Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes
By CORNELIA DEAN

Published: February 1, 2005

Dr. John Frandsen, a retired zoologist, was at a dinner for teachers in Birmingham, Ala., recently when he met a young woman who had just begun work as a biology teacher in a small school district in the state. Their conversation turned to evolution.

"She confided that she simply ignored evolution because she knew she'd get in trouble with the principal if word got about that she was teaching it," he recalled. "She told me other teachers were doing the same thing."

Though the teaching of evolution makes the news when officials propose, as they did in Georgia, that evolution disclaimers be affixed to science textbooks, or that creationism be taught along with evolution in biology classes, stories like the one Dr. Frandsen tells are more common.

In districts around the country, even when evolution is in the curriculum it may not be in the classroom, according to researchers who follow the issue.

Teaching guides and textbooks may meet the approval of biologists, but superintendents or principals discourage teachers from discussing it. Or teachers themselves avoid the topic, fearing protests from fundamentalists in their communities.

"The most common remark I've heard from teachers was that the chapter on evolution was assigned as reading but that virtually no discussion in class was taken," said Dr. John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, an evangelical Christian and a member of Alabama's curriculum review board who advocates the teaching of evolution. Teachers are afraid to raise the issue, he said in an e-mail message, and they are afraid to discuss the issue in public.

Dr. Frandsen, former chairman of the committee on science and public policy of the Alabama Academy of Science, said in an interview that this fear made it impossible to say precisely how many teachers avoid the topic.

"You're not going to hear about it," he said. "And for political reasons nobody will do a survey among randomly selected public school children and parents to ask just what is being taught in science classes."

But he said he believed the practice of avoiding the topic was widespread, particularly in districts where many people adhere to fundamentalist faiths.

"You can imagine how difficult it would be to teach evolution as the standards prescribe in ever so many little towns, not only in Alabama but in the rest of the South, the Midwest - all over," Dr. Frandsen said.

Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said she heard "all the time" from teachers who did not teach evolution "because it's just too much trouble."

"Or their principals tell them, 'We just don't have time to teach everything so let's leave out the things that will cause us problems,' " she said.

Sometimes, Dr. Scott said, parents will ask that their children be allowed to "opt out" of any discussion of evolution and principals lean on teachers to agree.

Even where evolution is taught, teachers may be hesitant to give it full weight. Ron Bier, a biology teacher at Oberlin High School in Oberlin, Ohio, said that evolution underlies many of the central ideas of biology and that it is crucial for students to understand it. But he avoids controversy, he said, by teaching it not as "a unit," but by introducing the concept here and there throughout the year. "I put out my little bits and pieces wherever I can," he said.

He noted that his high school, in a college town, has many students whose parents are professors who have no problem with the teaching of evolution. But many other students come from families that may not accept the idea, he said, "and that holds me back to some extent."

"I don't force things," Mr. Bier added. "I don't argue with students about it."

In this, he is typical of many science teachers, according to a report by the Fordham Foundation, which studies educational issues and backs programs like charter schools and vouchers.

Some teachers avoid the subject altogether, Dr. Lawrence S. Lerner, a physicist and historian of science, wrote in the report. Others give it very short shrift or discuss it without using "the E word," relying instead on what Dr. Lerner characterized as incorrect or misleading phrases, like "change over time."

Dr. Gerald Wheeler, a physicist who heads the National Science Teachers Association, said many members of his organization "fly under the radar" of fundamentalists by introducing evolution as controversial, which scientifically it is not, or by noting that many people do not accept it, caveats not normally offered for other parts of the science curriculum.

Dr. Wheeler said the science teachers' organization hears "constantly" from science teachers who want the organization's backing. "What they are asking for is 'Can you support me?' " he said, and the help they seek "is more political; it's not pedagogical."

There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that all living things evolved from common ancestors, that evolution on earth has been going on for billions of years and that evolution can be and has been tested and confirmed by the methods of science. But in a 2001 survey, the National Science Foundation found that only 53 percent of Americans agreed with the statement "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals."

And this was good news to the foundation. It was the first time one of its regular surveys showed a majority of Americans had accepted the idea. According to the foundation report, polls consistently show that a plurality of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago, and about two-thirds believe that this belief should be taught along with evolution in public schools.

