The Wedge Strategy – Center for the Renewal of Science and
Culture
The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western
civilization was 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.
Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal
idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. … This materialistic conception of
reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art….
The
cultural consequences of this triumph of materialism were devastating. …
Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of
Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. …
[T]he Center explores how
new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case
for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences, and briefs
policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism. …
FIVE YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN SUMMARY
The social
consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are
convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. …
We are
building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has
come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist
worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions. …
Alongside a focus on
influential opinion-makers, we also seek to build up a popular base of support among our natural constituency, namely, Chnstians. …
The attention, publicity, and influence of design theory should draw scientific materialists into open debate with design
theorists, and we will be ready. With an added emphasis to the social sciences and humanities, we will begin to address the specific
social consequences of materialism and the Darwinist theory that supports it in the sciences.
GOALS
Governing Goals
* To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
* To replace materialistic
explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.
Five Year Goals
* To see
intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design
theory.
* To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
* To see major new
debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.
Twenty Year
Goals
* To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
* To see design theory application in
specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology,
ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts.
* To see design theory permeate
our religious, cultural, moral and political life.
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