This article needs to be updated.(November 2020) |
Abbreviation | DI |
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Founded | 1991 |
Founders | Bruce Chapman and George Gilder |
Type | Nonprofit |
91-1521697 | |
Legal status | 501(c)(3) |
Purpose | science and philosophy think tank |
Headquarters | 208 Columbia St., Seattle, Washington 98104-1508 |
Location |
|
President | Steven J. Buri [a] |
Chairman | Bruce Kerry Chapman [b] |
Parent organization | Hudson Institute |
Revenue (2019) | $7,637,803 [1] |
Expenses (2019) | $6,865,358 [1] |
Website | www |
Part of a series on |
Intelligent design |
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Creationism |
The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative [2] [3] [4] think tank that advocates the pseudoscientific concept [5] [6] [7] of intelligent design (ID). It was founded in 1991 [8] in Seattle as a non-profit offshoot of the Hudson Institute.
Its "Teach the Controversy" campaign aims to permit the teaching of anti-evolution, intelligent-design beliefs in United States public high school science courses in place of accepted scientific theories, positing that a scientific controversy exists over whether evolution is a reality, when in fact there is none. [9] [10] [11] [12]
The institute was cofounded in 1991 by Bruce Chapman and George Gilder as a non-profit educational foundation and think tank. [8] It was started as a branch organization of the Hudson Institute, an Indianapolis-based conservative think tank. It is named after the Royal Navy ship HMS Discovery in which George Vancouver explored Puget Sound in 1792. [13] The organization was incorporated in 1991.
Discovery Institute Press is the institute's publishing arm [14] and has published intelligent design books by its fellows including David Berlinski's Deniable Darwin & Other Essays (2010), Jonathan Wells' The Myth of Junk DNA (2011) and an edited volume titled Signature Of Controversy, which contains apologetics in defense of the institute's Center for Science and Culture director Stephen C. Meyer.
The Physicians and Surgeons for Scientific Integrity (PSSI), formally registered as PSSI International Inc., is a United States 501(c)(3) nonprofit anti-evolution organization, based in Clearwater, Florida, promoting the pseudoscience of intelligent design associated with the Discovery Institute. While in the past, the organization sponsored events promoting intelligent design and fundamentalist Christianity, it is currently largely inactive. [15] The PSSI was established in early 2006 by Rich Akin. [16] Geoffrey Simmons, Discovery Institute fellow, is one of the directors of the PSSI.
The PSSI created a public list of medical professionals who dissent from Darwinism. This list is used by the Discovery Institute in its anti-evolution campaigns. The list is used in support of the Discovery Institute claims that intelligent design is scientifically valid while asserting that evolution lacks broad scientific support. [17]
The PSSI, which was active between 2006 and 2008, held a "Doctors Doubting Darwin" rally at the University of South Florida's Sun Dome in September 2006. Attendance was estimated at 3,500 to 4,000 people by a local reporter. [18] Apologetic organizations promoting the event had hoped to fill all 7,700 seats in the Sun Dome. [19] [20] This meeting featured the Discovery Institute's Jonathan Wells and fellow Michael Behe, and received local radio coverage. This rally was opposed by the Florida Citizens for Science. [21] [22]
Teach the Controversy is a campaign conducted by the Discovery Institute to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design, a variant of traditional creationism, while attempting to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses. [23] [24] [25]
The scientific community and science education organizations have replied that there is no scientific controversy regarding the validity of evolution and that the controversy is a religious and political one. [26] [27] [28] A federal court, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a "false perception" that evolution is "a theory in crisis" by falsely claiming it is the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community. [26] [27] [29] [30] In the December 2005 ruling of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District , Judge John E. Jones III concluded that intelligent design is not science and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents". [31]
The Wedge Strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the institute. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto 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. In Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) the authors wrote "Although its religious orientation is explicit, the long-term plan outlined in the Wedge Document also displays the Discovery Institute's political agenda very clearly. In ten years, the Wedge strategy was to be extended to ethics, politics, theology; the humanities, and the arts. The ultimate goal of the Discovery Institute is to "overthrow" materialism and "renew" American culture to reflect right-wing Christian values." [32]
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, beside other connected sites, such as Mind Matters, [33] operated by the non-profit Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence [34] at Discovery Institute. It publishes the blog Evolution News & Science Today (formerly Evolution News & Views and often shortened to Evolution News (EN)), that promotes "a rigorously God-centered view of creation, including a new 'science' based solidly on theism." [35]
Christopher Rufo, an activist who later became famous for opposing the teaching of critical race theory, wrote frequently on the subject of homelessness while he worked for the Discovery Institute. [36] In his 2018 Discovery Institute-funded policy paper "Seattle Under Siege: How Seattle's Homelessness Policy Perpetuates the Crisis and How We Can Fix It," Rufo said that four groups—"socialist intellectuals", "compassion brigades", the "homeless-industrial complex", and the "addiction evangelists"—had successfully framed the debate on homelessness and diverted funding to their projects. [37] [38] He described how the "compassion brigade" had called for social justice using terms such as "compassion, empathy, bias, inequality, root causes, systemic racism." [38] Rufo brought negative attention to All Home, which at the time was King County, Washington's homelessness agency, by sharing a video of an adult entertainer performing at a conference on homelessness. All Home's director was placed on administrative leave and resigned shortly thereafter. [39]
Caitlin Bassett of the Discovery Institute has contributed opinion articles that criticize governmental response to homelessness as wasteful and counterproductive to the goal of ending homelessness. The Discovery Institute opposes the Housing First approach, preferring to prioritize treating homeless people for mental illness or drug addiction. [40]
Scott S. Powell, a senior fellow of the Institute, has promoted the false claim that the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen. [41]
The Discovery Institute website has posted articles denying the scientific consensus on climate change. [41]
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.
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".
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 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 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. 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.
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.
Paul A. Nelson is an American philosopher, noted for his advocacy of the pseudosciences of young earth creationism and intelligent design.
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.
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.
The Biologic Institute was a section of the Discovery Institute created to give the organization a facade of conducting biological research with the aim of producing experimental evidence of intelligent design creationism, funded by the Discovery Institute. It claimed offices in Redmond, Washington and laboratories in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Instead Biologic Institute consisted solely of a rented office space in Redmond which is no longer in use for several years although the web domain is still renewed. The 'research' listed for the group consists mainly of random and often irrelevant works by Intelligent Design supporters going back to their graduate school years. Several are notably articles, books or internally published content from Discovery's 'BioComplexity' journal which is not a legitimate scientific journal.
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.