Discovery Institute: Hatin' Off Darwinism

The Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture's website is definitely arguing against Darwinism as an explanation for why humans are the way they are. The writers behind this website seem to be doing all that they can to prove to us that science and molecular machines and mutations are the only logical explanations for human appearance and behavior and lifestyles and development (the basis of life), and I can see this in the numerous amount of evidence that the writers provide with each piece posted to the website.

I did not have to read very far into "Beyond the Realm of Reason", by Robert L. Brown (and Carl G. Herndl), to see what this reading had in common with the Discovery Institute's website. The reading begins with a story about the environment from the John Birch Society, then Brown starts to analyze the rhetoric of the story and the things they say. It seems as if Brown could analyze the pieces published on the Discovery Institute's website and point out a lot of the same things. I noticed that one sentence could be changed a little bit and explain the Discovery Institute's website.
Brown: "This essay analyzes the environment as constructed by a group that seems alien to us: the John Birch Society, which we take as emblematic for much of the American political right."
Discovery: "This blog post analyzes the website that analyzes evolution as constructed by a group that seems alien to us: the Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture, which we take as emblematic for much of the American cultural right."
For this assignment, I am required to use the method that Brown used and explain how it works culturally with one of the Discovery Institute's website's truths.

The truth I am using that the Discovery Institute's website presents is that Darwinism is false. The piece, titled "Why Darwinism is False", talks about "Why Evolution is True" which is a book written by Jerry A. Coyne, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. The book explains Coyne's idea that “all the evidence—both old and new—leads ineluctably to the conclusion that evolution is true"- with the evidence old and new being a variety of species undergoing changes over time. This piece serves as a good summary of what the Discovery Institute Center of Science & Culture has to say about Darwinism especially because of the fact that the Discovery Institute's website's writer who wrote this article took someone elses ideas and attempted to explain why what they said was wrong. These writers are constantly doing this on their website with other peoples' ideas to help better support their theory of Darwinism being false and science being the true basis of life. The Discovery Institute refutes this claim made by Coyne by saying, "Of course, “evolution” is undeniably true if it means simply that existing species can change in minor ways over time, or that many species living today did not exist in the past. But Darwin’s claim that all species are modified descendants of a common ancestor, and Coyne’s claim that DNA mutations and natural selection have produced those modifications, are not so undeniably true." This whole article seems to only consist of the writer of the Discovery Institute's website taking all of Coyne's ideas and giving evidence from other sources to prove what Coyne has said to be wrong. Why can't the Discovery Institute use their own knowledge or quotations or ideas or experiments or studies to prove Coyne wrong if they really want to embarrass Coyne? I have noticed this pattern in most of the articles on the Discovery Institute's website.

In "Beyond the Realm of Reason", Brown says (but referring to articles written by the John Birch Society about the environment), "It's important, we think, to examine one of these articles in order to gain a sense of the way arguments are constructed. One article will suffice, since the rhetoric of the entire edition is remarkably consistent." This quote matches what the Discovery Institute's website's writers have done exactly. The articles are written in the same way- just copying and pasting quotes from outside sources and mixing the order of quotes from Coyne (or any of the writers that the Discovery Institute attempts to embarrass) and inserting clever comments here and there to help better their argument for Darwinism being false (or whatever the article may be arguing for). For the truth presented about Coyne's book by the Discovery Institute, it was unnecessary for the writer to include THAT many sources to prove Coyne wrong. We got the point of the article right in the beginning. The Discovery Institute tends to over-do it, which is the same thing that Brown notices in the John Birch Society's articles in "The Resilient Earth". The Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture may think that their arguments are strong and plentiful...but Brown would point out many fallacies. The bar graph, on the left, points out that there are Discovery Institute haters out there. I thought this was an interesting thing to find when googling "Discovery Institute" images.