Center for Science and Culture - Definition and Overview

The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC) is an American organisation that espouses intelligent design (ID). It is part of the conservative Christian thinktank, the Discovery Institute. The CSC argues that there is evidence that life has been designed, and tries to present this as science. It is opposed to Darwinian explanations of thee origins of life. The scientific community however is critical of ID, labelling it creationism and pseudoscience.

History

The Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture was founded in 1996. The "renewal" in its name is believed to refer to the "science" of the Rennaissance Era. Science as it is know today started during that time as protoscience and was conducted with the aim of studying God's Universe. Critics have pointed out that this does not fit in with established scientific philosophy and thus label it pseudoscience. The CSC wants 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 argue that the principle of naturalism (i.e. materialism) allows falsifiability and that supernaturalism is unfalsifiable.

The Wedge

In 1999 an internal report from 1998 was leaked. It presented a five-year plan of how they would get accepted as science. The document defined the following key aims of the movement:

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 Discovery Institute would later issue a statement denying that it wanted to establish a theocracy.

Fellows

The CSC has a number of fellows. The program director is Stephen C Meyer, Associated 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.