These findings set the United States apart from all other industrialized nations, said Dr. Jon Miller, director of the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University, who has studied public attitudes toward science. Americans, he said, have been evenly divided for years on the question of evolution, with about 45 percent accepting it, 45 percent rejecting it and the rest undecided.

In other industrialized countries, Dr. Miller said, 80 percent or more typically accept evolution, most of the others say they are not sure and very few people reject the idea outright.

"In Japan, something like 96 percent accept evolution," he said. Even in socially conservative, predominantly Catholic countries like Poland, perhaps 75 percent of people surveyed accept evolution, he said. "It has not been a Catholic issue or an Asian issue," he said.

Indeed, two popes, Pius XII in 1950 and John Paul II in 1996, have endorsed the idea that evolution and religion can coexist. "I have yet to meet a Catholic school teacher who skips evolution," Dr. Scott said.

Dr. Gerald D. Skoog, a former dean of the College of Education at Texas Tech University and a former president of the science teachers' organization, said that in some classrooms, the teaching of evolution was hampered by the beliefs of the teachers themselves, who are creationists or supporters of the teaching of creationism.

"Data from various studies in various states over an extended period of time indicate that about one-third of biology teachers support the teaching of creationism or 'intelligent design,' " Dr. Skoog said.

Advocates for the teaching of evolution provide teachers or school officials who are challenged on it with information to help them make the case that evolution is completely accepted as a bedrock idea of science. Organizations like the science teachers' association, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science provide position papers and other information on the subject. The National Association of Biology Teachers devoted a two-day meeting to the subject last summer, Dr. Skoog said.

Other advocates of teaching evolution are making the case that a person can believe both in God and the scientific method. "People have been told by some evangelical Christians and by some scientists, that you have to choose." Dr. Scott said. "That is just wrong."

While plenty of scientists reject religion - the eminent evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins famously likens it to a disease - many others do not. In fact, when a researcher from the University of Georgia surveyed scientists' attitudes toward religion several years ago, he found their positions virtually unchanged from an identical survey in the early years of the 20th century. About 40 percent of scientists said not just that they believed in God, but in a God who communicates with people and to whom one may pray "in expectation of receiving an answer."

Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said he thought the great variety of religious groups in the United States led to competition for congregants. This marketplace environment, he said, contributes to the politicization of issues like evolution among religious groups.

He said the teaching of evolution was portrayed not as scientific instruction but as "an assault of the secular elite on the values of God-fearing people." As a result, he said, politicians don't want to touch it. "Everybody discovers the wisdom of federalism here very quickly," he said. "Leave it at the state or the local level."

But several experts say scientists are feeling increasing pressure to make their case, in part, Dr. Miller said, because scriptural literalists are moving beyond evolution to challenge the teaching of geology and physics on issues like the age of the earth and the origin of the universe.

"They have now decided the Big Bang has to be wrong," he said. "There are now a lot of people who are insisting that that be called only a theory without evidence and so on, and now the physicists are getting mad about this."

An excellent argument for just doing away with public education.

Those who want real science education can send their kids to schools where that stuff is taught, and the Holy Rollers can send their kids to their kind of schools.

The Big Bang and Evolution are NOT needed in high school science classes.

What is needed is hard science: Math, physics and chemistry. The politics of Evolution and Big Bang vs. whatever do not add one thing to the basic disciplines required to prepare kids for advanced college physics and chemistry courses.



This image shows that the U.S. is falling behind in physical science (the blue dotted line). The upward trend after world war II was due to the GI Bill and the optimism of the country. The upward trend after "Sputnik" was the national response to the fear of armed soviet satellites, resulting in JFK's call to young Americans to commit to a science education and put a man on the moon in ten years.

If you look carefully at the graph you will see that US citizens are losing interest in physics.





The Asian countries will control all of our manufacturing within 20 years. And they will have the educated population to keep that control.

While we are arguing over pet theories, we are neglecting the important aspects of science.

High school physics and chemistry do not require these theories, so why let them be a stumbling stone on the path to preparing for higher education.

Would it not be more effective to use reverse psychology and forbid the kids from reading or talking about evolution... then try to stop them from learning about it!

The above graphs and more are part of a lecture titled: Our Energy Challenge, given by Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley.
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/energychallenge.html

I agree that physics and mathematics are important. In fact, a visit to my personal web page might clue you in to how important I think that these subjects are.

