Center for Science and Culture
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute, a conservative Christian think tank in the United States. The CSC lobbies for wider acceptance of intelligent design (ID) as an explanation for the origins of life and the universe, and is opposed to the theory of evolution. However, the wider scientific community considers ID to be pseudoscientific and akin to creationism.
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History
Originally founded as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, the CSC was founded in 1996. The evolution of the center's name reflects the evolution of the center's attempt to present itself as less religiously motivated in the publics eye. The "renewal" in its name referred to its goal of "renewing" American culture by grounding society's major institutions, especially education, in religion. But since that time the center has publicly disavowed any religious motivations to its social and political agenda and so has dropped "renewal" from it's title and moderated its formerly overtly religious language of its public statements. This was done to appeal to a more secular audience to which the center hopes its social and political programs will appeal and make inroads. [1] (http://web.archive.org/web/19970608130849/http://www.discovery.org/crsc/aboutcrsc.html)
Despite these attempts to appeal to a broader, less religious, audience, the CSC still states as a goal a redefinition of science, and the philosophy on which it is based, particularly the exclusion of what it calls the "unscientific principle of materialism", and in particular the acceptance of what it calls "the scientific theory of intelligent design". Critics point out that the principle of naturalism (i.e. materialism) allows falsifiability and that supernaturalism is unfalsifiable, meaning any suggested policies or curicula put forth by the center that rest on supernatural suppositions are by definition pseudoscience, not science.
The Wedge strategy
Main article: Wedge strategy
In 1999 an internal CSC report dating from 1998 was leaked to the public, which outlined a five-year plan for fostering broader acceptance of ID. This plan become known as the Wedge strategy. The 'wedge document' explained the key aims of CSC as follows.
- 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 human 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 influence in the fine arts.
- To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.
The paper also stated in part that:
- 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. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip Johnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. 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.
The Discovery Institute would later issue a statement denying that it sought to establish a theocracy.
Critics have alleged that the Center has a hidden agenda: that of giving the teaching of creationism immunity from First Amendment challenges by adopting the putatively theologically neutral stance of intelligent design. They note that in press releases intended for the general public, the CSC describes itself as "the nation's leading think-tank researching scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution." But in press releases for members only, the CSC assures them that it "seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its damning cultural legacies."
Smithsonian Natural History Museum controversy
In May 2005 the Discovery Institute donated $16,000 to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and by museum policy, this minimum donation allowed them to celebrate their donation inside the museum in a gathering. The Discovery Institute decided to screen a film entitled The Privileged Planet (http://www.illustramedia.com/tppinfo.htm), based on the book The Privileged Planet (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2170&program=CSC%20-%20Video%20and%20Curriculum%20-%20Multimedia), written by two senior fellows of the Discovery Institute. Notably, the video was also a production of Illustra Media (http://www.illustramedia.com/), which has been identified (http://www.nmsr.org/smkg-gun.htm) as front for a creationist production company. Upon further review, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History determined that the content of the video was inconsistent (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001098.html) with the scientific research of the institution. They therefore refunded the $16,000, clearly denied any endorsement of the content of the video or of the Discovery Institute, and allowed the film to be shown in the museum as per the original agreement. Recent editorials (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060201659.html) have decried as naïve and negligent the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's failure to identify the Discovery Institute as a creationist organization, exclude the video with its review process in the first place, and identify the entire incident as an example of Wedge Strategy in action.
Fellows
The CSC has a number of fellows. The Center is directed by Discovery Senior Fellow Dr. Stephen Meyer. An Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College, Dr. Meyer holds a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. He formerly worked as a geophysicist for the Atlantic Richfield Company., The Associate Director is John G West. The father of the movement however and perhaps the most important is Phillip E. Johnson. Most of these fellows are theists, and Christians of various denominations.
Senior fellows
- Michael J. Behe
- David Berlinski
- Paul Chien
- William A. Dembski
- David DeWolf
- Guillermo Gonzalez
- Michael Newton Keas
- Nancy Pearcey
- Jay W. Richards
- Mark Ryland
- Wesley J. Smith
- Jonathan Wells
- Benjamin Wiker
- Jonathan Witt
Fellows
- Francis J. Beckwith
- Raymond Bohlin
- Walter Bradley
- J. Budziszewski
- John Angus Campbell
- Robert Lowry Clinton
- Jack Collins
- Robin Collins
- William Lane Craig
- Brian Frederick
- Mark Hartwig
- Kenneth Hermann
- Robert Kaita
- Dean Kenyon
- Robert C. Koons
- Forrest M. Mims
- Scott Minnich
- J.P. Moreland
- Paul Nelson
- Joseph Poulshock
- Pattle Pak-Toe Pun
- John Mark Reynolds
- Marcus Ross
- Henry Schaefer
- Wolfgang Smith
- Charles Thaxton
- Richard Weikart
External links
- Discovery Institute's CSC (http://www.discovery.org/csc/)
- The Wedge Strategy (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html)
- The Wedge Document -- So what? from the Discovery Institute (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?id=109)
- Evolving Banners at the Discovery Institute (http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/4116_evolving_banners_at_the_discov_8_29_2002.asp) - the NCSE shows the changing banners on the CRSC/CSC's website.
