Founded | 1996 |
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Type | Non-profit |
Focus | Promote intelligent design |
Location |
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Owner | Discovery Institute |
Key people | Stephen C. Meyer |
Employees | 8 staff [1] |
Website | www |
Part of a series on |
Intelligent design |
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Creationism |
The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative Christian think tank [2] in the United States. The CSC lobbies for the inclusion of creationism in the form of intelligent design (ID) in public-school science curricula as an explanation for the origins of life and the universe while trying to cast doubt on the theory of evolution. [3] These positions have been rejected by many in the scientific community, which identifies intelligent design as pseudoscientific neo-creationism, whereas the theory of evolution is the accepted scientific consensus. [4]
The Center for Science and Culture serves as the hub of the intelligent design movement. Nearly all of prominent proponents of intelligent design are either CSC advisors, officers, or fellows. Stephen C. Meyer, a former vice president of the Discovery Institute and founder of the CSC, serves as a Senior Fellow, and Phillip E. Johnson was the Program Advisor. Johnson is commonly presented as the movement's "father" and architect of the center's Wedge strategy and "Teach the Controversy" campaign, as well as the Santorum Amendment.
In 1987, the US Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard against creation science being taught in United States public school science classes. In reaction, the term intelligent design was coined as a substitute in drafts of the textbook Of Pandas and People , which was published in 1989, beginning the campaigning of the intelligent design movement under the leadership of Pandas editor Charles Thaxton. [5] The Edwards v. Aguillard ruling also inspired Phillip E. Johnson to begin anti-evolution campaigning. He met Stephen C. Meyer, and through him was introduced to others who were developing what became the Wedge strategy, including Michael Denton, [6] Michael Behe and William A. Dembski, with Johnson becoming the de facto leader of the group. By 1995, Johnson was opposing the methodological naturalism of science in which "The Creator belongs to the realm of religion, not scientific investigation", and promoting "theistic realism" which "assumes that the universe and all its creatures were brought into existence for a purpose by God" and expects "this 'fact' of creation to have empirical, observable consequences." [7]
In December 1993, Bruce Chapman, president and founder of the Discovery Institute, noticed an essay in The Wall Street Journal by Meyer about a dispute when biology lecturer Dean H. Kenyon taught intelligent design creationism in introductory classes. [8] [9] Kenyon had co-authored Of Pandas and People, and in 1993 Meyer had contributed to the teacher's notes for the second edition of Pandas. Meyer was an old friend of Discovery Institute co-founder George Gilder, and over dinner about a year later they formed the idea of a think tank opposed to materialism. In mid-1995, Chapman and Meyer met a representative of Howard Ahmanson, Jr. Meyer, who had previously tutored Ahmanson's son in science, recalls being asked "What could you do if you had some financial backing?" [8]
The Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, as it was originally named, grew out of a conference called "The Death of Materialism and the Renewal of Culture" that the Discovery Institute organised in mid-1995. It was founded in 1996 by the Discovery Institute with funding provided by Fieldstead & Company, the Stewardship Foundation, Howard Ahmanson, Jr. and the Maclellan Foundation. [7] [8] [10] The evolution of the center's name in 2002 reflects its attempt to present itself as less religiously motivated in the public's eye. [11] The evolving banners on the CRSC/CSC's website pictorially parallel these verbal efforts to disassociate the site from its overtly religious origins. [12] The "renewal" in its name referred to its stated goal of "renewing" American culture by grounding society's major institutions, especially education, in religion as outlined in the Wedge Document.
An internal CSC report dating from 1998 which outlined a five-year plan for fostering broader acceptance of ID was leaked to the public in 1999. This plan became known as the Wedge strategy. The Wedge Document explained the CSC's key aims are "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies" and to "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
The document sets as "Five-Year Goals" "To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory" and notably "To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda." This was seen in the following years, with public debates over the teaching of intelligent design in public school classrooms taking place in many states as part of the Teach the Controversy campaign.
