Wedge Strategy



The Wedge Document is a publication of the Discovery Institute which outlines their goal to bring the "controversy" over "evolution" versus "intelligent design" into the public arena, in a way politically contrived to get less informed members of the public to side with the idea of "teach both sides" (one side being "science", the other religion). It is the smoking gun that demonstrates that "intelligent design" is "creationism" in a thin disguise. The full text of the document can be found at Text of The Wedge Strategy.

The story of how it came into the public domain can be found in this Seattle Weekly newspaper article.

Hoax?
Because of the nature of this document, some have claimed that it must be a hoax; this is most definitely not the case. The Discovery Institute has not only acknowledged authorship of the document, but has also defended its content. A scan of the original document is also available in PDF format. The introduction to this document also appeared on their website in 1996, as archived by archive.org.

Although the Discovery Institute acknowledges the authenticity of the document, they want to dismiss the supposed Wedge Document "conspiracy theory" as a "pseudo-intellectual urban legend":

Teach the controversy
One part of the Discovery Institute's strategy is the slogan "teach the controversy". It deliberately tries to make opponents look like they are against teaching "all" of science to students. This, of course, only works with people who don't understand the issue.

Dr. Barbara Forrest, of the NCSE, has described creationists' wedge strategy as a "Trojan horse," likening it to a computer virus. She says "A Trojan horse is a proposal to 'teach the controversy' about evolution that appears to have some useful or benign purpose (e.g., to promote critical thinking), but really masks the plan to teach intelligent design creationism." And "In this case, the Trojan horse and the public school system become the Discovery Institute's entry vehicle for teaching a religious belief in the public school science class."

She continues to add, "Remember the ID creationists' main goal: to disguise their creationism so that users of the system (parents and children) and federal judges do not realize what the ID movement is up to."

Excerpts
The Wedge Document clearly shows that the Discovery Institute intended ID to further their religious ideals. Some selected excerpts from the Wedge Document follow: