Discovery Institute
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| Founded | 1990. Incorporated in 1991 |
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| Founder | |
| Type | IRS exemption status: 501(c)(3) |
| Location | |
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Key people
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Steven J. Buri, President |
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Revenue
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$4,074,669 USD (2013) |
| Expenses | $4,981,381 (2013) |
| Website | www |
The Discovery Institute (DI) is a non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design (ID). Its "Teach the Controversy" campaign aims to permit teaching of anti-evolution, intelligent-design beliefs in United States public high school science courses alongside accepted scientific theories, positing that a scientific controversy exists over these subjects.
In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania found:
The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board's ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.
This federal court—along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science—say that the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is "a theory in crisis" through incorrectly claiming that it is the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community. The court ruled that the Discovery Institute pursues "demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions," and the Institute's manifesto, the Wedge Document, describes a religious goal: to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." It was the court's opinion that intelligent design was merely a redressing of creationism and that, as such, it was not a scientific proposition.
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