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Stephen C. Meyer

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This page is for the intelligent design advocate and Discovery Institute officer Stephen C. Meyer. For the rugby player see Steve Meyer.

Stephen C. Meyer
Born1958
USA
Occupation(s)Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute
Known forAdvocate of intelligent design

Stephen C. Meyer (b. 1958) is an American think tank executive officer and co-founder, along with Phillip E. Johnson and others, of the intelligent design movement. Meyer, along with Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, is a founder of the Discovery Institute (DI) and its Center for Science and Culture (CSC), which is the driving force behind the controversial concept of intelligent design.[1][2][3] Formerly an academic philosopher of science, Meyer is currently vice president and senior fellow at CSC, and a director of Access Research Network.[4]

Biography

Meyer graduated with a degree in geology in 1980 from Whitworth College and worked as a geophysicist for the Atlantic Richfield Company.[5] Shortly after, Meyer won a scholarship from the Rotary Club of Dallas to study at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science in 1991.[6] His dissertation was entitled "Of clues and causes: A methodological interpretation of origin of life studies."[6]

After graduating, Meyer taught philosophy at Whitworth College, which has links to the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Spokane, Washington, and then at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a Christian university.[6] He currently does not hold a teaching position, but has since devoted his time to promoting intelligent design.

In 1990, Meyer, Bruce Chapman and George Gilder, formed the Discovery Institute as a non-profit educational foundation and think tank based upon the Christian apologetics of C. S. Lewis and opposed to materialism. It was founded as a branch of the Hudson Institute, an Indianapolis-based, conservative think tank and named for the HMS Discovery, which explored Puget Sound in 1792.

Meyers was a member of the 'Ad Hoc Origins Committee' formed by supporters of Phillip E. Johnson in response to Stephen Jay Gould's devastating review of Johnson's Darwin on Trial that appeared in the July 1992 issue of Scientific American.[7] Also in 1992 at a wedge conference CSC fellow Mark Hartwig referred to Johnson, Meyer, Dembski, and Behe as "creationists."[8]

In 1993, Chapman secured seed money in the form of a grant from Howard Ahmanson, Jr. and US$450,000 from the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based MacLellan Foundation, which underwrote the earliest nucleus of intelligent design authors who titled themselves "The Wedge".[9][10] Meyer had previously tutored Ahmanson's son in science, and Meyer recalls being asked by Ahmanson "What could you do if you had some financial backing?"[11] It is from these beginnings that the intelligent design movement grew.[11]

In 1999, Meyer with David DeWolf and Mark DeForrest laid out a legal strategy for introducing intelligent design into public schools in their book Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum.[12] Meyer has co-edited Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2000) with John Angus Campbell and co-edited Science and Evidence of Design in the Universe (Ignatius Press, 2000) with Michael J. Behe and William A. Dembski.

Meyer has been described as "the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)" by historian Edward Larson, who was a fellow at the Discovery Institute prior to it becoming the center of the intelligent design movement.[13] In 2004, the DI helped introduce ID to the Dover Area School District, which resulted in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District where ID was ruled to be religion. Discussing ID in relation to Dover, on May 6, 2005 Meyer debated Eugenie Scott, on The Big Story with John Gibson.

He has appeared on television and in public forums advocating intelligent design. Notably he appeared in the Discovery Institute's 2002 film Unlocking the Mystery of Life and was interviewed in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Has also been an active debater such as in April 2006 with Peter Ward, a paleontologist from the University of Washington held an open online discussion on the topic of Intelligent design in the Talk of the Times forum in Seattle, WA. [14]

Peer review controversy

Main article: Sternberg peer review controversy

On 4 August 2004, an article by Meyer appeared in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.[15] On 7 September, the publisher of the journal, the Council of the Biological Society of Washington, released a statement retracting the article as not having met its scientific standards and not peer reviewed. [16] The same statement vowed that proper review procedures would be followed in the future and endorsed a resolution published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID. [17]

The journal's reasons for disavowing the article were denied by Richard Sternberg, the managing editor at the time.[18] Critics believe that Sternberg's personal and ideological connections to Meyer suggest at least the appearance of conflict of interest in allowing Meyer's paper to be published.[19] As evidence they cite that Sternberg is a fellow of International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), a group dedicated to promoting intelligent design,[20] and presented a lecture on intelligent design at the Research And Progress in Intelligent Design (RAPID) conference.[21]

A critical review of the article is available on the Panda's Thumb website.[22] In January 2005, the Discovery Institute posted its response to the critique on their website.[23]

Meyer alleges that those who oppose "Darwinism" are persecuted by the scientific community: "The numbers of scientists who question Darwinism is a minority, but it is growing fast. This is happening in the face of fierce attempts to intimidate and suppress legitimate dissent. Young scientists are threatened with deprivation of tenure. Others have seen a consistent pattern of answering scientific arguments with ad hominem attacks. In particular, the series' attempt to stigmatize all critics--including scientists--as religious 'creationists' is an excellent example of viewpoint discrimination." [24] The American Society for Clinical Investigation says that the claim that intelligent design scientists undergoing persecution by the science establishment for their scientific ideas is a hoax, repeated by ID proponents to further their cause, which has failed to produce a legitimate body of science. [25]

