Let's talk about "The Wedge Strategy" as it applies to creationism, vaccines, and science denialism of all stripes.
The name derives from a document drafted in 1998 by staff at the Discovery Institute & marked "Top Secret" and "Not For Distribution", leaked by an HR contractor.
It made explicit the aims and strategy of the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, a group led by Stephen Meyer that rebranded creationism as intelligent design.
Their goals, stated plainly:
"To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies"
"To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
The Discovery Institute wasn't about discovery. The Wedge Document lays out their PR efforts, apologetics & legal strategies as an effort to teach religion in public schools, funded by Christian Dominionists who want to overthrow secular US government by theocratic dictatorship.
They knew teaching creationism was unconstitutional, so they developed a stealth approach that pretended to be scientific, to give cover to their ideologically motivated deceptions.
To be explicit: they don't believe in the utility of intelligent design as an objective research program. They're just creationists: theologians or religious apologists. It's a ruse to soft-sell religious takeover of science instruction in public schools.
Irreducible complexity was invented as a ruse, and it's persuaded 0% of actual research biologists, but as laid out in the Wedge Strategy, it muddies the water by sounding sciencey. That's exactly what the Wedge Strategy document maps out. Obfuscation, deception, misdirection.
As Discovery Institute founder Philip E. Johnson said in an interview:
"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."
In a separate thread, I'll describe how vaccine denialists, global climate change denialists & others have adopted the same strategies.
Original Wedge Document is here:
ncse.ngo/files/pub/crea…
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