Discovery Institute

“Do you know who funded it?” asked the email from the AP reporter. She and a number of other people read my post from three days ago about the Darwin conference being held in Rome. I took a deep breath and replied to the AP email, “Yes, I know who funded it.” It was the Templeton Foundation. I took a deep breath because Templeton is a powerful and well-connected. You don’t want to cross Charles Harper of Templeton if you can help it. But in public and private Harper has attacked intelligent design and Discovery Institute. He is not just interested in discussion, but in molding the discussion in certain ways. To that end, Templeton funds go to many groups Read More ›

[Editor’s Note: The three individual installments of this series can be seen here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. The final complete article, New England Journal of Medicine Traipses Into the Kitzmiller Decision, can be found here.] Previously in parts one and two of this critique, I discussed how George Annas’s New England Journal of Medicine review of the Kitzmiller decision only told one part of the story. The prior sections discussed problems with the Kitzmiller ruling’s finding that ID is not science. This final section will discuss problems with the claims that ID is creationism, and also the false history of ID promulgated in the ruling, and subsequently into “Intelligent Judging — Evolution in the Classroom and the Courtroom,” Read More ›

Intelligent Design (ID) has made it to the cover of Time magazine this week, and I’m delighted to say that the cover story is for the most part respecftul and fair. It’s certainly a far-cry from Time’s inaccurate and conspiracy-mongering tirade a few months ago. The cover story even gives a mostly correct definition of ID (adapted from the definition on Discovery Institute’s website). Time says that intelligent design is “the proposition that some aspects of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to natural selection.” A number of ID scientists were interviewed for the article, and Time assigned at least a dozen reporters to work on the story.

Still, there are some misleading or erroneous statements in the Time story that ought to be corrected. Here are three of the most important:

UPDATE: Stephen Meyer’s O’Reilly interview has been canceled. Due to the unfortunate Air France crash, O’Reilly will not have time for the full ID discussion, so he’s only going to interview the Darwinist. And William Dembski reports that his appearance on Fox has also been canceled. Discovery Institute has now issued a statement about President Bush’s comments on teaching the controversy over Darwinism. And here’s what the AP and other news sources are reporting on the issue: During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about competing viewpoints, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported. “I think that part of Read More ›

Discovery Institute isn’t calling for states to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in the science classes of our public education system, but neither should a biology teacher be forbidden to discuss it if she so chooses. One blogger’s intellectual journey through the writings of Discovery Institute senior fellow Stephen Meyer offers an engaging explanation of why: Until about two months ago, I hadn’t read much material put out by the Discovery Institute. Their Center for Science and Culture is one of the main forces behind Intelligent Design. What little knowledge I had of them was based on what I would occasionally read in news articles and perhaps Panda’s Thumb. Then after reading one of my posts where I said Read More ›