But evolution is an important part of biology!!!! "evolution" is no mere pet theory.

You have to understand evolution to understand what the Q you are trying to solve is. weather in mathematics or bio-chemistry

The graphs in my post above show an alarming decline of Physical Science graduates in the USA. Because of that fact, I am saying, teaching the basic science pre-requisites -- math, physics and chemistry -- is far more important than introducing the theory of evolution to high school kids.

Biblical fundamentalists want to teach the literal seven days of creation as fact in high school science classes. Of course that should be prevented.

But kids do not NEED evolution taught in high school. Yes, some kid might raise his/her had in biology class and ask about the "origin of life", but there is nothing that they learn in high school that is dependent upon knowing about Darwin's theory of evolution or the Big Bang.

They would have a hard time getting through college without that info, but not so for high school.

So, I ask, why make a big deal out of it?

We should be making a big deal out of the fact that the kids are not learning Math, Newtonian Physics, Thermodynamics and real world Chemistry.

The irony here is that, strictly speaking, evolution is silent on the origin of life.

Evolution is the principle by which living organisms adapt to changing enviroments (e. g, voles near the Chernobyl nuclear accident site, anti-biotic resistant bacteria, etc.)

This is a major, major principle!

Don't get me wrong; I, far more than most, well understand the need for having a strong foundation in mathematics and the hard sciences.

The problem isn't just the issue of evolution. Bibical literalist thinking is the greatest empediment to peace and prosperity on this planet.

ollie - I think the conflict is caused by how the word Evolution is perceived.

What you have described is adaptation, which is the active mechanism behind "evolution". The creationist, the knowledgeable ones at least, also accept that biological adaptation within species is a proven fact, but reject the theory that species 'evolved' form other species.

So, there is no resistance to a biology class teaching high school students that Biological adaptation occurs as a response to environment, and is then genetically passed on via DNA memories.

But a high school biology teacher does not need to piss-off parents by trying to convince the minors in his/her class that humans evolved from primordial soup.

That privilege can be reserved for college professors who would be free to debate the issue with the young adult students who have chosen to take their class.

The theory of Humans evolving from primordial soup billions of years after an ancient Big Bang, does not add one thing to a high school students grasp of math, physics or chemistry.

The point I am trying to make is, we should not be spending any political energy diverting a school board away from the issue of USA students falling down in the physical sciences - the subjects and disciplines that are required for developing our future technology...

For example - new ENERGY technology!

Just remember that not everyone goes to college. It is a good thing to prepare students for a competetive world-workforce of the future. A balanced liberal arts curriculum in highschool is a good thing for everyone. College bound students take advanced college prep courses, others may take Vocational Ed, others may take business type classes as well. But when it comes to science courses, discussions of evolution, Newton, Einstein, and the Big Bang Theory should be introduced. They do not have to go into them in depth. They are all now a part of our HISTORY. Another thing I wish to say is, WE DO NOT EDUCATE OUR YOUTH LIKE THEY DO IN CHINA AND RUSSIA AND THANK GOD FOR THAT!

apparently life sciences like biology are worthless, nice to know my education (from HS thorugh grad school) means nothing and is useless according to your post

This is a tempest in a teapot. Evolution is taught in biology classes, but the entire curriculum is covered in a day or two- and usually only represents a few questions on a quiz.

At least in our local school districts that's the case.

You said it all, KT!

It's crazy that a teacher couldn't teach evolution.Kids considering medical schools,or biology majors need to understand mutations and the strongest species survives,and genetic theories.
the parents that have a problem with scientific facts,need to home school their kids,not dumb down an entire generation!

Not only the strongest but also the luckiest, since a beneficial mutation in one milennia, could be a catastrophic in another.
Fks sample Paleo-genetics seems to have proven that we literaly all off us have one mother (IE Eve), and only a very few fathers. six in the case of caucasians,
This seems to indicate that at one time our species were only one Lion attack away from extintion, the attack didn't habn't so here we are. This dos not mean that at one time only had one female, but that we were so few that we would have been boardering on exstintion. an enlarge family, and the reason that we have several fathers seems just to indicate that males moves more around (Nothing changed in that regard)
Besides being a longlived species, we are also very subseptible to inbreeding, a futher indication off our close kinship.