If the CSC's strategy is successful, within twenty years the goals are "To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science." and "To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life." The CSC has responded to controversy regarding the Wedge Document, saying "Conspiracy theorists in the media continue to recycle the urban legend of the 'Wedge' document..." [25] [26]
The CSC's Teach the Controversy campaign seeks to promote the teaching of "the full range of scientific views" on evolution [27] on "unresolved issues" and the "scientific weaknesses of evolutionary theory." [28] Critics of the CSC's campaign say that they have manufactured the controversy and that they promote the false perception that evolution is "in crisis" and is a "dying theory." [3] [29] [30] [31]
The strategy has been to move from standards battles, to curriculum writing, to textbook adoption, all the while undermining the central positions of evolution in biology and methodological naturalism in science. The CSC is the primary organizer and promoter of the Teach the Controversy campaign. Examples of Teach the Controversy in action were the Kansas evolution hearings, the Santorum Amendment, 2002 Ohio Board of Education intelligent design controversy, and the Dover Area School District intelligent design controversy.[ citation needed ]
The CSC believe that the program and curricula they advocate presents evidence both for and against evolution and then encourages students to evaluate the arguments themselves. Casting the conflicting points of view and agendas as an academic and scholarly controversy was proposed by Phillip E. Johnson of the Discovery Institute in his book The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism (2000). In his book, he writes of the 1999–2000 Kansas evolution hearings controversy over the teaching of intelligent design in public school classrooms: "What educators in Kansas and elsewhere should be doing is to 'teach the controversy.'" [32]
In its early years, the CSC (then called the CRSC) offered science curriculum that assured teachers that its "Web curriculum can be appropriated without textbook adoption wars." [33] This had the net effect of encouraging ID sympathetic teachers to side-step standard textbook adoption procedures. Anticipating a test case, Discovery Institute director Stephen C. Meyer along with David K. DeWolf and Mark Edward DeForrest published in the Utah Law Review a legal strategy for winning judicial sanction. [34] [35]
According to published reports, the nonprofit Discovery Institute spends more than $1 million USD a year for research, polls, lobbying and media pieces that support intelligent design and their Teach the Controversy strategy. [36] In August 2005, The New York Times reported that since 2004 there have been 78 campaigns in 31 states to either Teach the Controversy or include intelligent design in science curricula, twice the number seen in 2002–2003. [8]
The cultivation of support for ID and its social and political agenda in higher education is a very active part of CSC's strategy. The CSC has claimed that established scholars in the scientific community support intelligent design. [37]
CSC-recommended curricula benefits from special status at number of religious schools. Biola University and Oklahoma Baptist University are listed on the Access Research Network website as "ID Colleges." [38] In addition, the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA), which began as a student organization at the University of California, San Diego, helps establish student IDEA clubs on university and high school campuses. The Intelligent Design and Undergraduate Research Center, ARN's student division, also recruits and supports followers at universities. Campus youth ministries play an active role in bringing ID to university campuses through lectures by ID leaders Phillip E. Johnson, William A. Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, and others. This activity takes place outside university science departments.
Several public universities, including the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of New Mexico have had intelligent design often as freshman seminars, honors courses, and other courses outside required curricula in which instructors have wider latitude regarding course content. [39]
The CSC offers fellowships of up to $60,000 a year for "support of significant and original research in the natural sciences, the history and philosophy of science, cognitive science and related fields." [40] Published reports state that the CSC has awarded $3.6 million in fellowships of $5,000 to $60,000 per year to 50 researchers since its founding in 1996. [8]
Among the center's publications are 50 books on intelligent design, such as those by William A. Dembski, and two documentary films, Unlocking the Mystery of Life (2003) and The Privileged Planet (2004), the later based on the book of the same name written by senior fellows Jay W. Richards and Guillermo Gonzalez.
