Uncloseting the Discovery Institute: The IDea that Dare Not Speak Its Name (Part 2)

November 5th, 2007 Jemmy Button Posted in News |

IN PART 1 OF THIS SERIES, we looked at the Discovery Institute’s 1996 press release announcing the program for its new Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture:

For over a century, Western science has been influenced by the idea that God is either dead or irrelevant. Two foundations recently awarded Discovery Institute nearly a million dollars in grants to examine and confront this materialistic bias in science, law, and the humanities.

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, part of that million bucks lives on – in the archived version of the first CRSC Website (1996-98). The cover page is a redraft of the original press release, but “God” has been mysteriously expunged in favour of a more anodyne “spiritual side of human nature”:

Life After Materialism

For more than a century, science attempted to explain all human behaviour as the subrational product of unbending chemical, genetic, or environmental forces. The spiritual side of human nature was ignored, if not denied outright.

This rigid scientific materialism infected all other areas of human knowledge, laying the foundations for much of modern psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. Yet today new developments in biology, physics, and artificial intelligence are raising serious doubts about scientific materialism and re-opening the case for the supernatural.

The supernatural? Is this the “idea” which Robert Crowther now laments is so closeted that “no one can even be allowed to whisper its name”? Is the suggestion here that, if the mathematical models for, say, the climate prove too complex or ambiguous, we should whip out the old ouija board instead?

So it would appear, for the website then provides some ‘Links to other sites on topics related to the Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture’, a veritable potpourri of “supernatural” speculation ardently endorsed by the Discovery Institute.

Such as: Walt Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation, which advances a singular “Hydroplate Theory”:

“There are many new reasons for concluding that the earth has experienced a devastating, worldwide flood, whose waters violently burst forth from under the earth’s crust. Standard “textbook” explanations for many of the earth’s major features are scientifically flawed. We can now explain, using well-understood phenomena, how this cataclysmic event rapidly formed all these features. Many other mysteries are better explained in terms of this literally earth-shaking event, an event far more catastrophic than most people have imagined.”

Among the “mysteries” which are “better explained” by Walt Brown’s solipsistic conjecture are comets, which Brown maintains were ejected from the earth by Noah’s Flood.

Or the next link offered by the Discovery Institute’s first website, this one to a site called simply Creation Science. Among the many exotic items found therein is the following credo, What do Creation Scientists Believe?:

“A large subset of creation scientists could be called “Biblical creationists”, who take the first eleven chapters of the Bible to be real history, including the creation of all things in six 24-hour days, the existence of Adam and Eve as the first man and woman, the unnatural introduction of “death” into the perfect creation because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and the occurence of a world-wide flood (Noah’s flood) which destroyed most life and greatly affected the processes operating on the earth. Most creation scientists believe that the earth is “young” (on the order of ten thousand years), but this is a secondary issue.”

Secondary indeed! For once we have abandoned science in favour of the “supernatural”, nothing as prosaic as measurements or data need restrain our wildest flights of fancy. What does it matter if the earth is 6,000 or 4.5 billion years old? Even if all the data does not accord with a priori religious belief or institutional dogma, then data be damned! Your supposition is as good as mine!

Or — maybe not. The Creation Science Credo then offers up a superlative bit of Orwellian logic:

“A major goal of creation science is to point out the weakness of evolutionary theory, because basically there are only two alternatives for how we got here, and if naturalistic processes are incapable of the task, then special creation must be the correct answer.”

Well, that’s clear enough: if you’re wrong, then I am right, no matter how baseless or unsupported my notions. Is it any wonder that the Discovery Institute does no science, but is a PR outfit promoting “Teach the controversy”?

Of course, as we shall see in the next part of the series, these embarrassing links to the most extreme and anti-scientific forms of Young Earth Creationism have been gradually airbrushed out of the Discovery Institute’s website. And it is now the Discovery Institute itself that is very tetchy about anyone mentioning the idea not allowed to whisper its name. Witness a recent DI blog by Logan Gage last August: A “Stealth Creationist Theory” Which Is Neither Stealth Nor Creationist: Discuss!:

Richard Brookhiser’s recent TIME magazine article “Matters of Morality” is just lovely in its description of intelligent design:

In 2005 Bush said that both intelligent design (a stealth creationist theory) and evolution ought to be taught in schools.

Wow. First of all, ID is not creationism—and no one is more vociferously insistent about this than the major creationist organizations like Answers In Genesis.
… {snip}…
How does a respectable magazine get away with such a description—which is as biased as it is false?

As Mr. Gage bids us “Discuss!”, we need simply point out that TIME “gets away such a description” because, as the original CRSC website bears witness, it is demonstrably accurate and true.

The Discovery Institute does not simply fear to whisper the name of Creationism, they’ve tried to rewrite their own history. And — no need to coyly whisper here — they blatantly lie about it.