Adaption and mutations (not neccesairily the same) is an important part off 'origin of the species' but not the whole story.
The argument that Evolution education is not that important, is bull..... since that is behaving like an ostrich, next i think we should all just agree that Pi = 4 , that is so much more easy to calculate whit *Uuups... we have tried that before, didn't work all that well, i think*.
Either you make a stand against Neo-con fundams, or you do like England vs Hitler in the 30' IE *Hes allright just misunderstood* and then screw you to all resemblans of a future US Education.
Guess whom GE or Exxon would hired. An chemical engineer whit a degree in 'inteligent design and church is always right' from Harvard, or and Indian Engineer whit a no nonsens degree from a no name university whit acceptet curriculum. even if they are demanding the same in salary. which they are not.

If educators aren't willing to confront the built in bias in the culture against intellectual honesty which is a direct consequence of bibical literalist thinking
there is little hope for any of us.

We're willing to confront it every time we see it; all we ask is some support from our fellow secular humanists when we do.

well, you know this religious humanist will have your back!

No it isn't. Life began in the ocean as cellular material after gases in the atmosphere combined with electrical impulses 'mutated' in a chemical reaction. Or so goes the theory. Maybe we will never know.

What you are describing is NOT evolution. <_<

Evolution requires that a living organism be present and that the "offspring" of that organism which is better adapted for the enviroment is better at propogating itself.

What you are describing is, IMHO, probably what happened, but isn't evolution.

Oh yes, strictly speaking, "mutation" is not part of classical evolutionary theory either (Darwin knew nothing about genes :D ) though it is a part of the modern theory.

I'd wager a bet that we'll know when life began on this planet sooner than we learn who "Deep Throat" was.

I guess that makes us back to back, huh?

Teacher Must Revise Creation Lesson Plan

Updated 9:57 AM ET June 10, 2005

http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...610_444&src=abc

For 15 years, in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling, Larry Booher taught creationism in his high school biology class. He even wrote a textbook and passed out copies of it in three-ring binders.

The school superintendent didn't know what was going on. Neither did the school board president. Then, they got an anonymous tip.

On Thursday, Booher agreed to revise his lesson plan, though he maintained that he only handed out the book, titled "Creation Battles Evolution," to his Biology 2 students as a voluntary, extra-credit option.

"He told the students, 'You may read this. You don't have to. It has some Bible references in it,'" said Alan Lee, superintendent of Washington County schools. "This teacher felt like he wasn't doing anything wrong."

The Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that creationism, the belief that God created the universe as explained in the Bible, is a religious belief not science and may not be taught in public schools along with evolution.

"Creationism is not biology and has no place in a biology class," said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. "What makes it wrong is not the theory of creationism, but the teaching of creationism as part of a science class."

Lee said Booher's source book material was never presented to the school board or to his office for approval. He declined to say what punishment if any Booher would face, calling it a personnel matter.

Elizabeth Lowe, chairwoman of the school board, said she had heard "not a word" about Booher's book in her 11 years in office.

Lee described Booher, 48, as "one of the finest science teachers I've ever been around" and said Booher would return to the classroom in the fall since he agreed to stop distributing the creationism materials.

"He must teach evolution exclusively observable scientific fact, not beliefs or religion," Lee said. "I fully believe he will comply. He just stepped over the line."

Calls to Booher's home were met with hang-ups Thursday. He told The Roanoke Times he regretted handing out the material.

"I can't change my classroom into a Sunday school class," he told the newspaper. "It's not like I tried to make it a secret. If administrators knew, fine. If they didn't, I didn't make an issue of it."

Booher's source book, which he distributed at his own expense to classes ranging from 25 to 40 students, included nine chapters with titles such as "In the beginning" and "Evidence for a young Earth."

As news of Booher's source book surfaced this week, Lee said he has had no complaints from parents.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "People in this area tend to be very religious. They likely didn't see it as anything that wasn't appropriate."

I think it is a better argument for just doing away with religion. Just imagine
all the community development that could be done with all the time, money
and effort that religion uses up.

I think most of the areas of America that have a problem with evolution, have NEVER EXPERIENCED EVOLUTION, you'll find their pictures about 3 figures behind homo sapiens.