Since its founding in 1996, the CSC has spent 39 percent of its $9.3 million on research according to Meyer, underwriting books or papers, or often just paying universities to release professors from some teaching responsibilities so that they can ponder intelligent design. Over those nine years, $792,585 was spent to finance laboratory or field research in biology, paleontology, or biophysics, while $93,828 was spent to help graduate students in paleontology, linguistics, history, and philosophy. [8]
The results of this are found in Discovery Institute-authored science class curricula, "model lesson plans", which are at the center of many of the current debates about including intelligent design in public school science classes. CSC promotes these, urging states and school boards to include criticism of evolution science lessons, and to "Teach the Controversy", rather than actually teach intelligent design which is susceptible to legal challenges on First Amendment grounds.[ citation needed ]
CSC publishes the blog Evolution News & Science Today (formerly Evolution News & Views), which is often shortened to Evolution News (EN).[ citation needed ]
In May 2005, the Discovery Institute donated $16,000 to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and by museum policy, this minimum donation allowed them to celebrate their donation inside the museum in a gathering. The Discovery Institute decided to screen The Privileged Planet. [41] The video was also a production of Illustra Media, [42] which has been identified as a front for a creationist production company. [43] [44] Upon further review, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History determined that the content of the video was inconsistent with the scientific research of the institution. [45] As a result, they refunded the $16,000, clearly denied any endorsement of the content of the video or of the Discovery Institute, and allowed the film to be shown in the museum as per the original agreement. Editorials have decried as naïve and negligent the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's failure to identify the Discovery Institute as a creationist organization, exclude the video with its review process in the first place, and identify the entire incident as an example of Wedge strategy in action. [46]
The center also funded research for the controversial book From Darwin to Hitler (2004) by Center fellow Richard Weikart. [47] Weikart claims that Darwinism's impact on ethics and morality played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis.
On September 6, 2006, on the center's Evolution News & Views blog, Discovery Institute staffer Casey Luskin published a post titled "Putting Wikipedia On Notice About Their Biased Anti-ID Intelligent Design Entries". In the post, Luskin reprinted a letter from a reader complaining that English Wikipedia's coverage of ID to be "one sided" and that pro-intelligent design editors were censored and attacked. Along with the letter, Luskin published an English Wikipedia email address for general information and urged readers "to contact Wikipedia to express your feelings about the biased nature of the entries on intelligent design". [48]
Most criticism of the CSC and the Discovery Institute is that the institute intentionally misrepresents many facts in the promoting of its agenda. A wide spectrum of critics level this charge: from educators, scientists, and the Smithsonian Institution to individuals who oppose the teaching of creationism alongside science on ideological grounds. The following are the most common areas in which the institute is accused of intentionally misleading:
Intellectual dishonesty, in the form of misleading impressions created by the use of rhetoric, intentional ambiguity, and misrepresented evidence; and a lack of rigor are the most common criticisms of the center. [53] Critics have also stated that its goal is to lead an unwary public to reach certain conclusions, and that many have been deceived as a result. Its critics, such as Eugenie Scott, Robert Pennock, and Barbara Forrest, claim that the CSC knowingly misquotes scientists and other experts, deceptively omits contextual text through ellipsis, and makes unsupported amplifications of relationships and credentials.
Barbara Forrest, author of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design and Glenn Branch say that the CSC uses academic credentials and affiliations opportunistically. [11] In 2001 the Discovery Institute purchased advertisements in three national publications ( The New York Review of Books , New Republic and Weekly Standard ) to proclaim the adherence of approximately 100 scientists to the following statement: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."[ citation needed ]
Such statements usually refer to the institutional affiliations of signatories for purposes of identification. But this statement strategically listed either the institution that granted a signatory's PhD or the institutions with which the individual is presently affiliated. Thus the institutions listed for Raymond G. Bohlin, Fazale Rana, and Jonathan Wells, for example, were the University of Texas, Ohio University, and the University of California, Berkeley, where they earned their degrees, rather than their current affiliations: Probe Ministries for Bohlin, the Reasons to Believe ministry for Rana, and the CSC for Wells. During controversies over evolution education in Georgia, New Mexico, Ohio, and Texas, similar lists of local scientists were circulated.[ citation needed ]
Alongside the allegation that the center intentionally misrepresents facts, Eugenie Scott and other critics say there is a noticeable conflict between what the CSC tells the public through the media and what they say before conservative Christian audiences. They contend that this is a studied and deliberate attempt at the obfuscation advocated by Wedge strategy author Phillip E. Johnson. [54]
Critics can also be found outside of the scientific community. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State has voiced First Amendment concerns over Discovery Institute's activities. He described the approach of the teach the controversy movement's proponents as "a disarming subterfuge designed to undermine solid evidence that all living things share a common ancestry":
"The movement is a veneer over a certain theological message. Every one of these groups is now actively engaged in trying to undercut sound science education by criticizing evolution," said Lynn. "It is all based on their religious ideology. Even the people who don't specifically mention religion are hard-pressed with a straight face to say who the intelligent designer is if it's not God." [36]
In 2004, Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross published Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design documenting the history of the intelligent design movement and the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture as well as critiquing ID research. [55] Forrest and Gross referred to the group as an outgrowth of Johnson's religious mission and explored its plans for "a rigorously God-centered view of creation, including a new 'science' based solidly on theism." [56]
The center is funded through the Discovery Institute, which is largely underwritten by grants and gifts from wealthy Christian fundamentalist conservative individuals and groups, such as Howard Ahmanson Jr., Philip F. Anschutz, Richard Mellon Scaife, and the Maclellan Foundation. [36] [57] [58] [59]
Published reports place the Discovery Institute's budget for ID-related programs at over $4 million per year. The center's expenditures can be assumed to be substantial based on the scope and quality of the center's extensive public relations campaigns, materials and contributions to local and regional ID and Teach the Controversy efforts.
