IN PART 2 OF THIS SERIES, we saw how the Discovery Institute unabashedly endorsed its anti-scientific ‘supernaturalist’ manifesto with extreme forms of Creationism. So far from “ashamed to whisper”, in the 1990’s the Discovery Institute boldly proclaimed not only such Biblically-literalist doctrines as an earth only 6,000 years old and an historic Noah’s Flood, but also plenty of ‘roll-your-own’ armchair science, such as Walt Brown’s “Hydroplate Theory” to hurl comets from the earth into the heavens as well as the candid credo that, in Creation “science”, empirical data issues are “secondary”: primacy is instead afforded to discrediting materialistic “evolutionary theory.”

In 1997, the website for the DI’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture received a fresh lick of paint and a new Frequently Asked Questions Page. The page is more interesting today for its copious ADINCU’s (Answers the Discovery Institute Now Covers-Up):

#1. What is Materialism?

For these purposes, it has little to do with greed. Or wanting to buy too much at the mall to boost your self-esteem.

Materialism is the modern day philosophy that holds that matter is all there is. It’s the philosophy that says “If you can’t touch it, smell it, taste it or explain it through the hard sciences, it doesn’t exist.” Men are merely complex machines and not spiritual beings.

And it’s approved by most intellectuals around the world.

One other thing: we’re out to topple it.

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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”:

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DISCOVERY INSTITUTE PUBLICIST ROBERT CROWTHER recently posted an especially self-pitying article on one of the DI’s blogging arms, ”Evolution News and Views”. Entitled Is Intelligent Design Such a Dangerous Idea That It Must Not Be Thought?, it’s a real tear-jerker, wending its way through the DI’s ever-popular “Mom, those mean scientists won’t play with me” themes and — in words echoing those of Lord Alfred Douglas that cost Oscar Wilde so dearly — concluding with the plaintive wail about persecuting “Darwinists” (my bolding):

Try as they might, they can’t ban thinking about intelligent design. Thoughtful students will continue to explore what is so dangerous about this idea that no one can even be allowed to whisper its name.

So poignant a plea could not fail to move even the stony hearts of Darwin Central, the Conspiracy that Cares. And so we at once resolved, not to whisper, but indeed to loudly proclaim, through this present series of articles, all that we have learned about the downtrodden Discovery Institute and its promotion of the IDea that dare not speak its name.

Thanks to some fine internet archaeology by Darwin Central Arch-Conspiratrix JennyP, it is possible to trace, over the last 11 years, how the Discovery Institute has been diligently scrubbing their website of any embarrassing hints about their true motivation for opposing evolution and replacing it with “intelligent design”. Using the Wayback Machine, we can follow how the Discovery Institute has been sanitising its propaganda, from initial call to arms to ‘topple naturalism’ to incessant plaints of ‘persecution’ by the jack-booted Thought Police of the Darwintern.

And lo, what do we find at the very outset? Far from not daring to whisper, in the beginning the Discovery Institute flamboyantly proclaimed its true agenda with an unbridled exuberance to belt even the most ostentatious Gay Pride Parade into drab and lacklustre monochrome. It was quite a smorgasbord they presented, so I hope you’ve brought a goodly appetite as we begin our little feast here.

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DISHONEST ATTEMPTS BY THE DISCOVERY INSTITUTE, its UK proxy organisation Truth in Science, and its Creationist bedfellow Harun Yahya to introduce Creationism/Intelligent Design into the science curricula of European Schools have been resoundingly smacked down by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Meeting in Strasbourg on 4 October, the Assembly passed by a vote of 48 to 25 the revised draft of the Committee on Culture, Science, and Education resolution on The dangers of creationism in education.

The Executive Summary of the Resolution reads:

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are definitely inappropriate for science classes.

However, some people call for creationist theories to be taught in European schools alongside or even in place of the theory of evolution. From a scientific view point, there is absolutely no doubt that evolution is a central theory for our understanding of life on Earth.

The Assembly calls on education authorities in member states to promote scientific knowledge and the teaching of evolution and to oppose firmly any attempts at teaching creationism as a scientific discipline.

