Posted on 12/23/2002 7:26:26 AM PST by Deadeye Division
Heir spends family fortune to discredit evolution theory
12/23/02
Scott Stephens
Plain Dealer Reporter
If you can't imagine how an ultra-conservative California savings and loan heir could be linked to the shaping of Ohio's new science standards, you probably have never heard of Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson.
For years, the reclusive philanthropist and evangelical Christian has channeled millions from his family's fortune to a variety of causes designed to discredit and defeat Darwin's evolution theory that living things share common ancestors but have changed over time.
Some of those millions have gone to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, the nation's best-known, best-organized and best-funded proponent of intelligent design - the concept that living things have been "designed" by some purposeful but unknown being because they are too complex to have occurred by chance.
Critics of Discovery use Ahmanson's funding as a club to pummel the institute.
Discovery, despite criticism from some of the nation's top Darwinists, had a prominent role in this year's origins debate in Ohio. Discovery President Bruce Chapman, who founded the institute in 1990, meets those blows with a mixture of anger and amusement.
"I think the materialists had better get some better material," said Chapman, who founded Discovery in 1990 after serving as director of the U.S. Census Bureau and as an assistant to former President Ronald Reagan. "A lot of our foes are pretty ruthless. They'd like us to go away, but what they're reduced to is slurs against the people giving us grants."
If 2002 was any indication, the Discovery Institute isn't going away anytime soon. Senior fellows from the institute were invited to sit elbow-to-elbow with evolutionists at high-profile debates involving intelligent design this summer in Columbus and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
The issue has captured the public's imagination and landed the institute on the front-page of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, as well as on CNN.
Some believe Discovery scored its biggest victory earlier this month when Ohio adopted science standards that require students to examine criticisms of biological evolution. The Ohio Board of Education explicitly stated it wasn't pushing intelligent design, but Discovery fellows hailed the new standards as a historic victory, a triumph of democracy and academic freedom over the rigid edicts of the science establishment.
But the institute, which has a $2.5 million annual budget, has plenty of work not connected to intelligent design, including public transportation, technology, Social Security reform and the environment.
"I was very much impressed by both the range and the quality of their work," said University of Washington Professor Herbert Ellison, who served on the institute's advisory board. "Their ideas and opinions have had considerable impact in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, and across the country and abroad."
Still, Discovery's most visible impact has been with intelligent design. Often derided as stealth creationism, the concept has shown some legs in the ageless argument about the origin and development of life on Earth.
Through its Center for Science and Culture, Discovery has tried to position itself as a scientific rather than creationist player.
Instead of embracing biblical literalists who believe God created the Earth in six days or that Adam and Eve shared the planet with dinosaurs, Discovery has offered up reputable scholars with impressive academic pedigrees, including Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, Baylor University mathematician William Dembski and University of California-Berkeley molecular and cell biologist Jonathan Wells.
Behe's "Darwin's Black Box," which theorizes evolution cannot explain the complexity of cells, and Wells' "Icons of Evolution," which argues that evolution textbooks are filled with mistakes, are two of the movement's defining books.
"An important thing about them is the big-tent approach," Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, a leading Darwin defender, said. "Within the guts of the movement, you can find rather nasty arguments between the Biblical literalists and the intelligent-design advocates. They [intelligent-design supporters] say, 'We might disagree on things like the age of the Earth and the fossil record, but we have a common enemy.' "
To some of those enemies, that's a distinction without a difference.
Eugenie Scott, a physical anthropologist and director of the pro-evolution National Center for Science Education, noted wryly that Discovery recently shortened the name of its "Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture" to "Center for Science and Culture" to make itself sound more "scientific." She said the name change doesn't mask the fact that the institute's contributions to science have been nearly nil.
"They weren't being taken seriously as a science organization," Scott said.
Scott and others say the institute's efforts to be accepted as a serious player are also being undercut by the source of its money.
Ahmanson, whose family made billions in the savings and loan business, was associated at times with Christian Reconstruction, a radical faction of the Religious Right that sought to replace American democracy with a theocracy based on biblical law and under the "dominion" of Christians. For years, the Orange County multimillionaire served on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, the movement's think tank.
Ahmanson gave Discovery $1.5 million to help start its Center for Science and Culture. Fieldstead & Co., which is owned by Ahmanson and his wife, Roberta, has pledged $2.8 million through 2003 to support the institute's work.
Discovery Institute adviser Phillip Johnson, arguably the nation's best-known anti-evolutionist, dedicated his 1997 book, "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds," to "Howard and Roberta." Johnson said his relationship with Discovery is limited.
"I'm very loosely connected," he said during an October visit to Northeast Ohio. "I don't direct it and I don't take any money from them."
Discovery also received $350,000 from the Tennessee-based Maclellan Foundation. Foundation officials were quoted publicly as saying the grant was to help researchers prove that "evolution was not the process by which we were created."