CSC director, Stephen C. Meyer, admits most of the center's money comes from wealthy donors from the Christian right. [36] Howard Ahmanson Jr., who provided $1.5 million in funding that established the center, has said his goal is "the total integration of biblical law into our lives." [60] The Maclellan Foundation commits itself to "the infallibility of the Scripture." [36] Most Discovery Institute donors have also contributed significantly to the George W. Bush campaign. Until 1995, Ahmanson sat on the board of the Christian reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation, [61] and funds many causes important to the Christian right, including Christian reconstructionism.
Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.
The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative think tank that advocates the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design (ID). It was founded in 1991 in Seattle as a non-profit offshoot of the Hudson Institute.
William Albert Dembski is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). On September 23, 2016, he officially retired from intelligent design, resigning all his "formal associations with the ID community, including [his] Discovery Institute fellowship of 20 years". A February 2021 interview in the CSC's blog Evolution News announced "his return to the intelligent design arena".
The Santorum Amendment was a failed proposed amendment to the 2001 education funding bill that promoted the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in US public schools. In response, a coalition of 96 scientific and educational organizations wrote a letter to the conference committee, urging that the amendment be stricken from the final bill and arguing that evolution is regarded as fact in the scientific fields and that the amendment creates the misperception of evolution not being fully accepted in the scientific community and thus weakening science education. The words of the amendment survive in modified form in the bill's conference committee report but do not carry the weight of law. As one of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns it became a cornerstone in the intelligent design movement's "teach the controversy" campaign.
Phillip E. Johnson was an American legal scholar who was the Jefferson E. Peyser Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an opponent of evolutionary science, co-founder of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC), and one of the co-founders of the intelligent design movement, along with William Dembski and Michael Behe. Johnson described himself as "in a sense the father of the intelligent design movement".
John Corrigan "Jonathan" Wells was an American biologist, theologian, and advocate of the pseudoscientific argument of intelligent design. Wells joined the Unification Church in 1974, and subsequently wrote that the teachings of its founder Sun Myung Moon and his own studies at the Unification Theological Seminary and his prayers convinced him to devote his life to "destroying Darwinism."
The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific idea of intelligent design (ID), which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The movement arose out of the creation science movement in the United States, and is driven by a small group of proponents. The Encyclopædia Britannica explains that ID cannot be empirically tested and that it fails to solve the problem of evil; thus, it is neither sound science nor sound theology.
Stephen Charles Meyer is an American historian, author, and former educator. He is an advocate of intelligent design, a pseudoscientific creationist argument for the existence of God. Meyer was a founder of the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the main organization behind the intelligent design movement. Before joining the institute, Meyer was a professor at Whitworth College. He is a senior fellow of the DI and the director of the CSC.
The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social agenda authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was presented in a Discovery Institute internal memorandum known as the Wedge Document. Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect politically conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log.
The "Teach the controversy" campaign of the Discovery Institute seeks to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design as part of its attempts to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses. Scientific organizations point out that the institute claims that there is a scientific controversy where in fact none exists.
