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The DI Will Hate This Post

By stcynic on April 20, 2006.

Yesterday, the Baylor student newspaper printed an article that referred to the Discovery Institute as a "conservative Christian think tank". The DI, as you can imagine, didn't like that description one bit because, frankly, they've spent so many years selling the silly notion that they're not a conservative Christian think tank and it's just annoying when all that propaganda doesn't pay dividends. They fired off a letter and the Baylor paper caved in immediately and pulled the article and made a "correction". The letter said, in part:

The article "Baylor not immune to scholarly feud over origin of life" by Van Darden and Josh Horton inaccurately describes the Discovery Institute as a "conservative Christian think tank." This is false. Discovery Institute is a secular, non-partisan, non-profit public policy center dealing with national and international affairs. It is not religious in any manner and does not embrace any religion, but rather respects each individual's right to choose their personal religious belief. Discovery staff and fellows comprise a diverse range of political and philosophical beliefs...

Current Institute projects explore the fields of technology, science and culture, education policy, reform of the law, national defense, the environment and the economy, the future of democratic institutions, transportation, religion and public life, government entitlement spending, foreign affairs and cooperation within the bi-national region of "Cascadia."

Now, they do have at least a portion of a legitimate point to make. The DI is a large organization with many distinct groups within it, only one of which deals directly with ID and "cultural renewal". The rest deal with mundane things like transportation policy and such. But in the context of the ID debate, the only DI department that matters is the Center for Science and Culture. and they've gone to great lengths to cover up the essentially religious nature of that project for many years.

The original name of the CSC was the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture; it was shortened to the Center for Science and Culture in 2002. The NCSE has a rundown of how they tried several times to cover up the religious identity of the group through their evolving banners. For the first 3 years of its existence, the banner/logo for the CRSC was Michelangelo's painting from the Sistine Chapel showing God and Adam touching fingers. Then they changed it and took Adam out, having God instead touch an image of the double-helix DNA structure. That lasted almost two years, then they changed it to just have picture of a star nebula from the Hubble telescope. Then, finally, they kept that banner but changed the name to the Center for Science and Culture.

Why did they feel the need to keep making their banners less and less religious? Because they'd left behing quite an inconvenient track record of their religious motivations that might prove damaging in court. To begin with, the Wedge Document, a mission statement blueprint of the goals of the CRSC put out by the DI, had made their goals quite clear. In the first section, it bluntly declared:

Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature.

In laying out their "five year strategic plan", the DI said that their goal was "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies" and "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God." Gosh, where could anyone have ever gotten the idea that they were a conservative Christian thinktank? It couldn't be that the DI is in fact engaged in a longstanding campaign of deceit to cover up their too-honest declarations of a decade ago, could it? Nah. Obviously, those evil Darwinists must have made it up out of thin air. Once again, the DI's own words of yesterday get in the way of the image they're trying so frantically to sell today.

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Well, they want a big tent, they want to include Moonies (Wells), Raeliians, Muslims and Conservative Jews.

Given the ease at which someone can investigate which political party a person belongs to these days (via donations and primary registrations) it should be possible to find out how "diverse" the DI really is.

Not that it's necessary, since we all know what the answer is already.

The Baylor paper pulled the article? What pathetic cowardice. Why couldn't they just publish a "correction" or "clarification?" The phrase "memory hole" comes to mind, but it would be wrong to compare these folks to commie tyrants, that's fer sure...

Oh, and what's with this "cultural renewal" stuff? Is that anything like "cultural cleansing?" Or "ethnic cleansing?"

"secular"!... That always cracks me up. :)

By GPPlascencia (not verified) on 20 Apr 2006 #permalink

Follow the money (funding) is always a good idea - those that pay generally call the tune. This is been done before - mainly conservative Christians and some *shudder* Christian reconstructionists, I believe.

Does anyone have a link?

That's right....secular...no religion to be seen here. Where DO you people get that idea? I just can't figure it out!! Why can't you just believe the times we say its not about religion and ignore those other statements??

Note to our fundementalist religion base: We have to say things like the above for legal purposes....but you know we don't really mean them. See our stuff where we talk about it all being about the religion. Just don't show the atheist evolutionists, or we'll get our asses kicked in court again next time. ... cdesign proponentsists...how did that slip by us? *wink, wink*. :)

....

"According to Reason magazine, promotional materials from the Seattle-based Discovery Institute acknowledge that the Ahmanson family donated $1.5 million to the Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture for a research and publicity program to "unseat not just Darwinism but also Darwinism's cultural legacy." In fact, the August 1999 issue of the Discovery Institute's Journal recognizes an Ahmanson outfit for providing the Center's start-up funds."

from:

http://washblog.typepad.com/main/2005/05/the_discovery_i.html

Christian reconstructionists:

from ( http://www.religioustolerance.org/reconstr.htm )

The use of the death penalty would be greatly expanded, when the Hebrew Scriptures' laws are reapplied. People will be executed for adultery, blasphemy, heresy, homosexual behavior, idolatry, prostitution, evil sorcery (some translations say Witchcraft), etc. The Bible requires those found guilty of these "crimes" to be either stoned to death or burned alive. Reconstructionists are divided on the execution method to be used.
A church or congregation which does not accept the Mosaic Law has another god before them, and is thus guilty of idolatry. That would be punishable by death. That would include all non-Christian religious organizations. At the present time, non-Christians total two-thirds of the human race.
The status of women would be reduced to almost that of a slave as described in the Hebrew Scriptures. A woman would initially be considered the property of her father; after marriage, she would be considered the property of her husband.

