Enemy at the gates
* 08 October 2005
* From New Scientist Print Edition.
* Mike Holderness
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18825201.300.html
THEIR aim is to destroy science. They seek "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies". Who are they? The words come from a think tank called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CSC) in Seattle. But they reflect the ideology of a much wider network of funding foundations and lobby groups dedicated to overthrowing "scientific materialism".
Science has always been good at making enemies; it's an occupational hazard of success. But never before has the enemy been so devious and dangerous. These plans to reverse the march of science come not from a group of backwoods zealots, but from an orchestrated, clever and well-funded campaign. Whether or not scientists relish the prospect, they have a fight on their hands.
Any serious attempt to understand the campaign against science starts with a manifesto entitled "The Wedge Strategy", which was leaked from CSC's parent organisation, the Discovery Institute, when CSC was founded in 1996. The document sets out a method for undermining secular scientific thinking. "If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree," the document says, "our strategy is intended to function as a 'wedge' that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points."

“If intelligent design is just the thin end of the wedge, what's coming next?”

One of the leading exponents of the strategy is William Dembski, a professor of theology and science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. In 2003 he gave a series of lectures decrying the power of science over faith. Science, he said, "has a track record of taking young Christians and derailing them when they go to the academy and they lose their faith". He has vowed that the undermining of faith "is going to stop".
The weak point in the trunk, according to Dembski, is Darwinian evolution, and the wedge that will split it asunder is the concept known as intelligent design. ID is founded on the proposition that the evolution of complex structures, from the flagellum that propels many bacteria to the human eye, is mathematically impossible and can only be explained by invoking a designer. Cunningly, this opening gambit in the battle for minds doesn't even play by the rules of fundamentalism: no holy book explicitly mentions the mathematics of complexity, let alone rules on its correct application. Indeed, the strategic value of ID is its claim to be rooted in the straightforward scientific process of a free exchange of ideas.
Dembski is working to dismantle science's foundations block by block, starting with evolution. "ID is going to clear the ground of this suffocating naturalistic theology," he says, and it has already made huge headway in the US. Dembski gleefully points to opinion polls which he claims show that just 7 to 10 per cent of Americans hold with Darwinism.
New world order
If ID is just the thin end of the wedge, what's coming next? According to the document, nothing less than a new world order in science, built around a faith-based form of reasoning. "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist world view, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions," it says.
No one should be in any doubt that this is a serious goal. At least one of the Discovery Institute's senior fellows thinks progress is impossible without a new, faith-based science. In a 1999 article in The Wall Street Journal, George Gilder wrote that belief is "entirely essential to human achievement". And he left no doubt about where he was coming from. "What the nation needs is a renewal of the faith that sustained our forefathers at a similar time of change and opportunity on the frontiers of 19th-century America...Our previous accomplishments as a nation were based on faith, the faith of our fathers, the belief in things hoped for and unseen." Therefore, he suggests, faith must be put in charge. "An economy of ideas and innovations ultimately means an economy ruled by spirit and faith," Gilder concluded.
One of the fruits of a faith-based approach to science will be a dismissal of what Gilder calls the "chimeras of popular 'science'": ideas such as global warming, pollution problems and ozone depletion. And that, unsurprisingly, has political ramifications, including climate-change denial and the pursuit of ruthless free-market economics. Gilder claims credit for formulating the "supply-side economics" embraced by the Reagan administration.
The Discovery Institute is not alone in aggressively promoting such views. It is backed by organisations that also support many other think tanks with fundamentalist ideologies.
The institute would not divulge information about its funding sources to New Scientist, but it is possible to trace some of them through watchdog websites such as www.mediatransparency.org and www.sourcewatch.org. In 2003, for instance, the Pittsburgh-based Carthage Foundation made a donation of $40,000 for "project support", according to mediatransparency.org. Other recipients of Carthage money include the Free Congress Foundation (FCF), a Washington-based institution with the mission of returning the US to a Judaeo-Christian culture. The FCF, which received $10 million from the Carthage Foundation between 1985 and 2003, argues that the Ten Commandments should be posted in schools and courtrooms as "a reminder...to act responsibly and morally". In 2003 the Carthage Foundation also gave $35,000 to the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, which seeks to apply free-market principles to environmental protection.
