Science vs. Religion

I've been following the creationism-in-disguise path of Intelligent Design for quite a while. Still, the recent hoopla surrounding a, er, certain suggestion that it be taught alongside evolution has stirred things up again. Most of my previous reading on the topic has centered around the scientific community showing how, in contrast to evolution, Intelligent Design is not a theory by any definition, since it cannot be tested. It's always been a bit of an embarrassment by association that a UC Berkeley professor, Phillip Johnson, is always cited as one of the eminent scientists who support Intelligent Design. Tonight I read an article that discusses the home of Intelligent Design, the Discovery Institute. It's very enlightening, but the American Prospect is a bit like the National Review when it comes to unslanted news sources. Still, I learned about something I had never heard of before: the Wedge Document...

The most eloquent documentation of ID’s religious inspiration comes in the form of a Discovery Institute strategic memo that made its way onto the Web in 1999: the “Wedge Document.” A broad attack on “scientific materialism,” the paper asserts that modern science has had “devastating” cultural consequences, such as the denial of objective moral standards and the undermining of religious belief. In contrast, the document states that ID “promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.” In order to achieve this objective, the ID movement will “function as a ‘wedge’” that will “split the trunk [of scientific materialism] … at its weakest points.”

Fascinating. So I went in search of the Wedge Document. I found it on the Discovery Institute's web site as part of their catchily named rebuttal, "The Wedge Document: So What". If you want to read something really scary, read their rebuttal. At least it was to me, your mileage may vary. Interesting stuff.