Defeating Benzenism by Opening Minds

For more than a century, chemistry textbooks have promoted a flawed
theory by incorporating faked drawings of benzene rings with three
double bonds. If benzene had double bonds like cyclohexene, it should
be easy to add halogens and other reagents across the double bonds.
But no such thing happens. Some textbooks show benzene rings with
little circles inside them instead of double bonds. This equivocation
is to be expected because Benzenism is only a theory, and a theory in
crisis at that. Nevertheless, chemistry teachers continue to teach
Benzenism as a fact, despite plenty of evidence that refutes it. Look
around in the chemistry literature. All you see are single bonds,
double bonds and triple bonds, all of which are fixed kinds. Where are
the transitionals? What good is half a bond?

Fortunately, the Aromaticity Institute has come up with an alternative
to Benzenism, by recognizing that the electron system in benzene and
other aromatic compounds exhibits irreducible simplicity. Remove any
of several constraints, like cyclic structure and 2n+2 pi electrons,
and the ability to avoid addition reactions, cannot exist. Thus
Intelligent Electron Theory was developed to explain the irreducible
simplicity that naturalistic theories, such as Benzenism, cannot. As
an analogy, if one sees human footprints on a beach, one rightly
concludes that they were made by humans walking. Naturalistic
explanations, such as "natural selection of wind and tide operating on
random changes to sand patterns" cannot explain the footprints.
Similarly, the irreducible simplicity of a benzene ring's refusal to
add reagents across its double bonds can only be explained by pi
electrons that anticipate the reagent and delocalize to prevent
addition. There have been heroic efforts to save the sinking ship of
Benzenism, of course, with high-tech gear like molecular orbital
theory. But all this does is tack on ad-hoc hypotheses and "just-so"
stories.

Contrary to popular misrepresentation, Intelligent Electron Theory
does explain facts and makes predictions. If aromatic pi electrons
know that there are 2n+2 of them in a cyclic organic compound, they
delocalize to prevent reagent addition. A prediction was fulfilled
when it was observed that chlorine cannot be added to biphenyl.
Reacting chlorine with biphenyl only produces a messy mixture of
substitution products called PCBs.

Benzenists have reacted with knee-jerk opposition to Intelligent
Electron Theory because, while one side of the proverbial elephant is
labeled "intelligent electrons," the other side might be labeled "free
will." Moral relativists cannot bear the fact that electrons, and
humans, have free will, and are thus responsible for their actions.
It's no surprise that morally relativistic naturalists will do
whatever it takes to defend the dogma of Benzenism.

Benzenists complain that Intelligent Electron Theory does not have a
solid record of peer-reviewed publications. But Intelligent Electron
Theory is relatively recent theory. It's not fair to demand an
extensive publication record, especially since Intelligent Electron
theorists are shut out by the Benzenist orthodoxy. All Intelligent
Electron theorists want is equal time in science class for their
theory along side Benzenism, so that open-minded students, who have
not yet been indoctrinated into the religion of Benzenism, can compare
the two theories decide for themselves which is the true explanation.