Today we got together for a Christmas lunch for Discovery Institute’s Seattle office. These events are typically framed around gracious appreciation for Discovery’s staff, their hard and very effective work over the past year. What gets left out is appreciation for our leadership — in alphabetical order, Steve Buri, Bruce Chapman, Steve Meyer, and John West (speaking, above). 

It’s remarkable how much Discovery and its programs, including the Center for Science & Culture and the new Bradley Center, accomplish despite a relatively small staff. It would not be possible without — now in reverse alphabetical order — West, Meyer, Chapman, and Buri. I am looking at the CSC’s 2018 Annual Report which quantifies some (but not all) of these achievements. They are truly impressive. 

Vision and Spirit

At the lunch, CSC Research Coordinator Brian Miller (below) remarked on the advance of intelligent design and the critique of Darwinism at the highest levels of scientific discussion. 

Important as these ideas are, however, they would be powerless to challenge and change our troubled culture were it not for the research, the publications, the scholarship, the communications through every medium, the education and public outreach, the advocacy of good science and academic freedom that altogether comprise our work. And none of these would be conceivable were it not for the care and the skilled and disciplined direction or the exhausting hours contributed by the four gentlemen mentioned above. 

Beyond that, there is the completely unquantifiable vision and spirit without which, again, none of this would be possible. That Discovery Institute is also, not just a company, but rather a community of colleagues and friends with a shared mission, a very special place to work, is, again, thanks above all to these four. This doesn’t get said nearly often enough.

Merry Christmas to them, and to you, our equally vital friends and supporters outside these Seattle walls! In the spirit of the holiday season, I invite you to consider deepening your own involvement by contributing now to the Center for Science & Culture, which among so much else sponsors what we do at Evolution News. See here for more about the CSC’s 2019 Annual Campaign and what your gift will do.