Ahmanson rarely grants interviews, and calls to him and to Maclellan Foundation executive director Tom McCallie were not returned. Chapman said linking the institute to the radical Christian Right is a ploy not unlike the red-baiting antics of former U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
He also said evolutionists have put Discovery in a classic catch-22: The institute is frozen out from publicly funded research grants and excluded from science publications, and then criticized for its lack of "serious" research in peer-reviewed journals.
So Discovery fellows have followed the lead of an unlikely role model who also drew heat for publishing his findings in a book rather than scientific journals.
"They criticized Charles Darwin for the same thing," Chapman said.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
sstephens@plaind.com, 216-999-4827
Speaking of ... I tried it with "splifford the bat" and it came back with "drab pest of filth" (among many others)... :)
Some anagrams for "creationism":
A CRETIN I'M SO
A CORSET I'M IN
A SCORN ITEM I
SCREAM I INTO
SCARE I'M INTO
MANIC SORTIE
COMA INSERT I
COMA REST I IN
AM EROTIC SIN
A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.
Spend away, perhaps someday he will need to get an honest job.
To the extent the first edition is favored, it is generally, I think, because it is a "cleaner" read. Darwin had systematically developed his ideas for 20 years, and the first edition of The Origin was very mature. Most of the changes in later editions contributed little to the core of the theory, and even tended toward elements (e.g. inheritence of aquired characteristics) that muddied the picture or were not correct.
As the DNA "toolkit" expanded due to early chance mutation and natural selection, the rate of change accelerated -- by more chance mutation and a modified "natural selection." That is, if some major section was cleaved an reattached in a new way -- you'd get a significant difference quickly -- like somebody being born with a sixth finger. (Although I'm not aware if sixth fingers are hereditary -- it shows that things can appear suddenly -- you didn't need thousands of generations of people with slightly longer stubs that finally develop into a sixth finger. Some people just have complete sixth fingers (or toes) as if out of the blue.
Thank you Junior, this is the reason why I asked to be included on the Evolution ping list.
The answer is that it cannot be done. Reason is quite simple - evolution is based on materialistic beliefs, on randomness and lack of causation. Now DNA disproves materialism completely because in order for it to work, you need symbolism which is a totally non-materialistic concept. You need the symbol of reading DNA by threes in order to code for amino acids. You need to translate these codes into particular amino acids (there is no 'reason' for this code other than that is the way RNA reads the code and translates it into amino acids.) There is also more symbolism in DNA than this since 95 of DNA is not in genes so it must have other meanings such as specifying location (numeric symbols) and no doubt instructions similar to those in computer programs (jump, copy, return, etc.) None of this is possible without symbols and therefore the materilistic base of evolution is false, there must have been a designer to set up this symbolism and there can be no doubt that the designer also has affected the creation of new species.
It is so much easier to win an argument when you are talking to yourself eh Patrick? Heaven forbid that anyone should challenge your assumptions, you know they cannot stand up to scrutiny.
Not really correct. About a year before the publication of the Origins Darwin and Wallace read a joint paper to the Linnean society on the theory of evolution. Nothing came of it. Nobody thought much of it and it was not even worth discussing. Evolution gained notice only with the popular publication of the Origins.
It is evolution which is filled with junk science. Let's see:
Darwin proposed melding of traits from parents - a total assumption disproved by real science - junk science.
Darwin said that killing the feeble and genetically disabled would purify the species - a total assumption disproved by real science - junk science.
Darwin proposed that some races (the white race) were superior to others - a total assumption disproved by real science - junk science.
Evolutionists proposed that the tonsils and the appendix were useless organs, the remnants of evolution - a total assumption disproved by real science - junk science.
Evolutionists proposed that the 95% of humans not in genes was junk and could be used to prove evolution - a total assumption disproved by real science - junk science.
Paleontologists propose that brain size indicates intelligence - a total assumption disproved by real science - junk science.
I could go on and on, but the picture becomes quite clear from the above - evolutionists go around constantly making assumptions to prove their theory but once the real scientific facts are elucidated the evolutionist's assumptions are disproven. A good theory makes assumptions which are eventually verified by scientific facts. Evolution is a very bad theory and belongs in the dust bin of history.
Hate to tell you but Darwin was an atheist . If he changed the ending it was no doubt because of attacks on his book due to atheism. His next book the Descent of Man compares man to monkeys and says man descended from apes. His book was so atheistic that Marx wished to have Das Kapital dedicated to Darwin. Darwin declined because he did not wish to make his atheism known.
Clearly you have not been listening. The advances in biology in the last 50 years have given us a tremendous new understanding of nature. This understanding has totally discredited the theory of evolution.
Actually this same experiment was done on humans. The experiment was called the Soviet Union. As you may have heard, it did not work.
Total garbage. Just look at the evolutionists here, they do not know beans about science, they refuse to answer scientific questions, constantly attack religion and never, but never give scientific evidence for their theory. All they do is repeat the mantra 'evolution is science and everyone who disagrees is a know-nothing'. This is clear evidence of people who are not scientists and are just plain ideologues whose support of evolution is based on their atheistic/materialistic predispositions.
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