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
The biggest money around is government money and that is all behind the evolutionists. Like all the leftists, the evolutionists live off the public trough and misuse our money to support their theory which has absolutely no scientific basis.
What isn't "really" correct? The info about The Linnaean Society paper was in the post of mine that you are here replying to. (Why didn't you quote the portion of my message relevant to your reply, btw?) What you say is essentially correct. The Linnaean Society paper attracted very little attention, but I never said anything to the contrary. I'm quite aware of the context of these events. I was just pointing out the fact that Darwin did present his theory in a paper before setting it out in The Origin. If you were aware of this previous to my incidental comment then that's great, and I'm pleasantly surprised.
Right, gore. And is the conspiracy that suppresses this related to the Bush/Moussad conspiracy that crashed those planes into the WTC, or are the space brothers behind it?
No he wasn't.
Charles Darwin - his religious beliefs
This website contains text extracted from "The Autobiography of Charles Darwin" edited by Nora Barlow.
Another source of conviction in the existance of God connected with the reason and not the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look at a first cause having an intelliegent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a theist.This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker. But then arises the doubt -- can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as the possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such a grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.
I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.
Please note that the preceding was written by Darwin as a private personal history. It was intended only for his family and Darwin never anticipated that it would be published. This document, written late in his life, is as close to his true and genuine views as we do have or could reasonably expect to have.
On what basis, Gore, do you claim to know Darwin's views better than he did?
Huge he err, toot.
Ego he, O'er truth.
"Ogre," he utter. Oh!
HOT: He true Ogre.
Right, gore. And is the conspiracy that suppresses this related to the Bush/Moussad conspiracy that crashed those planes into the WTC, or are the space brothers behind it?
We know what the 'conspiracy' is. Look at the fights over evolution in schools. There is an inbred bunch in education which fights tooth and nail against anyone who denies evolution. Those who oppose it are insulted and often fired.
However, that does not mean that scientific research has not disproven evolution. Real scientists (not the Goulds, Dawkinses, and the bureaucrats of evolution such as that fool editor of Scientific American who have not been inside a lab since High School) constantly show evolution to be well nigh impossible. If often cite the discovery of genetics, the discovery of DNA and the discovery of the importance of non-coding DNA as examples disproving evolution. However, if you have examples of scientific discoveries in biology which tend to prove evolution, kindly tell me and we can discuss it.
Problem with using that is that references to his atheism were taken out from the publication at the insistence of his wife. Here is some of what was taken out and strong proof in his own hand of his atheism:
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include My Father, Brother, and almost all my best frieds, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
Further on he says:
A being so powerful and so full of knowledge as a God who could create the universe, is to our finite minds omnipotent and omniscient, and it revolts our understanding to suppose that his benevolence is not unbounded, for what advantage can there be in the sufferings of millions of lower animals throughout almost endless time.
From; Gertrude Himmelfarb, 'Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution' page 385, quoting from unpublished passages in the Autobiography.
That Darwin was totally dishonest about his religious views in public, there is tons of evidence:
Many years ago I was strongly adviced by a friend never to introduce anything about religion in my works, if I wished to advance science in England; and this led me not to consider the mutual bearings of the two subjects. Had I foreseen how much more liberal the world would become, I should perhaps have acted differently.
From: Gertrude Himmelfarb, 'Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution' page 383, quoting from the Cambridge manuscript.
Last night Dicey and Litchfield were talking about J. Stuart Mill's never expressing his religious convictions, as he was urged to do so by his father. Both agreed strongly that if he had done so, he would never have influenced the present age in the manner in which he has done. His books would not have been text books at Oxford, to take a weaker instance. Lyell is most firmly convinced that he has shaken the faith in the Deluge far more efficiently by never having said a word against the Bible, than if he had acted otherwise.
...
I have lately read Morley's Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity (even when written with the wonderful force and vigor of Voltaire) produce little permanent effect; real good seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.
From: Gertrude Himmelfarb, 'Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution' page 387, quoting from the Cambridge manuscript.
"P.S. Would you advise me to tell Murray [his publisher] that my book is not more un-orthodox than the subject makes inevitable. That I do not discuss the origin of man. That I do not bring in any discussion about Genesis, &c, &c., and only give facts, and such conclusions from them as seem to me fair.
Or had I better say nothing to Murray, and assume that he cannot object to this much unorthodoxy, which in fact is not more than any Geological Treatise which runs sharp counter to Genesis."
From: Daniel J. Boorstein, The Discoverers, page 475.
No doubt from a subconscious desire to remain mysterious.
This is not so profound as it is profuse; few among the many actually brute about the orts and bits that buttress the contemporary convential wisdom; it's so much easier to accept the word of "experts."
It is more humane than cock-fighting?
Poor history, that. Darwin did make an allowance for the "faithful" in Origins, but wrote God off as unnecessary in "The Descent of Man."
Having been around many researchers, I maintain that only a few are indifferent to money.
This is a poor example; if a sixth finger could be envisioned to be beheficial, it would need to be fully muscled and increase either dexterity or gripping strength.
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