You are so right. Trouble is, they would not know what picture you mean.

Wonder what ever happened to Don. I always liked him.

We now know who deep throat was, do we know when life began on this planet?

Hmmm... and that's 80 to 90 percent of America?

And after they get rid of Darwin, they'll go after Galileo next:
http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2

Comedy Central's The Daily Show is doing segments all week on Intelligent design and anti-science programs promoted by this administration.

'Intelligent Design' Court Battle Begins

Updated 4:00 AM ET September 27, 2005
By MARTHA RAFFAELE

http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...8csfo500&src=ap

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - The opening day of a landmark trial over whether a school district should require students to hear about "intelligent design" felt a lot like a science lecture.

Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, the first witness called Monday by lawyers suing the Dover Area School District for exposing its students to the controversial theory, sprinkled his testimony with references to DNA, red blood cells and viruses, and he occasionally referred to complex charts on a projection screen.

Even U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III was a little overwhelmed.

"I guess I should say, 'Class dismissed,'" Jones mused before recessing for lunch.

Dover is believed to be the nation's first school system to mandate students be exposed to the intelligent design concept. Its policy requires school administrators to read a brief statement before classes on evolution that says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps." It refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.

Intelligent design holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms. It implies that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force.

Eight families sued, saying that the district policy in effect promotes the Bible's view of creation, violating the constitutional separation of church and state.

Miller, whose cross-examination was to resume Tuesday morning, said the policy undermines scientific education by raising false doubts about evolutionary theory.

"It's the first movement to try to drive a wedge between students and the scientific process," he said.

But the rural school district of about 3,500 students argues it is not endorsing any religious view and is merely giving ninth-grade biology classes a glimpse of differences in evolutionary theory.

"This case is about free inquiry in education, not about a religious agenda," said Patrick Gillen of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., in his opening statement. The center, which lobbies for what it sees as the religious freedom of Christians, is defending the school district.

The non-jury trial is expected to take five weeks.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs began their case by arguing that intelligent design is a religious theory inserted in the school district's curriculum by the school board with no concern for whether it has scientific underpinnings.

"They did everything you would do if you wanted to incorporate a religious point of view in science class and cared nothing about its scientific validity," attorney Eric Rothschild said.

Miller, who was the only witness Monday, sharply criticized intelligent design and questioned the work that went into it by one of its leading proponents, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, who will be a key witness for the district.

The statement read to Dover students states in part, "Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered." Miller said the words are "tremendously damaging," falsely undermining the scientific status of evolution.

"What that tells students is that science can't be relied upon and certainly is not the kind of profession you want to go into," he said.

"There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory," he added.

On the other hand, Miller said, "intelligent design is not a testable theory in any sense and as such it is not accepted by the scientific community."

During his cross-examination of Miller, Robert Muise, another attorney for the law center, repeatedly asked whether he questioned the completeness of Darwin's theory.

"Would you agree that Darwin's theory is not the absolute truth?" Muise said.

"We don't regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth," Miller responded.

The Dover lawsuit is the newest chapter in a history of evolution litigation dating back to the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee nearly 80 years ago. More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that states may not require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.

___

On the Net:

Dover Area School District: http://www.dover.k12.pa.us

National Center for Science Education: http://www.ncseweb.org

Thomas More Law Center: http://www.thomasmore.org

Intelligent design goes on trial in Pennsylvania

Tuesday, September 27, 2005
By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05270/578445.stm

HARRISBURG -- A federal trial that could have a bearing on how evolutionary theory is presented to public school students began here yesterday, with a judge hearing opening statements for and against the discussion of "intelligent design" in science classes.

Mostly, the statements were against it, as the trial's first day focused on testimony from Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University. He is testifying for the plaintiffs suing York County's Dover Area School District.

Eleven parents, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and other attorneys, are seeking to overturn the district's controversial -- and possibly one-of-a-kind -- addition to the ninth-grade biology course.

Last autumn, Dover's school board instructed ninth-grade biology teachers to tell students that the theory of evolution has unexplainable gaps, and that "intelligent design," which says biology's complex machinery presents evidence of an intelligent creator, "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view." The policy took effect in January -- some of the students were allowed to opt out of hearing the short statement.

