Introduction to Intelligent Design

**An Introduction to Intelligent Design**

				Edited by Peter Gegenheimer Associate Professor, Section of Biochemistry & Biophysics, Department of Molecular Biosciences, The University of Kansas-Lawrence.
1: Where	2: Why	3: How?		4: Who	5: What	6: More	7: Read
The Creationist "Conference"	The Discovery Institute	The Wedge Strategy		The Cast	What is Intelligent Design?	Science and Society	Books, Articles, & Sites

The Wedge Strategy: Divide and Conquer
The Wedge Document	Johnson on The Wedge	The Polanyi Center: Outpost of the Wedge

**The Wedge Strategy**
	The tactic adopted by the Center for the Renewal of Society and Culture at the Discovery Institute is at once astonishingly ambitious, but strikingly simple. It is expressed in a strategy called "the Wedge." In order to make the public accept its brand of pre-Christian Biblical Reconstructionism, the Design movement must convert people to the belief that science and religion are implacably opposed. Second, the public must be convinced that the evils of contemporary society stem from the acceptance of science rather than religion as the primary way of understanding the world. The public must be convinced that science is unreliable and that its practitioners constitute a corrupt powerful elite establishment which seeks to control society by controlling knowledge and the sources of knowledge. The primary information for this Strategy is the Wedge Document itself (reproduced verbatim in Adobe PDF format) and the following articles by or about Phillip Johnson in which he explains the Wedge Strategy and his role in it.
	The Wedge Document from the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. (2-page pdf flyer)
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**Phillip Johnson and the Wedge**

	The Wedge Strategy: Touchstone Magazine, July/Aug 1999 [ Archive ]	Interview with Christian Book Distributors on "The Wedge of Truth"--[ Archive ]	Summary of "Defeating Darwinism..." at Christian Book Distributors	Interview with Nancy Pearcy for World Magazine, 7/2000 [ Archive ]
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**The Michael Polanyi Center at Baylor**

	A direct outcome of the Wedge strategy was the CRSC's action to establish a subsidiary at Baylor University, called the Michael Polanyi Center. The "Director" of the Center, William Dembski, is (and was) a staff member of the CRSC. His salary came from the CRSC either directly or indirectly through Baylor. The assistant director of the Polanyi Center --its only other member -- is a CRSC fellow and was (apparently) fully-supported by the CRSC. Because CRSC did not advertise its sponsorship of the Polyani Center, this arrangement allowed CRSC to tout the Polanyi Center as an example of the increasing acceptance of design by major universities.' The Polanyi Center was dedicated to furthering the "Wedge" by promulgating the misconceived dogma that there can or must be only one understanding of reality. Hence, this understanding must include both science and religion simultaneously and without contradiction. This is spelled out in paragraph 6 of the Center's Statement of Purpose: "More specifically, it [the Center] also affirms that science, philosophy and religion make claims of mutual relevance, and seeks to integrate what is known from each of these domains into a unified whole based on an explicit recognition of the principle that Truth itself must form a unity. ..... But in the final analysis, there must be a rapprochement between what is true in science and what is true in religion, because the world, and hence truth, is of one piece." Needless to say, the CRSC hopes that this will lead to a rejection of science whenever it encounters a conflict which the CRSC has created for it in their variant of Judeo-Christianity.
	Statement of Purpose for the original Polanyi Center (1999-2000) [ Original link ]

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Last updated: 4:12pm on 5/30/05 by pgegen@ku.edu