DS: It's my understanding that the primary think tank behind IDC is motivated by more than watering down evolution, they want to have some kind of theocratic veto over all public science policy, is that correct and can you elaborate?

WE: That's correct. If you examine the "wedge" document from the Discovery Institute, it seems clear that the "cultural renewal" aspect of the program was taken very seriously, and I think that despite their "so what?" response they are still committed to that broad program. You can see from that document and various things written by Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture Senior Advisor Phillip E. Johnson that while evolutionary biology is in the crosshairs now, that's certainly not the end of where they want to take this. Science, in their view, has to be made 'safe for theism', and in fact you can find various references to making a "theistic science" in their writings. In Johnson's analysis, science is the secular trusted source of knowledge, and as such it must diminish the strength of belief in religious teachings. Johnson had a choice about what to try to do about the situation as he saw it. He could have advocated improved rigor in theological circles, and done grass-roots activism to increase the relevance of theology to day-to-day life, and thus affected a cultural change. But that's not what happened. Instead, Johnson has been at the helm of a movement whose aim is to first saddle science with a guiding philosophy that is pretty indistinguishable from how things were in the late 18th century. Once that is accomplished, then the remainder of the program seeks to make "intelligent design" the dominant view in all parts of the culture, including literature and the arts. What it means to make "intelligent design" the dominant view in, say, photography, I don't know.

I'm not sure that the methods proposed by the Discovery Institute are those that would be approved of by the Christian reconstructionists, who are not reticent in their proposals for direct political action. At least from the materials on hand, it seems that the Discovery Institute wanted to see "intelligent design" become something that could be established as a convincing intellectual argument, something that would require the assent of others when it was presented. They would like to be able to cast the skeptics as the people holding unreasonable doubts about "intelligent design", rather than themselves being shown to be holding unreasonable doubts about evolutionary biology, the process of science, and modernity in general.

Of course, the Discovery Institute is not the only group advocating "intelligent design", and some of the other groups doing so take an even harder, more strident stance on things. Consider the Intelligent Design Network in Kansas and the hearings held last year about the state science standards. One feature seen there was that the advocates for the "minority report" version of the standards repeatedly said that "theistic evolutionists" were misguided and did not understand either Christian theology or evolutionary biology. The letters to the editor of various newspapers in Pennsylvania that espoused "intelligent design" as a way to put religious teachings into public schools helped convince Judge Jones that the Dover school district policy had the effect of promoting religion. This is a failing of the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" plan of "intelligent design" advocates: the sectarian Christian base mentioned in the "wedge" document has not gotten the memo that in order to sidestep the constitution, they have to keep up the pretense that the antievolution content referred to as "intelligent design" or "teaching the controversy" has nothing to do with promoting particular religious beliefs. In the recent case in Lebec, California, a high school teacher simply cobbled together a class relying heavily on promotional materials from both young-earth creationist and "intelligent design" advocates and tried to pass it off as "philosophy". Even the Discovery Institute ended up agreeing that the course as it was implemented needed to be withdrawn, though they still seem to have difficulty recognizing that promoting the particular religious views inherent in the antievolution content they offer under the labels "intelligent design", "teach the controversy", "critical thinking", "free speech", and "academic  freedom" are still the same stuff that earlier court rulings have found impermissible.

The whole interview is an insightful must-read.