Miller is an oft-recruited defender of evolution, and has written several articles and trade books explaining evidence for evolution, reconciling his scientific views with his religious ones and panning the concept of intelligent design. He is also the author of one of the top-selling high school biology textbooks.

Yesterday, amid several hours of testimony and slide show graphics, Miller said that "intelligent design is not science, and it cannot be construed as a scientific theory whatsoever."

The question of whether intelligent design is itself a scientific theory, or is merely posing as one while taking pokes at another theory, will be one of the main issues considered by the court.

If the plaintiffs can convince the judge that intelligent design is inherently religious, even though supporters try not to name the creator, the school board policy may violate the Constitution's church-state separation clause, not to mention years of case law.

But if the defendants can show that intelligent design is not religious, the amendment to the curriculum may slip through.

Attorneys from the Thomas More Law Center, which is defending Dover Area, tried in opening statements to paint the change to the science curriculum as a minor one. In fact, attorney Pat Gillen no fewer than six times referred to the intelligent design statement as a "modest" change to the district's biology course, having nothing to do with God.

"Creationism and intelligent design are two different things," Gillen said. This case, he said, is not about church-state separation, but instead about the "freedom of academic inquiry."

But in the plaintiff's opening statement, attorney Eric Rothschild tried to show that the school board members in Dover were religiously motivated. In a barrage of school board memos, and in one video clip, Rothschild showed that the board had often discussed injecting "creationism" into the science curriculum.

That's key, because "creationism" and "creation science" already have been rejected by the courts when proponents have tried to insert those terms into public school lesson plans. Rothschild wanted to show that intelligent design is similar to creationism, and that the board used the terms interchangeably.

"That's their word -- creationism," he said. "Board members, in starkly religious terms, changed the science curriculum to advance a specific religious viewpoint," and have imposed that viewpoint on their students.

Once Miller was on the stand, he was called upon to summarize a book called "Of Pandas and People," a text that presents intelligent design on a high school reading level. The book is in the Dover library, and the board statement invited students to look at the book if they wished to.

Miller examined several of the book's arguments -- that complex biological systems point to an intelligent designer, that Darwin is wrong about the evolutionary tree -- and picked them apart.

Pandas, he concluded, "is inaccurate [or] downright false in every section of the book."

He also said the four-paragraph statement, despite its brevity, is damaging, because it sets up a "false duality" for students -- they must pick between the "atheist's" textbook, or the "Bible-friendly" one.

Today, Miller remains on the stand, to be cross-examined by Dover's defense team.

The nonjury trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, is expected to last five weeks, said U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Bill Toland can be reached at btoland@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1889.)

If it can't be tested, it isn't science
Sunday, September 25, 2005

-- Bill Toland

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05268/576798.stm

The scientific theory of evolution is strong, says Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University and one of the witnesses who will testify for the parents suing Dover Area School District.

As a competitor in the public arena, though, the theory is handicapped, and badly. A Gallup poll found last year that 13 percent of respondents believed human life arose from evolution naturally, and 38 percent believed God guided evolution. But 45 percent believed evolution played no role, preferring biblical accounts.

"The scientific community has to do a much, much better job at making the case for evolution," he said. But it's tough to do that in a sentence or a paragraph, in a newspaper story or a quick television piece. Opponents of natural evolution who support intelligent design have become adept at spouting snappy quotes. "Teach the controversy," they'll say. Evolution is just "a theory, not a fact," they'll say.

The current media setup, pitting evolution against intelligent design, "benefits them in a number of ways," Miller said. The journalistic instinct to seek tit-for-tat balance in a story, he said, makes it appear as if evolution and intelligent design have equal support within the scientific community, and that a controversy actually exists.

It does not, he said. "You have the entire scientific community, balanced against four or five people, and it's portrayed as though these are two equal sides."

Those "four or five" people include Michael Behe, of Lehigh University; John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture; Phillip Johnson, author of "Darwin on Trial"; and William A. Dembski, who has written several books on the subject.

There are other supporters. The Discovery Institute points to a list of 400 scholars who either support intelligent design or, at least, have issues with evolution. Four hundred sounds like a big number, but as a light-hearted retort, the National Center for Science Education has come up with its own list of defenders, all of them named Steve, in honor of the late Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard biologist. About 700 scientists are on the list.

