The Discovery Institute's Wedge Document, and other sources have said that Nelson publishes works derived from his dissertation, "Common Descent, Generative Entrenchment, and the Epistemology in Evolutionary Inference", in which he criticizes the principle of common descent as it is expounded in the Evolutionary Monographs series. Nelson is frequently cited by opponents of intelligent design as an example of ID's "big tent" strategy in action. He has written about "Life in the Big Tent" in the Christian Research Journal. In an interview for Touchstone Magazine Nelson said that the main challenge facing the ID community was to "develop a full-fledged theory of biological design", and that the lack of such a theory was a "real problem". As shown in the Peabody Award-winning documentary , in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, Barbara Forrest presented a quote from Nelson to demonstrate that Intelligent Design proponents know that it is not a theory in the scientific sense:
Young Earth views
Nelson was a contributor to the book Three Views on Creation and Evolution, edited by J. P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds, in which he, along with Reynolds, represented the young Earth creationist position. In their discussion in that book he and Reynolds acknowledged that "natural science at the moment seems to overwhelmingly point to an old cosmos." Ideas consistent with present-day Young Earth creationism were abandoned around the start of the 19th century. Today, such proposals are rejected by the scientific community, and the courts have ruled Young Earth creationism to be a religious belief. In a discussion with historian of scienceRonald Numbers, Nelson made a distinction between his theological understanding of Earth history, which is informed by the biblical account as presented in the book of Genesis, and his advocacy for intelligent design. Nelson acknowledged that his young-Earth views are unpopular with many other intelligent design advocates. Nelson was a cast member in the 2017 creationist documentary filmIs Genesis History?. After the film's release, he published an article stating that the film distorted his arguments and presented "a false dichotomy" between naturalistic evolution and young Earth creationism while omitting other viewpoints. Director and Producer Thomas Purifoy wrote a response entitled A Tale of Two Dichotomies in which he presented the full film interview with Nelson as evidence and stated that "as a philosopher, Paul seemed to be shifting back to viewing things from a philosophical perspective. The film, however, was not about comparing two different philosophies, but two different histories."
