Discovery Institute’s `Wedge’ Document Described 20-Year Strategy

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) According to a six-year-old “wedge document,” The Discovery Institute, a leading proponent of intelligent design, “seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies.” The document described a five-year goal of making intelligent design “an accepted alternative in the sciences” and a 20-year objective of making […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) According to a six-year-old “wedge document,” The Discovery Institute, a leading proponent of intelligent design, “seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies.”

The document described a five-year goal of making intelligent design “an accepted alternative in the sciences” and a 20-year objective of making “intelligent design theory … the dominant perspective in science.”


Leaked to the Internet in 1999, the document served as a basis for a book by Barbara Forrest, professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University. The Discovery Institute’s Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, based in Seattle, calls the document “an early fundraising proposal” that has become “a giant urban legend.”

Forrest was a key witness for the plaintiffs in their lawsuit against the Dover Area School District’s policy of requiring that a statement on intelligent design be read to ninth-grade science students. Eleven parents in the Pennsylvania district sued the school board, and a trial was held in Harrisburg, Pa. A judge is expected to rule in January.

As suggested by the book’s title, “Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design,” Forrest is critical of the wedge strategy.

In testimony at the trial, Forrest said the strategy, written by “members of the intelligent design movement,” is “a tactical document” in which “they outline their goals and their activities.”

In a statement issued to the media after Forrest testified, the Discovery Institute said that “among true believers on the Darwinist fringe, the document came to be viewed as evidence for a secret conspiracy to fuse religion with science and impose a theocracy.”

Here are excerpts from the document:

The wedge strategy:

The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built.

Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art.


Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies.

The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences and briefs policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism.

Five-year plan:

If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a wedge that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points.

The very beginning of this strategy, the thin edge of the wedge, was Phillip Johnson’s critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in “Darwinism on Trial,” and continued in “Reason in the Balance” and “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.” Michael Behe’s highly successful “Darwin’s Black Box” followed Johnson’s work.

We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist world view and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

The Wedge strategy can be divided into three distinct but interdependent phases.

We believe that, with adequate support, we can accomplish many of the objectives of Phases I and II in the next five years (1999-2003), and begin Phase III.


_ Phase I: Without solid scholarship, research and argument, the project would be just another attempt to indoctrinate instead of persuade.

So, in Phase I we are supporting vital writing and research at sites most likely to crack the materialist edifice.

_ Phase II. The best and truest research can languish unread and unused unless it is properly publicized. For this reason we seek to cultivate and convince influential individuals in print and broadcast media, as well as think tank leaders, scientists and academics, congressional staff, talk show hosts, college and seminary presidents and faculty, future talent and potential academic allies.

Other activities include production of a PBS documentary on intelligent design and its implications, and popular op-ed publishing.

Alongside a focus on influential opinion-makers, we also seek to build up a popular base of support among our natural constituency, namely, Christians.

_ Phase III. Once our research and writing have had time to mature, and the public prepared for the reception of design theory, we will move toward direct confrontation with the advocates of materialist science through challenge conferences in significant academic settings.


We will also pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula. The attention, publicity and influence of design theory should draw scientific materialists into open debate with design theorists, and we will be ready.

Goals:

Five-Year: To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory. To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.

20-Year: To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science. To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

(Bill Sulon writes about religion for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.)

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