Hello Dark ages!

Well, what else would should we expect? The D.I. is more of a PR firm for Christocrats than anything else.

By Chris Blakley (not verified) on 20 Apr 2006 #permalink

I'm a student at Baylor, and after reading this post I was compelled to write a letter to the editor at the Lariat explaining their mistake.

I was, however, surprised you didn't single out this quote:

"Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

Cody they might throw you out. Which would probably be benefical for you in the long run.

Rich, this is nothing. I once threatened to burn my professor at the stake.

Heh, I just posted a comment on the Doubting Darwin blog quoting certain objectives from the Wedge, and the guy deleted it! I am shocked and appalled by such actions.

No, really.

Cody, is it true that DaveScot lives in a Caravan in Demski's yard?

The Baylor Lariat didn't just pull the article, they put out this correction today (which someone typed up and emailed me):

Correction

Wednesday's article "In The Beginning" contained several errors.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute is a secular, non-partisan, non-profit public policy center dealing with national and international affairs, not a conservative Christian think tank.

Dr. Francis Beckwith is not a member of the institute but a fellow, which means he received funding for research.

Beckwith, who was described as a proponent of teaching intelligent design alongside traditional scientific theory, said he believes there are good reasons why a public school should not require the teaching of ID, but there are no good constitutional reasons to prohibit a teacher from teaching it or a school board from requiring it.

Bekwith's statement that "intelligent design arguments - in principle - cannot be excluded from the realm of science," was not in the context of theology, but a question of philosophy of science having to do with the preconditions of science itself.

A corrected version of the story may be viewed at www.baylor.edu/Lariat

I have the original and revised stories.

Before DI complaint:

Beckwith, associate professor of church-state studies and outspoken proponent of teaching intelligent design alongside traditional scientific theory, was denied tenure in March, an act some say is due to Beckwith's membership in the Discovery Institute.

The institute, a Seattle-based conservative Christian think-tank, states on its Web site that the theory of
intelligent design holds 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."

After DI complaint (link here):

Beckwith, associate professor of church-state studies, was denied tenure in March, an act some say is due to Beckwith's association with the Discovery Institute.

The Seattle-based institute, a secular, nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy center dealing with national and international affairs, states on its Web site that the theory of intelligent design holds 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." Beckwith is a fellow of the institute.

Too bad no one sent the Baylor Lariat the Wedge Document yesterday -- oh wait, I did. Maybe the DI threatened to sue them or something.

The other noticable change appears to be in the last few paragraphs:

Dr. Charles Garner, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said the core of the intelligent design debate comes down to differing worldviews.

"It ends up being more about interpretation of facts," Garner said. "Facts are not often in dispute. The interpretation of facts is what's in dispute."

Beckwith, whose tenure denial sparked a new round of discussion on the issue, declined to comment further.

But he said in a debate in Legal Affairs: The Magazine at the Intersection of Law and Life, that "many people claim that science is inexorably wedded to naturalism and that a non-naturalist account, such as intelligent design, is a 'science stopper' because there could always be a naturalistic answer that has yet to be discovered."

Beckwith said if non-naturalist views could count against naturalist views, "intelligent design arguments -- in principle -- cannot be excluded from the realm of science."

Lilley, however, said science will always win if it's pitted against narrowly-defined theology.

"If you understand theology appropriately, and understand that the Bible is our book of faith, (you understand that) it's authoritative for our faith," he said. "But don't confuse it as a book of science."

After DI complaint:

Charles Garner, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said the core of the intelligent design debate comes down to differing worldviews.

"It ends up being more about interpretation of facts," Garner said. "Facts are not often in dispute. The interpretation of facts is what's in dispute."

Beckwith declined to comment on intelligent design, the Polanyi Center or the Baylor Center for Science, Philosophy and Religion because he said he was not at Baylor when any of the previous controversy occurred.

Lilley said the fact is that science will always win if it's pitted against narrowly-designed theology.

"If you understand theology appropriately, and understand that the Bible is our book of faith, (you understand that) it's authoritative for our faith," he said. "But don't confuse it as a book of science."

(bolds, links added)

Perhaps they should have quoted from Beckwith's 2003 article in the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, & Public Policy:

III. CONCLUSION

The purpose of this article is to answer the question of whether Intelligent Design would pass constitutional muster if it were permitted or required to be part of a public school's curriculum. In order to answer this question, I first covered the rise of, and case for, ID, showing that ID-in contrast to the Creationism repudiated by the Supreme Court and other federal courts -- is a serious challenge to the evolutionary paradigm. It is offered by well-credentialed scholars who have published their views in academic journals and monographs as well as in anthologies with prestigious university press imprints. I then assessed the question of whether ID is a religion, concluding that it is neither a conventional religion nor a religion according to the parallel position test (PPT). I also argued that ID would pass the Edwards standard, the test offered by the Supreme Court to forbid the required teaching of Creationism in public schools. For, unlike Creationism, ID is neither historically connected to Scopes nor is its literature replete with "science" and curricula that are transparent attempts to require that public schools offer to their students an account of origins derived from the Book of Genesis. [...]

The infusion of Intelligent Design into this debate has changed the legal landscape significantly. Unlike the Creationism repudiated by the Supreme Court in Epperson and Edwards, ID cannot be dismissed as a transparent attempt on the part of religious people to force their views on the public schools. [...]