Chapter 7
The Infamous Wedge Strategy
The Wedge Strategy is the title of a document, and it is probably the first document in history to propose defeating science by using a public relations campaign. Written in 1998, The Wedge Strategy is the document that the Discovery Institute wishes you didn’t know about. In fact, it was marked “Top Secret” and “Not for Distribution.” The only reason we know about it is because it was leaked to the web in 1999.32
Basically, the Discovery Institute decided that it needed to take over American science, education, and society. It wants to replace them with something that its members approve of and can be in charge of.
So in 1998, they created The Wedge Strategy. This document plans out how they are going to do this.
They intend to force this takeover using ID. In fact, they refer to their strategy as the “Wedge Strategy” because they want to use ID as the thin end of a wedge, like an axe, that would split open science, and create an opening for their religious ideas as a replacement for science. If you think that I am stating the case too strongly, here is the cover they used for their Wedge Strategy document. It is a scene of biblical creation, with a superimposed triangle, representing their axe-like “wedge.”
Figure 7.1 Copy of the cover of The Wedge Strategy.
In The Wedge Strategy, the Discovery Institute stated its primary aim, which is to “defeat scientific materialism.” Remember, by materialism, they don’t mean buying lots of stuff. They mean believing in the material world. If you only accept evidence from the material world, evidence like things you can actually see and hear, then according to ID proponents you are a “materialist.”
The Discovery Institute doesn’t like “materialism.” However, science requires that scientists only accept evidence from the material world when they are doing their research. This specific requirement is what has allowed science to advance. In the last 400 years, our understanding of the natural world has progressed to a previously unimaginable degree as a direct result of this requirement. In fact, science is the all-time undisputed champion at finding out material facts about the material world as direct result of this requirement.
This requirement has made scientists look for real-world explanations for natural phenomena, which we have then found. This change in our knowledge is so large and magnificent that the method that we used to achieve it should be respected, not dismantled. You can’t get the same results with different means.
Falling back on a deity may seem like a reasonable idea at times, but it doesn’t produce useful results.
Rejecting supernatural explanations and seeking real ones is what has allowed us to find those real explanations. Every time.
For example, think about AIDS. After AIDS was discovered, many people were happy to call it the wrath of a deity. Fortunately, scientists did the research and discovered that the real cause of AIDS is HIV. Because of that discovery, we are now able to successfully treat people with AIDS. That’s how science progresses—by seeking reality-based answers rather than fake but easy ones offered by supernatural explanations.
Supernatural explanations would stop science in its tracks, and this is what the Discovery Institute wants.
So let’s not pretend that the Discovery Institute is doing science. It is doing the opposite. It wants to replace science. It doesn’t like “materialism,” so it doesn’t like science, because science only uses evidence from the material world.
The Discovery Institute’s stated goal is “to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.” It is not content with having God discussed in churches and in private contemplation. It wants to shove its idea of God into science, where it would damage people’s health and happiness.
So forget any notion that ID is science. The entire aim of its existence is to obliterate science.
In The Wedge Strategy, the Discovery Institute outlines how it’s going to do it. It has five-year plans, and twenty-year plans.
It talks about ID taking over, but not about what ID actually is. It talks about research, but not experiments. It talks about having numerous research articles in scientific journals, but that didn’t happen. It talks about “persuading” people, but not about accumulating evidence.
It talks about how bad its authors think science is, and why they think that society is bad because of science’s influence.
It also talks about how science made people think that life in the world could be better, which the ID promoters branded as “utopianism.” They state that applying scientific knowledge to human problems is wrong, so it appears that intelligent design promoters are against things like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, because these use scientific knowledge to create a better life for people here on Earth.
And they talk at length, and more length, and more length, about how they will run their public relations campaign. Not how they will accumulate evidence for ID, but how they will make society accept it by doing public relations. Here’s a quote:
Alongside a focus on influential opinion-makers, we also seek to build up a popular base of support among our natural constituency, namely, Christians.
— The Wedge Strategy; Phase II: Publicity and Opinion-making
So the Discovery Institute intends to defeat science by doing politics.
After the Leak
Of course, once the embarrassing Wedge Strategy became common knowledge, the Discovery Institute and its leaders tried to distance themselves from it. They now say that it isn’t important. But they would say that, wouldn’t they?
They know that the Wedge document is embarrassing to them. Here’s what William Dembski, whose name appears several times in the Wedge document, had to say about it in 2002: “the wedge metaphor has even become a liability. To be sure, our critics will attempt to keep throwing the wedge metaphor (and especially the notorious wedge document) in our face.”33
This doesn’t sound like they’re very proud of their work, does it?
However, though ID is probably the first movement to use a public relations campaign to try to “defeat” evolution, it is not the first movement to try to ignore evolution through political means. And politics, as we all have heard, makes for strange bedfellows. Do you suppose that the folks promoting ID know that the last major political campaign against evolution was done by Josef Stalin himself, in the old Soviet Union?