Discovery Institute work figured in ruling

Seattle's Discovery Institute, a major force in promoting intelligent design, is mentioned throughout a judge's decision barring a Pennsylvania school district from teaching the controversial concept.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones said intelligent design is creationism in disguise. And in a 139-page decision, he repeatedly pointed to the work of the Discovery Institute to back up his ruling.

He said a document prepared by the institute's Center for Science and Culture is dramatic evidence of intelligent design's "religious nature and aspirations."

In fact, Jones relies on the 1999 manifesto as evidence the intelligent-design movement "seeks nothing less than a complete scientific revolution in which ID [intelligent design] will supplant evolutionary theory."

The Discovery Institute says it repeatedly urged the Dover Area School Board and district officials not to mandate teaching intelligent design. That's because the group doesn't want to "politicize what primarily should be a scientific and intellectual dispute," John West, associate director of the institute's Center for Science and Culture, said Tuesday. "We think ultimately intelligent design has to win based on the scientific evidence, not in the courtroom or the school district."

The Center for Science and Culture opened in 1996 as part of the already-established Discovery Institute. The think tank was founded by former Washington Secretary of State Bruce Chapman to study such topics as transportation, economics, technology and bioethics.

West said Jones wrote an "angry decision" that ignored facts presented by the Discovery Institute about its role and about the existence of peer-reviewed articles backing intelligent design.

"In his grandiose effort to try to answer all the questions, he may have undermined the authority of his opinion because he really comes off as someone with an agenda," West said.

"He just ignored any facts that didn't fit his little theory. He simply mouthed the script the [American Civil Liberties Union] gave him."

In addition to relying on Discovery Institute work to back up claims that intelligent design is creationism in disguise, the judge outlined specific work the institute did with Dover school officials.

Testimony, according to Tuesday's decision, showed the Discovery Institute provided Dover officials with a DVD, videotape and books, which were given to science teachers.

Two lawyers from the institute made a presentation to the school board.

Jones said the only outside organizations the board consulted were the Discovery Institute and a conservative legal foundation, "and it is clear that the purpose of these contacts was to obtain legal advice, as opposed to science education information."

The judge called those groups "two organizations with demonstrably religious, cultural and legal missions."

West said that ignores the evidence that the Discovery Institute urged the board not to mandate intelligent design in the classroom, and when that happened anyhow, urged the board to repeal its decision.

The Discovery Institute maintains it wants schools not to teach intelligent design, but to "teach the controversy": tell students there is a debate about evolution.

But a lawyer with the conservative law center that advised the board said last fall that the Discovery Institute backed off its support of teaching intelligent design, which he said is spelled out in the group's literature, and hurt the board's legal case.

The institute agreed with one of the court's conclusions Tuesday: Dover school-board members didn't understand intelligent design.

Jones wrote that there was a "collective failure to understand the concept."

West said "we had a real problem with a school board that doesn't even know what it is they are adopting. ... And the people who suffer from what they did are the scientists and scholars who are trying to make this argument in academia."

The Discovery Institute submitted some briefs in the case to make legal arguments but was not a party to the lawsuit.

David Postman: 360-943-9882 or dpostman@seattletimes.com