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RUTHLESSLY PERSECUTED by the jack-booted Thought Police of the Darwintern, who ceaselessly conspire to suppress the publication of leading-edge alchemy, New Age astrology, and post-modernist Intelligent Design in peer-reviewed scientific journals, the Discovery Institute valiantly battles on to bring the TRVTH before the general public in easy to digest layman books and, in a new venture, movies for the hard-of-thinking. We understand Hollywood is keenly interested in Dr. Michael Behe’s new tome, The Edge of Evolution, which will hopefully be finding its way to a theatre near you soon:

True, the reviews of the book itself were disappointing (links available from the NCSE at Behe’s latest scrutinized), but Robert Crowther has boldly stepped into the breach with some glowing commentary in his piece on the DI’s blog, California Literary Review Interviews Michael Behe on The Edge of Evolution. Mr. Crowther usefully provides a link to the original article, and quotes Dr. Behe from therein:

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IN MEMORIUM: Mr. Whippy (1996-2007)

MR. WHIP E. COLI, THE CELEBRATED PERITRICHOUS BACTERIUM, has collapsed and died in the course of a lecture delivered by Dr. William Dembski on 17 September 2007 in Oklahoma.

Better known by his stage name of “Mr. Whippy”, he was incubated in a “Black Box” by Dr. Michael Behe in 1996, and from a tender age drew acclaim for his magnificient flagellum, the excellence of which reduced Dr. Behe and some others to a state of Irreducible Perplexity.

Sold to the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Discovery Circus, Mr. Whippy and his astounding flagellum was exhibited alongside the Mysteriously-Invisible Peer-Reviewed Publication, the Incredibly-Ancient Argument from Ignorance, and other amazing sideshow marvels purporting to herald the end of materialist science and finally ‘whip’ the godless Darwinists into submission. Three times a day, Mr. Whippy would step forth on stage to spin his flagellum at an incredible 17,000 rpm while his barker would challenge spectators to explain how such a marvel of nano-engineering could have been assembled by blind and random chance alone.

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FROM OUTER SPACE TO SALIVARY GLANDS, is there any topic beyond the ken of Dr. Michael Egnor, prolific blogger for the Discovery Institute? A scant 24 hours after rehashing the hoary ‘Argument from Incredulity’ in a blog piece on SETI research, he has developed a novel argument in his offering for today, Spit-Brain Research (18 September).

Dr. Egnor’s remarkable fugue is his response to some recent research published by UCSC, Extra gene copies were enough to make early humans’ mouths water (9 September). The paper notes findings that

Humans have many more copies of this [salivary amylase] gene than any of their ape relatives, the study found, and they use the copies to flood their mouths with amylase, an enzyme that digests starch. The finding bolsters the idea that starch was a crucial addition to the diet of early humans, and that natural selection favored individuals who could make more starch-digesting protein.

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FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL, man has sought the answer to the Great Question of Life, “From whence do we come?” And for nearly six happy millennia, parents have passed down the wisdom of the ages to their inquiring offspring and told them the simple, beautiful truth: “My child, the Stork left you in the cabbage patch.”

But today, dedicated perverts, in the name of ‘science’, seek to displace this ancient verity with an outlandish, materialistic ‘just so’ story. In our public schools, a child is no longer taught he is a cherished gift bestowed on us by a benevolent avian emissary, but rather, the meaningless product of a mythical process called Natural Conception.

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DEVOTEES OF MELODRAMA SUFFERING WITHDRAWL PANGS awaiting the next season of Desperate Housewives, relief is at hand! Simply tune in to the magnificent soap opera generously offered by Evolution News and Views, one of the blogging arms of the Discovery Institute, for a thrilling pot-boiler of bizarre antics and improbable plot twists worthy of Wisteria Lane itself!

But be warned: it’s fast-paced stuff. It would be a full-time task to run down every quotation quarried out of context or factoid spun right out of orbit abounding in the sheer volume of episodes.

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NEVER MIND THE “MISSING LINK”, here at Darwin Central we’re more intrigued at the moment by the strange saga of the Discovery Institute’s very own Darwinist, who moreover appears to have gone ‘Missing in Action.’

One may be forgiven for having missed an item in a local freesheet, Seattle Weekly: Rural School Board Candidate Hasn’t Been Forthcoming About His “Intelligent Design” Agenda (29 August), which reported that Discovery Institute Fellow John Angus Campbell was a candidate in a pending North Mason County school board election. The article reports that Professor Campbell does not include in a biography on his campaign website any mention of his Fellowship at the Discovery Institute, nor refer to the details of his submitted testimony to the Kitzmiller et. al. v. Dover case.

More remarkably still, the article reports the rather astonishing news that Dr. Campbell, a professor of rhetoric, characterises himself as a “Darwinist.” As there can be no question whatsoever that Professor Campbell’s declaration here is in utmost good faith, one is left with something of a conundrum: has the Discovery Institute, which has promoted such works as Philip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial (1991) and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (1997), or Richard Weickart’s From Darwin to Hitler (2004), been infiltrated by a Darwinist mole?

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