Discovery Institute's “Wedge Document” How Darwinist Paranoia Fueled an Urban Legend

Evolution News ^ | 10/07/05 | Staff

[Heartlander]

Discovery Institute's “Wedge Document”: How Darwinist Paranoia Fueled an Urban Legend

In 1999 someone posted on the internet an early fundraising proposal for Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. Dubbed the “Wedge Document,” this proposal soon took on a life of its own, popping up in all sorts of places and eventually spawning what can only be called a giant urban legend. 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. These claims were so outlandish that for a long time we simply ignored them. But because some credulous Darwinists seem willing to believe almost anything, we decided we should set the record straight.

1. The Background

• In 1996 Discovery Institute established the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. Its main purposes were (1) to support research by scientists and other scholars who were critical of neo-Darwinism and by those who were developing the emerging scientific theory of intelligent design; and (2) to explore, in various ways, the multiple connections between science and culture.
• To raise financial support for the Center, Discovery Institute prepared a fundraising proposal that explained the overall rationale for the Center and why a think tank like Discovery would want to start such an entity in the first place. Like most fundraising proposals, this one included a multi-year budget and a list of goals to be achieved.

2. The Rise of an Urban Legend

• In 1999 a copy of this fundraising proposal was posted by someone on the internet. The document soon spread across the world wide web, gaining almost mythic status among some Darwinists.
• That’s when members of the Darwinist fringe began saying rather loopy things. For example, one group claimed that the document supplied evidence of a frightening twenty-year master plan “to have religion control not only science, but also everyday life, laws, and education”!
• Barbara Forrest, a Louisiana professor on the board of a group called the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, similarly championed the document as proof positive of a sinister conspiracy to abolish civil liberties and unify church and state. Forrest insisted that the document was “crucially important,” and she played up its supposed secrecy, claiming at one point that its “authenticity…has been neither affirmed nor denied by the Discovery Institute.” Poor Prof. Forrest—if she really wanted to know whether the document was authentic, all she had to do was ask. (She didn’t.)
• There were lots of ironies as this urban legend began to grow, but Darwinist true-believers didn’t seem capable of appreciating them:
  --Discovery Institute, the supposed mastermind of this “religious” conspiracy, is in fact a secular organization that sponsored programs on a wide array of issues, including mass transit, technology policy, the environment, and national defense.
  --At the time the “Wedge Document” was being used by Darwinists to stoke fears about Christian theocracy, the Chairman of Discovery’s Board was Jewish, its President was an Episcopalian, and its various Fellows represented an eclectic range of religious views ranging from Roman Catholic to agnostic. It would have been news to them that they were all part of a fundamentalist cabal.
  --Far from promoting a union between church and state, Discovery Institute sponsored for several years a seminar for college students that advocated religious liberty and the separation between church and state.

3. What the Document Actually Says

• The best way to dispel the paranoia of the conspiracy-mongers is to actually look at the document in question. It simply doesn’t advocate the views they attribute to it.
  First and foremost, and contrary to the hysterical claims of some Darwinists, this document does not attack “science” or the “scientific method.” In fact, it is pro-science.
• What the document critiques is “scientific materialism,” which is the abuse of genuine science by those who claim that science supports the unscientific philosophy of materialism.
• Second, the document does not propose replacing “science” or the “scientific method” with “God” or “religion.” Instead, it supports a science that is “consonant” (i.e., harmonious) with theism, rather than hostile to it. To support a science that is “consonant” with religion is not to claim that religion and science are the same thing. They clearly aren’t. But it is to deny the claim of scientific materialists that science is somehow anti-religious.

Following are the document’s major points, which we still are happy to affirm:

1. “The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization is 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.” As a historical matter, this statement happens to be true. The idea that humans are created in the image of God has had powerful positive cultural consequences. Only a member of a group with a name like the “New Orleans Secular Humanist Association” could find anything objectionable here. (By the way, isn’t it strange that a group supposedly promoting “theocracy” would praise “representative democracy” and “human rights”?)
2. “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 throughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment.” This statement highlights one of the animating concerns of Discovery Institute as a public policy think tank. Leading nineteenth century intellectuals tried to hijack science to promote their own anti-religious agenda. This attempt to enlist science to support an anti-religious agenda continues to this day with Darwinists like Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, who boldly insists that Darwinism supports atheism. We continue to think that such claims are an abuse of genuine science, and that this abuse of real science has led to pernicious social consequences (such as the eugenics crusade pushed by Darwinist biologists early in the twentieth century).
3. "Discovery Institute’s Center... seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies.” It wants to “reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." We admit it: We want to end the abuse of science by Darwinists like Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson who try to use science to debunk religion, and we want to provide support for scientists and philosophers who think that real science is actually “consonant with… theistic convictions.” Please note, however: “Consonant with” means “in harmony with.” It does not mean “same as.” Recent developments in physics, cosmology, biochemistry, and related sciences may lead to a new harmony between science and religion. But that doesn’t mean we think religion and science are the same thing. We don’t.
4. “Without solid scholarship, research and argument, the project would be just another attempt to indoctrinate instead of persuade.” It is precisely because we are interested in encouraging intellectual exploration that the “Wedge Document” identified the “essential” component of its program as the support of scholarly “research, writing and publication.” The document makes clear that the primary goal of Discovery Institute’s program in this area is to support scholars so they can engage in research and publication Scholarship comes first. Accordingly, by far the largest program in the Center’s budget has been the awarding of research fellowships to biologists, philosophers of science, and other scholars to engage in research and writing.
5. “The best and truest research can languish unread and unused unless it is properly publicized.” It’s shocking but true—Discovery Institute actually promised to publicize the work of its scholars in the broader culture! What’s more, it wanted to engage Darwinists in academic debates at colleges and universities! We are happy to say that we still believe in vigorous and open discussion of our ideas, and we still do whatever we can to publicize the work of those we support. So much for the “secret” part of our supposed “conspiracy.”