Political controversy

A "teach the controversy" strategy was announced by Meyer [26] following a presentation to the Ohio State Board of Education in March 2002. The presentation included submission of an annotated bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as “Darwinian evolution”.[27] In response to this claim the National Center for Science Education, an organisation that works in collaboration with National Academy of Sciences, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the National Science Teachers Association that support the teaching of evolution in public schools, [28] contacted the authors of the papers listed and twenty-six scientists, representing thirty-four of the papers, responded. None of the authors considered that their research provided evidence against evolution.[29]

On March 11 2002 during a panel discussion on evolution Meyer publicly told the Ohio Board of Education that the "Santorum Amendment" was part of the Education Bill, and therefore that the State of Ohio was required to teach alternative theories to evolution as part of its biology curriculum. A Brown University Professor of Biology, Kenneth R. Miller, showed that the Santorum Amendment is not in the body of the Education Bill itself. [30] Meyer and others rebutted that the language, while not in the bill itself is in the Conference Report to the bill and pointed out what they believe are misrepresentations by Miller.[31] Miller replied that Conference Reports do not carry the weight of law and that in implying that they do, Meyer factually mistated the nature and gravitas of the Santorum Amendment.[32]

Bibliography

Books by Meyer

Scientific paper

  • Stephen C. Meyer (2004) The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117(2):213-239. online version This paper was withdrawn by the publisher because the editor, fellow intelligent design proponent Richard Sternberg, went outside the usual review procedures in allowing Meyer's article to be published in his last issue as editor. (See:Sternberg peer review controversy)

References

  1. ^ Forrest, Barbara (May,2007), Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals. A Position Paper from the Center for Inquiry, Office of Public Policy (PDF), Washington, D.C.: Center for Inquiry, Inc., retrieved 2007-08-06 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |date= (help).
  2. ^ Small Group Wields Major Influence in Intelligent Design Debate ABC News, November 9 2005
  3. ^ "ID's home base is the Center for Science and Culture at Seattle's conservative Discovery Institute. Meyer directs the center; former Reagan adviser Bruce Chapman heads the larger institute, with input from the Christian supply-sider and former American Spectator owner George Gilder (also a Discovery senior fellow). From this perch, the ID crowd has pushed a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution that closely influenced the Ohio State Board of Education's recently proposed science standards, which would require students to learn how scientists "continue to investigate and critically analyze" aspects of Darwin's theory." Chris Mooney. The American Prospect. December 2, 2002 Survival of the Slickest: How anti-evolutionists are mutating their message. Retrieved on 2008-07-23
  4. ^ "About the Access Research Network". Access Research Network. 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-17.
  5. ^ "Paul Chien, Senior Fellow - CSC". Discovery Institute. 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-17.
  6. ^ a b c "Stephen Meyer Biography". Access Research Network. 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-17.
  7. ^ Creationism's Trojan Horse, Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross, p18
  8. ^ Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross. Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. 2004, page 329
  9. ^ The Wedge Breaking the Modernist Monopoly on Science Phillip E. Johnson. Touchstone. July/August, 1999.
  10. ^ The Wedge Document Discovery Institute, 1999.
  11. ^ a b Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive Jodi Wilgoren. The New York Times, August 21 2005.
  12. ^ "Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook". Access Research Network. 2008. Retrieved 2008-05-17.
  13. ^ The Republican War on Science, Chapter 11: "Creation Science" 2.0 Chris Mooney. 2005.
  14. ^ [1]
  15. ^ Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories, Stephen C. Meyer
  16. ^ Statement of the Council of the Biological Society of Washington
  17. ^ AAAS Board Resolution on Intelligent Design Theory
  18. ^ Home page of Dr. Richard Sternberg
  19. ^ Sternberg and the “smear” of Creationism, Andrea Bottaro, The Panda's Thumb
  20. ^ ISCID Fellows
  21. ^ RAPID Conderence Schedule
  22. ^ Meyer's Hopeless Monster, Wesley R. Elsberry, The Panda's Thumb
  23. ^ Rebuttals to Critiques of Meyer's PBSW Article, Discovery Institute
  24. ^ 100 Scientists, National Poll Challenge Darwinism (also known as A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism)
  25. ^ Defending science education against intelligent design: a call to action, Alan D. Attie, Elliot Sober, Ronald L. Numbers, Richard M. Amasino, Beth Cox, Terese Berceau, Thomas Powell and Michael M. Cox, J. Clin. Invest. 116:1134-1138 (2006)
  26. ^ Meyer's Hopeless Monster, Alan Gishlick, Nick Matzke, and Wesley R. Elsberry, Talk Reason
  27. ^ Teach the Controversy, Stephen C. Meyer, Discovery Institute
  28. ^ About the NCSE, National Center for Science Education
  29. ^ Analysis of the Discovery Institute’s “Bibliography of Supplementary Resources for Ohio Science Instruction”, National Center for Science Education
  30. ^ The Truth about the "Santorum Amendment" Language on Evolution, Web Site of the Dragonfly Book: BIOLOGY by Miller & Levine
  31. ^ Biologist Ken Miller Flunks Political Science on Santorum, Discovery Institute
  32. ^ Is There a Federal Mandate to Teach Intelligent Design Creationism?, National Center for Science Education

External links

Official

Critical

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