The Wedge Document

Sishir Chang · Jan 6, 2006

I was just listening to a story on NPR regarding the Evolution / ID debate and they mentioned something called The Wedge Document which was a fundraising document put out by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture promoting the use of ID as a wedge issue to overthrow the scientific materialism and replace it with a theistic approach to science and society. I googled it and found this:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=450

I don't want to post the whole thing but here are some quotes and the whole thing can be read at the link.

THE WEDGE STRATEGY
CENTER FOR THE RENEWAL OF SCIENCE & CULTURE
INTRODUCTION

The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West's greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.

Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. 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

The cultural consequences of this triumph of materialism were devastating. Materialists denied the existence of objective moral standards, claiming that environment dictates our behavior and beliefs. Such moral relativism was uncritically adopted by much of the social sciences, and it still undergirds much of modern economics, political science, psychology and sociology.

Materialists also undermined personal responsibility by asserting that human thoughts and behaviors are dictated by our biology and environment. The results can be seen in modern approaches to criminal justice, product liability, and welfare. In the materialist scheme of things, everyone is a victim and no one can be held accountable for his or her actions.

Finally, materialism spawned a virulent strain of utopianism. Thinking they could engineer the perfect society through the application of scientific knowledge, materialist reformers advocated coercive government programs that falsely promised to create heaven on earth.

Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences, and briefs policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism
...
THE WEDGE STRATEGY
Phase I.

Scientific Research, Writing & Publicity
Phase II.

Publicity & Opinion-making
Phase III.

Cultural Confrontation & Renewal
....
FIVE YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN SUMMARY
The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. 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 ]ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng 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 worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
....
GOALS
Governing Goals

To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.
Five Year Goals

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 the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.
Twenty Year Goals

To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts.
To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.
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I was thinking that this might be a hoax created to discredit ID proponents but also found on the Discovery Institute's own website they don't deny it but even defend it.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=450

(Sorry its a PDF so no cut and paste quotes) They start out by calling it an urban myth but make clear that it was an actual fundraising letter and defend it.

For some background the Discovery Institute is one of the leading organizations promoting Intelligent Design and I recall them and some of the authors listed in the wedge document as being cited in the court cases on the issue of teaching ID and also here on D & D debates on the subject.

Nolen · Jan 6, 2006

Wowsers. Talk about having an agenda. Just keep bringing this thing to every court case vs. ID and watch their stupid ship sink every time.

Materialism is bad overall. But supplanting all scientific culture with theism is the answer? Holy Hell.

thadeus · Jan 6, 2006

I remember reading about this a while ago.

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?p=1953231&highlight=wedge#post1953231

This is another battle over cultural control. Religious ideas like ID and such are at a decided disadvantage in the battle because of our Enlightenment heritage that says social and cultural institutions need to be rationally justifiable.

Rationality is the measuring stick of policy now (to a greater or lesser degree) and has been for some time - but a lot of policy has only had to satisfy minimal rational standards because the proponents of that policy have garnered support by appealing to non-rational human faculties; faith, hatred, fear, etc.,.

The Discovery Institute, and others like them, have always known this. That's why they've picked up the ID idea and ran with it - because it contains a surface appeal to rationality that, they believe, people will find acceptable enough according to rational standards that they'll be willing to let the proponents of ID gain some ground in the cultural wars.

I don't think the strongest advocates of ID have any real intention of establishing ID in schools (you'll note the most vocal supporters, on this site and elsewhere, are usually very religious) except as a transitory stage where the teaching of evolution is weakened, making way for creationism.

rhadamanthus · Jan 6, 2006

Yeah that whole enlightenment thing really was a bummer - let's get back the the dark ages when everyone was happy.

Yikes - this reads like something out of a movie script.

kpsta · Jan 6, 2006

Wedge: Look at the size of that thing!

Sishir Chang · Jan 6, 2006

^^ Outstanding!

MR. MEOWGI · Jan 6, 2006

Sishir Chang said:

^^ Outstanding!
Click to expand...

Are you telling me you haven't seen the Porkins Pamphlet?

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