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design (ID), ultimately found by the court to not be science. In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book. The prominence of this textbook during the trial was such that the case is sometimes referred to as the Dover Panda Trial, a name which recalls the popular name of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, 80 years earlier. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge's decision sparked considerable response from both supporters and critics.
Neo-creationism is a pseudoscientific movement which aims to restate creationism in terms more likely to be well received by the public, by policy makers, by educators and by the scientific community. It aims to re-frame the debate over the origins of life in non-religious terms and without appeals to scripture. This comes in response to the 1987 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard that creationism is an inherently religious concept and that advocating it as correct or accurate in public-school curricula violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The intelligent design movement has conducted an organized campaign largely in the United States that promotes a pseudoscientific, neo-creationist religious agenda calling for broad social, academic and political changes centering on intelligent design.
"A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism" was a statement issued in 2001 by the Discovery Institute, a Christian, conservative think tank based in Seattle, Washington, U.S., best known for its promotion of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design. As part of the Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy campaign, the statement expresses skepticism about the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life, and encourages careful examination of the evidence for "Darwinism", a term intelligent design proponents use to refer to evolution.
Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design is a 2004 book by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross on the origins of intelligent design, specifically the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture and its wedge strategy. The authors are highly critical of what they refer to as intelligent design creationism, and document the intelligent design movement's fundamentalist Christian origins and funding.
Darwinism, Design and Public Education is a 2003 anthology, consisting largely of rewritten versions of essays from a 1998 issue of Michigan State University Press's journal, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, edited by intelligent design activists John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer. The book was promoted as being a "peer-reviewed science book". It is written by advocates of intelligent design, and consists of pro-evolution essays.
Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing is a 2004 anthology edited by William A. Dembski in which fifteen intellectuals, eight of whom are leading intelligent design proponents associated with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) and the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), criticise "Darwinism" and make a case for intelligent design. It is published by the publishing wing of the paleoconservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The foreword is by John Wilson, editor of the evangelical Christian magazine Christianity Today. The title is a pun on the principle of biology known as common descent. The Discovery Institute is the engine behind the intelligent design movement.
The Discovery Institute has conducted a series of related public relations campaigns which seek to promote intelligent design while attempting to discredit evolutionary biology, which the Institute terms "Darwinism". The Discovery Institute promotes the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement and is represented by Creative Response Concepts, a public relations firm.
This timeline of intelligent design outlines the major events in the development of intelligent design as presented and promoted by the intelligent design movement.
John G. West is a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute (DI), and associate director and vice president for public policy and legal affairs of its Center for Science and Culture (CSC), which serves as the main hub of the pseudoscientific Intelligent design movement.
Patricia O'Connell Killen, a religion professor at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma whose work centers around the regional religious identity of the Pacific Northwest, recently wrote that 'religiously inspired think tanks such as the conservative evangelical Discovery Institute' are part of the 'religious landscape' of that area.
...99.9 percent of scientists accept evolution...
That this controversy is one largely manufactured by the proponents of creationism and intelligent design may not matter, and as long as the controversy is taught in classes on current affairs, politics, or religion, and not in science classes, neither scientists nor citizens should be concerned.
Some bills seek to discredit evolution by emphasizing so-called 'flaws' in the theory of evolution or 'disagreements' within the scientific community. Others insist that teachers have absolute freedom within their classrooms and cannot be disciplined for teaching non-scientific 'alternatives' to evolution. A number of bills require that students be taught to 'critically analyze' evolution or to understand 'the controversy.' But there is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of the theory of evolution. The current controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution is not a scientific one.
ID supporters present fallacious arguments, use dishonest rhetoric, and often present non-contemptuous responses as evidence that their theories are gaining acceptance.
Nearly all of the Discovery Institute's money for the Intelligent Design project comes in the form of grants from wealthy fundamentalists and from Christian political groups. In 2003, the Discovery Institute received some $4.1 million in donations and grants. At least twenty-two different foundations give money to the Intelligent Design project; two-thirds of these are religious institutions with explicitly Christian aims and goals.