A final thought: Don’t Darwinists have better ways to spend their time than inventing absurd conspiracy theories about their opponents? The longer Darwinists persist in spinning such urban legends, the more likely it is that fair-minded people will begin to question whether Darwinists know what they are talking about.

Read the Wedge document for yourself, along with a more detailed point by point response and clarification of falacious allegations.

[PatrickHenry]

Hi, BB! Thanks for the ping.

Junior, another thread to catalog.

[betty boop]

Hello Patrick! You're welcome!

Hi Junior!

[PatrickHenry]

Here's an essay by an Islamic creationist, describing and praising the "Wedge Strategy." The author was one of the "experts" who testified for ID at the famous Kansas hearings.
Why Muslims Should Support Intelligent Design, By Mustafa Akyol.

[Alamo-Girl]

Just some thoughts? Jeepers, betty boop, what an understatement!

Your magnificient essay-post strikes right at the very heart of the deficiency in science these days, the reason so many are troubled and the objective of the Intelligent Design movement.

[Junior]

The CrevoSci Archive Just one of the many services of Darwin Central "The Conspiracy that Cares"

• PatrickHenry's famous List o' Links

CrevoSci threads for the past week:

1. 2005-10-08 Famed author takes on Kansas: Rushdie bemoans role of religion in public life
2. 2005-10-07 Descent of Man in Dover (Why acceptance of ID not inevitable.)
3. 2005-10-07 Discovery Institute's “Wedge Document” How Darwinist Paranoia Fueled an Urban Legend
4. 2005-10-07 Dover, PA Evolution Trial [daily thread for 07 Oct]
5. 2005-10-07 Evolution and intelligent design Life is a cup of tea
6. 2005-10-07 Let 'intelligent design' and science rumble
7. 2005-10-07 The Las Cruces Fossil Human Footprints
8. 2005-10-07 The Map that Changed the World [in 1815]
9. 2005-10-07 University of Idaho Bans All Alternatives to Evolution
10. 2005-10-07 Why Intelligent Design Is Going to Win
11. 2005-10-06 Faith, Science and the Persecution of Richard Sternberg
12. 2005-10-06 Scientist defends Big Bang and God
13. 2005-10-06 Seeing Creation and Evolution in Grand Canyon (quote below is the most significant item)
14. 2005-10-06 The Mouth of the South Side (Carl Everett on Gays, Evolution, Bush and Kanye West)
15. 2005-10-06 U of I president:teach only evolution in {University}science classes (Connection to PA court fight)
16. 2005-10-06 Witness: 'Design' Replaced 'Creation'
17. 2005-10-06 Witness: Movement's roots in creationism (Dover trial 10/6/05)
18. 2005-10-05 Professor, teachers to testify in intelligent-design trial [Dover, PA, 05 Oct]
19. 2005-10-05 Supernova Storm Wiped Out Mammoths?
20. 2005-10-05 The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2005 goes to Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock
21. 2005-10-04 A space station view on giant lightning (May play role in global warming!)
22. 2005-10-04 Ancient Peruvians Loved Their Spuds
23. 2005-10-04 "Cardinal backs evolution and ""intelligent design"""
24. 2005-10-04 Potatoes came from Peru, US study finds
25. 2005-10-04 Space Scientists Seek Sprites, Elves and Jets
26. 2005-10-04 Spider fooled into sex by drop-dead male
27. 2005-10-04 The Bottom Line: Darwinism Promotes Social Disintegration
28. 2005-10-04 The Nobel Prize in Physics 2005 is awarded to Roy J. Glauber, John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch
29. 2005-10-03 How Long Did It Take to Deposit the Geologic Strata? (Hint: Maybe it wasn't millions of years)
30. 2005-10-03 Live from Pennsylvania: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
31. 2005-10-03 Returning to Dover [evolution trial in Dover, PA: week 2]
32. 2005-10-03 Systemic determinants of gene evolution and function
33. 2005-10-03 The timeless truth of creation

