This essay will present merely a hint at the contents of the elusive document, “The Wedgie.”
What is in view is actually quite understandably, in a manner of speaking, some atheist’s comfort in having history rewritten and science co-opted in order to make atheism free from any stain and absolute materialism the demonstrable outcome of the scientific endeavor.
Some atheists actually argue against academic freedom because, in their minds, otherwise we would have infringement upon their orthodoxy in order to make room for anti-Darwinian infidels. Some excuse atheism, in various forms such as absolute materialism, in public school textbooks that are supposed to teach biology (I provided mere examples in Protecting the Science Classroom). Some approve of having peer-reviewed science journals black-list scientists. So on and so forth.
Even as I write this I am painfully aware that I will merely skim the very surface, merely examining the dross, of the issue at hand and can only hope to make some basic points.
To hear some discuss Discovery Institute‘s “The Wedge” document you would think that it is tantamount to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” or even worse since “The Wedge” is a real document (which the Discovery Institute has discussed in detail here and here) the lore of which morphed into that they call an “intellectual urban legend.”
What I have in view here is “The Wedgie” document which is basically the atheist version of a long term plan to rewrite history and co-opt science towards the service of atheism.
Some consider that scientists who are theist are biased in their research whilst scientists who are atheist are not only unbiased but indeed, more respectable as scientists due to their atheism. For example, consider the argument from authority in appealing to 93% of atheists in the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
Incidentally, if I were to employ the reasoning skills that I have learned from Prof. Richard Dawkins I would argue that this number is surely faulty and that there are many theists in the NAS who will not admit it for fear of ridicule, fear of losing their jobs and thus, risking their careers.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (director of the Hayden Planetarium) is outraged that the NAS is not composed of 100% atheists and calls for the proselytizing of the infidels and the public at large (he actually employs a percentage of 85%),
I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don’t. That’s really what we’ve got to address here…if you can’t convert our colleagues, why do you have any hope that you’re going to convert the public?”1
In his book, “What’s So Great About Christianity?,” Dinesh D’Souza wrote:
Children spend the majority of their waking hours in school. Parents invest a good portion of their life savings in college education and entrust their offspring to people who are supposed to educate them.Isn’t it wonderful that educators have figured out a way to make parents the instruments of their own undoing?Isn’t it brilliant that they have persuaded Christian moms and dads to finance the destruction of their own beliefs and values?
Who said atheists aren’t clever?2
Of course, this is virtually passs&#a9; and a mere plagiarism of Humanist sentiments.
Author of “Humanism: A New Religion,” Charles Francis Potter wrote:
Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”3
To not miss the point, read “education” as “indoctrination”-not so, you say?
Consider what John J. Dunphy wrote:
I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects what theologians call divinity in every human being.These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level – preschool day care center or large state university.The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new – the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.
It will undoubtedly be a long, arduous, painful struggle replete with much sorrow and many tears, but humanism will emerge triumphant. It must if the family of humankind is to survive.4
RICHARD DAWKINS, the Oxford University professor and campaigning atheist, is planning to take his fight against God into the classroom by flooding schools with anti-religious literature.He is setting up a charity that will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs attacking the ‘educational scandal’ of theories such as creationism while promoting rational and scientific thought.
The foundation will also attempt to divert donations from the hands of ‘missionaries’ and church-based charities.”5
Prof. Richard Dawkins seeks to divert money from religious charities which provide life’s little luxuries such as homeless shelters, soup kitchens, disaster relief organizations, hospitals, adoption agencies, foster homes, etc., etc., etc. in favor of “charities free of ‘church contamination’” (perhaps to purchase bus ads).
In my parsed essay, Scientific Cenobites (beginning here) I have been providing some examples of that which the pure scientific method seeks to cut through in order to be as successful an endeavor as it: professional rivalries, schools of thought, worldview adherence, biased interpretation of evidence, arguments from authority, etc.
I recently attended a lecture by Jonathan Wells on DNA and embryo development. At the end of the lecture one of the attendees asked him what the lecture had to do with Intelligent Design. The answer was instant, succinct and quite clear, “Nothing.” He is a biologist lecturing on biology-period.
Yet, he went on to explain that he submitted an article to a peer-reviewed journal on the topic of his lecture. The article had gone through the process and the referees had all approved. Then, just prior to publishing, he was contacted and asked if he was THAT Jonathan Wells.
Even though the article had nothing to do with ID, did not mention ID, did not imply ID, and was approved by the referees, it was rejected because he is, you know, an infidel, one of those people. He, and others, are being black-listed to the point that they cannot simply function within their fields of research even when they do not tread upon the orthodoxy de jour.
“Infidels” is going too far, you say?
Prof. Richard Dawkins has made voluminous disparaging remarks about non-atheist scientists, and otherwise “creationists” (a term under which he includes ID), one such example is his correlating creationism with Nazism and any evolutionist who is not as fundamentalistic as himself as an appeaser of creationists, whom he correlates with Hitler (“the Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists” as he terms these evolutionists6).
Thus, this is not about academic freedom to teach YEC, astrology or abiogenesis in the public schools it is about blind-unrestrained-censorship.
This, of course, is nothing new. Consider the sentiments of another scientist:
Contrary to almost all astrophysicists my education had taken place in a laboratory…Instead of treating hydromagnetic equations I prefer to sit and ride on each electron and ion and try to imagine what the world is like from its point of view and what forces push them to the left or to the right. This has been a great advantage because it gives me a possibility to approach the phenomena from another point than most astrophysicists do, and it is always fruitful to look at any phenomenon under two different points of view.
On the other hand it has given me a serious disadvantage. When I describe the phenomena according to this formalism most referees do not understand what I say and turn down my papers. With the referee system which rules US science today, this means that my papers rarely are accepted by the leading US journals. Europe, including the Soviet Union, and Japan are more tolerant of dissidents…
What is more remarkable and regrettable is that it seems to be almost impossible to start a serious discussion between E [a very strong Establishment] and D [a small group of Dissidents]. As a dissident is in a very unpleasant situation, I am sure that D would be very glad to change their views as soon as E gives convincing arguments. But the argument ‘all knowledgeable people agree that_’ (with the tacit addition that by not agreeing you demonstrate that you are a crank) is not a valid argument in science. If scientific issues always were decided by Gallup polls and not by scientific arguments science will very soon be petrified forever.”7
“Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan are more tolerant”—simply stunning.
But who was this scientist and what were his crimes against science? Was he one of those crazy creationists? Was he one of those wacky ID proponents? No.
This was written by Hannes Alfven, plasma physicist and winner of a Novel Prize in Physics (amongst his many accolades), and the issue was whether cosmic rays are a galactic phenomenon or subject to heliospheric confinement.
The editors of American Scientist made the following comments about Hannes Alfven’s Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist:
Alfven’s anecdotes remind us how personalities influence ideas, and his irreverent comments about peer review are as relevant today as they ever were.
Co-opting science towards their ends to the point of ridiculing those who disagree and seeking to convert them, making inroads into the public classrooms via the back door and blacklisting scientists are, as sadly admitted, a mere meek and meager sampling of the contents of “The Wedgie” document.