That is belied by the statement of strategy published on the Discovery Institute web site, and since removed, that described what it called the "wedge" strategy. This wedge strategy was to get science to accept ID in order to make people comfortable with the idea that some kind of supernatural was an established scientific fact. Then they would spring Christianty out of that base (or whatever the Moonies are, the DI was founded by a moonie).
Discovery Institute's "Wedge Project" Circulates Online
On March 3, 1999, an anonymous person obtained an internal white paper from the CRSC entitled "The Wedge Project," which detailed the Center's ambitious long-term strategy to replace "materialistic science" with intelligent design. The paper describes the CRSC's mission with a sense of urgency:
"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 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 worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."
The white paper created quite a buzz among many skeptics after it was widely circulated on the Internet. However, CRSC Senior Fellow and Director of Program Development Jay Richards said that the mission statement and goals had been posted on the CRSC's web site since 1996. Richards also said, "the general concept of the 'Wedge' is described in Phillip Johnson's book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds." Richards neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the document, but he believed that the paper was an "older, summary overview of the 'Wedge' program." Much of the boilerplate content of the paper is posted on the CRSC's web site.
Other Resources:
Forrest, B. (2001). The wedge at work: How intelligent design creationism is wedging its way into the cultural and academic mainstream. MIT Press. Retrieved January 23, 2005, from http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/wedge.html
The wedge strategy: Center for the renewal of science & culture. Antievolution.org: The critic's resource. Retrieved January 23, 2005 from http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
I'll be adding your "Wedge" links to the List-O-Links. Gonna take some time to reorganize things, but it's worth it.