, Marcos Eberlin, Winston Ewert, Charles Garner, Ann Gauger, Ola Hössjer, Peter Imming, James Keener, David Keller, Matti Leisola, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, Jed Macosko, Tobias Mattei, Scott Minnich, Edward Peltzer, Colin Reeves, Ralph Seelke, Richard Sternberg, Scott Turner, Jiří Vácha, John Walton, and Jonathan Wells (Ibid.).

They aimed to test the scientific merit of ID Creationism (BIO-Complexity, 2025c). An IRS Form 990-EZ for the 2019 tax year (filed 2020) reflects modest finances (IRS, 2020). Their contact refers to the Center for Science and Culture (Biologic Institute, 2025c). In 2012, BI used a stock laboratory image in promotional material; coverage and DI commentary acknowledged the use of stock footage (Johnston, 2012; Hoppe, 2012; Klinghoffer, 2012).

Most of the funding for the Biologic Institute has been from DI (Biologic Institute, 2025a). The size of the financial contributions via ITS filings, the slow pace of publication, and the niche subject matter suggest that the research operation appears, at best, as a boutique operation that ceased physical operations many years ago. This follows the trends of ISCID, PCID, and numerous leading intellectuals of the ID movement from DI.

There is still more to review for this A Further Inquiry series.

References

Axe, D.A., Dixon, B.W., & Lu, P. (2008, June 4). Stylus: A System for Evolutionary Experimentation Based on a Protein/Proteome Model with Non-Arbitrary Functional Constraints. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002246.

Bailey, R. (2006, December 19). Biologic Institute = Tobacco Institute. https://reason.com/2006/12/19/biologic-institute-tobacco-ins/.

Biever, C. (2006, December 13). Intelligent design: The God Lab. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19225824-000-intelligent-design-the-god-lab/.

Biologic Institute. (2025a). About. https://www.biologicinstitute.org/about.

Biologic Institute. (2025c). Contact. https://www.biologicinstitute.org/contact.

Biologic Institute. (2025b). People. https://www.biologicinstitute.org/people.

BIO-Complexity. (2025a). Archives. https://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/issue/archive.

BIO-Complexity. (2025c). Editorial Policies. https://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/about/editorialpolicies.

BIO-Complexity. (2025b). Editorial Team. https://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/about/editorialTeam.

Cartwright, R.A. (2006, December 14). New Scientist Investigates Biologic Institute. https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/12/new-scientist-i.html.

Center for Science & Culture. (2025). About: Our Mission. https://www.discovery.org/id/about/.

Discovery Institute. (2025). Douglas Axe. https://www.discovery.org/p/axe/.

Forrest, B. (2007, July). Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. https://web.archive.org/web/20110519124655/http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/intelligent-design.pdf.

Hoppe, R.B. (2012, December 18). The Disco 'Tute's fake laboratory. https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2012/12/the-disco-tutes-1.html.

IRS. (2020). BIOLOGIC INSTITUTE: Short Form Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax. https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/841670187_201909_990EZ_2020110417413291.pdf.

Jacobsen, S.D. (2025, August 22). The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design and Intelligent Design Creationism. https://afurtherinquiry.substack.com/p/the-international-society-for-complexity.

Johnston, C. (2012, December 18). Intelligent design think tank’s “institute” is a Shutterstock image. https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/inteliigent-design-think-tanks-institute-is-a-shutterstock-image/.

National Center for Science Education. (2006, December 15). New Scientist visits the "God Lab". https://ncse.ngo/new-scientist-visits-god-lab.

National Center for Science Education. (2010, November-December). The Latest “Intelligent Design” Journal. https://ncse.ngo/latest-intelligent-design-journal.

National Center for Science Education. (2008, October 14). The Wedge Document. https://ncse.ngo/wedge-document.

Myers, P.Z. (2007, February 15). Happy Intelligent Design Day!. Pharyngula. https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/02/15/happy-intelligent-design-day/.

The Sensuous Curmudgeon. (2021, May 22). The Cosmic Aardvark Is Smiling. https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2021/05/22/the-cosmic-aardvark-is-smiling/.

Young, M. (2021, May 23). Biologic Institute Closes. https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2021/05/biologic-institute-closes.html.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

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