The most generous of the Discovery Institute's donors to date is philanthropist Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson, who in 1999 pledged $1.5 million over five years. Ahmanson also funds the Washington-based American Anglican Council, whose vice-president is Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute. The AAC's most visible recent campaign was against the ordination of homosexual clergy in the wake of the controversy surrounding the appointment of openly gay canon Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. Ahmanson has also made donations to the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), whose focus is on socially conservative intervention in the influential and rich Episcopalian Church, and in the United Methodists, to which George W. Bush belongs. Ahmanson's wife Roberta, who sits on the IRD board, believes that the church should be giving equal weight to the views of dead Christians when it makes policy decisions. "If you take the weight of Christianity for 2000 years, all that weight is on the orthodox side," she told The New York Times last year.
Discrediting Kyoto
An internal strategy document leaked in 2003 from the IRD to a church activist (who prefers not to be named) identifies its third priority, after issues of sexuality and the plight of Christians in Cuba and elsewhere, as discrediting "liberal legislation that relies on the Kyoto accords and unproven apocalyptic suppositions".
Ahmanson has other fingers in the climate-change-denial pie. He has also donated to the George C. Marshall Institute, which shares many of its board of directors with the Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). Founded with the support of the Korean cult leader Syung Moon, SEPP is one of the most vociferous campaigners against climate action in the US. And his influence now extends to the UK: in January, Robert May, president of the Royal Society, warned that the George C. Marshall Institute had teamed up with a climate-change sceptic group in the UK, The Scientific Alliance, to publish a document entitled "Climate Issues & Questions", which serves as an important information source for many lay climate-change deniers.
It is clear that the anti-secular movement has science in its sights. But should reasoning people fear for the future? So far, their victories have been modest. With a diverse range of allies, they obtained a ban on US federal funding for most stem-cell research. But they wasted about $400,000 - nearly half contributed by Ahmanson - on a failed bid to oppose California's support for such science. They have also failed in their attempts to get ID formally taught in US public schools.
“Dembski's people have stirred up the idea that science has something to hide”
David King, chief scientific adviser to the British government, says he is not overly worried. "What influence do they really have?" he asks. Barbara Forrest, professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and a vocal critic of creationism, concurs. "They're no threat to science at all," she says. "They've had no effect on the way science is done - they don't do any science themselves."
But Forrest and King may have misunderstood the enemy strategy. Dembski talks not of political or scientific successes; he is under no illusion that he can change mainstream scientific opinion. He talks only of "cultural engagement" and claims that the fact that science is biting back - as in Forrest's book Creationism's Trojan Horse - "is itself confirmation that something important is going on". Indeed, almost all the debates that Dembski's people have stirred up use the "no smoke without fire" principle and raise the idea that science has something to hide. And, for its slow-burning campaign against science, that's all the "wedge" strategists need.
Sometime in the past few years, those who question the findings of mainstream science ceased to be laughable luddites and, to a significant number of people, became an accepted voice in public debate about science. And when that voice's opinion is not only accepted, but also suits voters' prejudices, Dembski's work is done. As veteran liberal broadcaster Bill Moyers said when accepting the Global Environmental Citizen Award at Harvard Medical School: "The delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress."
The campaign to stop science has scored significant successes. If you're a fan of reason, you have good reason to be concerned.
Mike Holderness is a writer based in London
From issue 2520 of New Scientist magazine, 08 October 2005, page 47
Used under the provision of article 3 of the Terms of Service of Reed Business Information, parent to NewScientist.com  

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