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CrevoSci Warrior Freepdays for the month of October:
 

2003-10-09 antiRepublicrat 2004-10-10 Antonello 1998-10-18 AZLiberty 1999-10-14 blam 2000-10-19 cogitator 2001-10-21 Coyoteman 2004-10-26 curiosity 1998-10-29 Dataman 2000-10-29 dila813

2001-10-14 dread78645 1998-10-03 Elsie 1998-10-17 f.Christian 2002-10-08 FairOpinion 2001-10-26 Genesis defender 2000-10-09 Gil4 2000-10-08 guitarist 2004-10-10 joeclarke 1998-10-03 js1138

2001-10-24 k2blader 2000-10-08 LibWhacker 2002-10-25 m1-lightning 2001-10-10 Michael_Michaelangelo 2001-10-09 Mother Abigail 2004-10-25 MRMEAN 2004-10-03 Nicholas Conradin 1999-10-28 PatrickHenry 1998-10-01 Physicist

1998-10-25 plain talk 1998-10-12 Restorer 2005-10-04 ret_medic 2001-10-23 RightWingNilla 2004-10-09 snarks_when_bored 2002-10-22 sumocide 2004-10-21 WildHorseCrash 2001-10-23 yankeedame 2002-10-20 Z in Oregon

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In Memoriam
Fallen CrevoSci Warriors:

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ALS Area Freeper Aric2000 Askel5 bluepistolero churchillbuff ConservababeJen DittoJed2 dob Ed Current

f.Christian followerofchrist general_re goodseedhomeschool gopwinsin04 gore3000 Jedigirl JesseShurun kharaku Le-Roy

Marathon medved metacognative Modernman NoKinToMonkeys Ogmios peg the prophet Phaedrus Phoroneus pickemuphere

ret_medic RickyJ SeaLion Selkie Shubi Tomax tpaine WaveThatFlag xm177e2

Bring back Modernman and SeaLion!

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks for plugging The List-O-Links, but notice that it's hyphenated, not written like an Irish name.

[longshadow]

Wow -- thanks for demonstrating that creationists/IDers are just as dishonest and irrational in their "spin" as they are in their attempts to critique science.

Let's see how they spin THIS:

"Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," William Dembski, one of the movement's chief proponents, said in a 1999 interview in Touchstone, a Christian magazine that Forrest cited in her testimony.

[emphasis added]
source: http://ydr.com/story/doverbiology/88606/

IDers; hoist on the petard of Dembski's own words....

[Doctor Stochastic]

...like an Irish name.

List O'Links
Paddy O'Furniture
Mark O'Polo

[Doctor Stochastic]

The Thomas More lawyers seem to be representing their clients rather well. They do not seem to present their client's cases well.

[PatrickHenry]

Four o'clock
Theory o'Evolution. But ...
The List-O-Links.

It's all about the O'

[js1138]

I do believe there will be an appeal based on incompetent counsel.

[Tim Long]

Actually the unitarianism thing probably isn't correct. I looked it up after I posted and the source had changed its info. I've noticed people who wish to portray our nation as originally irreligious use a lot of BS info, like portraying George Washington as a deist. Deists don't get baptized : ) I even wonder about the purposes of the Jefferson Bible. Jefferson appears to have been a Godly man. But about Newton, he said "I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily." A unitarian wouldn't believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God; they deny too much of it.

[js1138]

Isaac Newton attempted to secretly publish essays attacking the concept of the Trinity. He was afraid to publish them in england. (I wonder why.)

[dr_lew]

A unitarian wouldn't believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God; they deny too much of it.

That's the Unitarians. Newton's beliefs were personal and were unitarian in nature. That is, he firmly rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, based on his historical study of the Arian heresy.

Cf. Westfall, The Life of Isaac Newton, under Arianism in the index. "The mere thought of trinitarianism, the 'fals infernal religion,' was enough to fan Newton into a rage." And Newton blamed it for what he saw as the degraded practice of Christianity, represented chiefly by Roman Catholicism, but not excepting Anglicanism.

Newton came near to sacrificing his academic career for his beliefs, as he was prepared to refuse ordination into the Anglican Church, which had been a requirement for his position at Cambridge, and would have involved swearing to beliefs abhorrent to him. Fortunately, we may say, some adroit politicing voided this requirement in the nick of time.

[Doctor Stochastic]

The Unitarians (as opposed as to unitarians) seem to have three beliefs, The Fatherhood Of God, The Brotherhood Of Man, and The Neighborhood Of Boston.

[Junior]

Sorry. I fixed it for the next posting.

[KMJames]

Thanks for posting Heartlander.

I had no doubt that the "wedgie boogieman" was the result of the excitable scientific materialists.

[KMJames]

correction:...the creation of the excitable scientific materialists.

[PatrickHenry]

Another of the "fallen" -- Kevin Curry.

[Junior]

Thanks. I'm beginning to feel like a graves registrar. Too many fallen over the years...