Teach the Controversy

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The "Teach the controversy" campaign of the Discovery Institute seeks to promote the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (a variant of traditional creationism) as part of its attempts to discredit the teaching of evolution in United States public high school science courses.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Scientific organizations (including the American Association for the Advancement of Science) point out that the institute claims that there is a scientific controversy where in fact none exists.[7][8][9][10][11]

The Discovery Institute is a conservative Christian think tank based in Seattle, Washington.[12][13] The overall goals of the movement are "to defeat scientific materialism" and "to replace [it] with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God".[14] It claims that fairness requires educating students with a "critical analysis of evolution"[15] in which "the full range of scientific views",[16] evolution's "unresolved issues", and the "scientific weaknesses of evolutionary theory"[17] are presented and evaluated and in which intelligent design concepts such as irreducible complexity[18] are presented.

The scientific community and science education organizations have replied that there is no scientific controversy regarding the validity of the theory of evolution and that the controversy exists solely in religion and politics.[7][8][11] A federal court has agreed with evaluation of the majority of scientific organizations (including the American Association for the Advancement of Science) that the institute has manufactured the controversy they want to have taught by promoting the false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis" by falsely claiming the theory is the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community.[7][8][9][19] In fact, intelligent design has been rejected by essentially all of the members of the scientific community,[20][21] including the numerical estimate of 99.9 percent of scientists.[22]

In December 2005, a federal judge ruled that intelligent design is not science and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents".[23] The federal ruling also characterized "teaching the controversy" as part of a religious ploy.[24]

  1. ^ Forrest, Barbara (May 2007). "Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. A Position Paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy" (PDF). Washington, D.C.: Center for Inquiry, Inc. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-19. Retrieved 2007-08-06..
  2. ^ Does Seattle group "teach controversy" or contribute to it? Archived 2006-06-14 at the Wayback Machine Linda Shaw. The Seattle Times, March 31, 2005.
  3. ^ Small Group Wields Major Influence in Intelligent Design Debate ABC News, November 9, 2005
  4. ^ "ID's home base is the Center for Science and Culture at Seattle's conservative Discovery Institute. Meyer directs the center; former Reagan adviser Bruce Chapman heads the larger institute, with input from the Christian supply-sider and former American Spectator owner George Gilder (also a Discovery senior fellow). From this perch, the ID crowd has pushed a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution that closely influenced the Ohio State Board of Education's recently proposed science standards, which would require students to learn how scientists "continue to investigate and critically analyze" aspects of Darwin's theory." Chris Mooney. The American Prospect. December 2, 2002 Survival of the Slickest: How anti-evolutionists are mutating their message Archived 2005-04-05 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Teaching Intelligent Design: What Happened When? by William A. Dembski"The clarion call of the intelligent design movement is to "teach the controversy." There is a very real controversy centering on how properly to account for biological complexity (cf. the ongoing events in Kansas), and it is a scientific controversy."
  6. ^ Nick Matzke's analysis shows how teaching the controversy using the Critical Analysis of Evolution model lesson plan is a means of teaching all the intelligent design arguments without using the intelligent design label.No one here but us Critical Analysis-ists... Archived 2015-09-06 at the Wayback Machine Nick Matzke. The Panda's Thumb, July 11, 2006
  7. ^ a b c "That this controversy is one largely manufactured by the proponents of creationism and intelligent design may not matter, and as long as the controversy is taught in classes on current affairs, politics, or religion, and not in science classes, neither scientists nor citizens should be concerned." Intelligent Judging—Evolution in the Classroom and the Courtroom George J. Annas, New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 354:2277-2281 May 25, 2006
  8. ^ a b c "Some bills seek to discredit evolution by emphasizing so-called "flaws" in the theory of evolution or "disagreements" within the scientific community. Others insist that teachers have absolute freedom within their classrooms and cannot be disciplined for teaching non-scientific "alternatives" to evolution. A number of bills require that students be taught to "critically analyze" evolution or to understand "the controversy." But there is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of the theory of evolution. The current controversy surrounding the teaching of evolution is not a scientific one." AAAS Statement on the Teaching of Evolution Archived 2006-02-21 at the Wayback Machine American Association for the Advancement of Science. February 16, 2006
  9. ^ a b "ID's backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard." Ruling, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, page 89
  10. ^ Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. A Position Paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy Archived 2007-06-30 at the Wayback Machine Barbara Forrest. May, 2007.
  11. ^ a b "Such controversies as do exist concern the details of the mechanisms of evolution, not the validity of the over-arching theory of evolution, which is one of the best supported theories in all of science." Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, Second Edition United States National Academy of Sciences
  12. ^ "The Board relied solely on legal advice from two organizations with demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions, the Discovery Institute and the TMLC."Ruling, page 131 Kitzmiller v. Dover.
  13. ^ Patricia O’Connell Killen, a religion professor at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma whose work centers around the regional religious identity of the Pacific Northwest, recently wrote that "religiously inspired think tanks such as the conservative evangelical Discovery Institute" are part of the "religious landscape" of that area. [1] Archived 2008-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ "Goals" (PDF), The Wedge, Seattle, W.A.: Discovery Institute (Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture), 1999, p. 4 Governing Goals, retrieved 7 July 2012
  15. ^ Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools by Eugenie Scott, Glenn Branch. Beacon Press, 2006. Page 30.
  16. ^ Key Resources for Parents and School Board Members Archived 2008-03-05 at the Wayback Machine Discovery Institute staff. August 21, 2007.
  17. ^ CSC Questions about Science Education Policy Discovery Institute staff.
  18. ^ Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools by Eugenie Carol Scott, Glenn Branch. Beacon Press, 2006.Page 35.
  19. ^ Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. A Position Paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy Archived 2007-06-30 at the Wayback Machine Barbara Forrest. May, 2007.
  20. ^ "ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community" Ruling, page 64 Kitzmiller v. Dover.
  21. ^ "Not a single expert witness over the course of the six week trial identified one major scientific association, society or organization that endorsed ID as science."reoRuling, page 70 Kitzmiller v. Dover.
  22. ^ Finding the Evolution in Medicine Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine National Institutes of Health
  23. ^ Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Conclusion (pages 136-138)
  24. ^ "has the effect of implicitly bolstering alternative religious theories of origin by suggesting that evolution is a problematic theory even in the field of science." . . . The effect of Defendants’ actions in adopting the curriculum change was to impose a religious view of biological origins into the biology course, in violation of the Establishment Clause. Conclusion, Page 134 of 139