Miller, in an interview last week, said he was confident that the federal courts would find that intelligent design is not science and has no place in a science classroom. "It's very simple," he said. Intelligent design, despite its clinical and nonreligious terminology, says nature presents evidence that a designer assembled life's building blocks and gave rise to new species.

And that designer, whoever it is, exists outside of the natural world, and its existence "cannot be tested. This whole idea is beyond the realm of science."

He put it another way. "Maybe you think the Red Sox won the World Series last year because [God] was just tired of [New York Yankees owner] George Steinbrenner," Miller said. "That may well be true," but even if it is, it can't be tested by science.

Forum: The Bush administration's abuse of scienceT

he once-cooperative relationship between scientists and our political leaders has thoroughly deteriorated under this White House, says Chris Mooney, and we all pay the price

Sunday, September 25, 2005

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05268/576883.stm

Today we are facing a full-fledged national crisis over the role of scientific information in public policy-making. It's a subtle crisis in some ways, often obscured by the complexities of scientific disputation. But it is a crisis nonetheless, one that threatens every one of us because it affects not only public health and the environment, but the way we treat knowledge itself in American society.

Chris Mooney is the author of "The Republican War on Science," published this month by Basic Books. He is Washington correspondent for Seed Magazine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The crisis is a direct consequence of continuing, and well-documented, misuses and distortions of scientific information by the Bush administration, on issues ranging from global climate change to embryonic stem-cell research. The extensiveness of the administration's abuses, combined with the fact that it refuses to acknowledge or apologize for its offenses, leaves us with a deep conundrum:

How do we ensure that scientific knowledge and expertise play an appropriate role in helping to inform national policy decisions? And what are the consequences when one ideological movement, or one presidential administration, or one political party, shows a systematic willingness to undermine, misappropriate and abuse scientific and technical expertise?

This is a question that cuts to the heart of the role of science in a democracy. None other than George W. Bush himself may have put it best when he declared, with a deer-in-the-headlights look during his first public appearance following the Asian tsunami catastrophe, "I am not a geologist, as you know."

Although I suspect that Bush's wisdom here is merely accidental, he's really on to something. For while we don't generally want our elected leaders to be scientists -- Israel's 1952 offer of the presidency to Albert Einstein being an exception to the rule -- we do want the two camps to communicate honestly and forthrightly.

In essence, then, the much-discussed "politicization of science" really amounts to a strategic attack of the necessary channels of communication between technocratic experts, who know a great deal about the workings of nature, and democratically elected leaders who must often tap into technocratic knowledge if they are to guide us wisely.

Unfortunately, under the Bush administration, the once cooperative relationship between scientists and our political leaders has thoroughly deteriorated. Many scientists feel they have received the back of the hand from this administration -- and not just when it comes to the requests for funding of basic research in Bush's budget.

Far more outrageous are the following: Reports of a former oil industry employee editing climate change reports from the White House. The president lending his endorsement to the teaching of so-called "intelligent design" alongside evolution in public school science classes. The resignation of a senior Food and Drug Administration expert due to continual politicking over the approval of Plan B emergency contraception (the "morning after" pill) over the counter. (On Friday, the head of the FDA, Lester Crawford, resigned abruptly; the fallout over the Plan B episode was likely part of the reason.)

And these are just the most prominent case studies from the past several months. Choose a different time period and you will have a different set of examples--and that's precisely the point. Science is being used repeatedly as a political football by the Bush administration, and the particular issue almost doesn't matter -- so long as it's of consequence to some interest group that the administration is committed to appeasing.

The most prominent such interest groups are religious conservatives and regulated industry. These two interest groups want very different things -- economics, morals -- but their desires frequently stray into scientific areas. For instance, religious conservatives want to challenge the way that evolution is taught in public schools, while business interests such as tobacco want (or at least, wanted) to challenge scientific studies suggesting health risks from smoking.

Catering to these constituencies, as the Republican Party has increasingly done, has inevitably led politicians and political appointees to humor what essentially amounts to their scientific lobbying. This has happened even as such lobbying has itself become state of the art, encompassing think-tank driven campaigns that skew what's actually known on hot-button scientific issues with big political ramifications, such as evolution and especially global warming. Both of these trends have converged under the Bush administration, a fact that goes a long way towards explaining the current crisis over the politicization of science.

Indeed, there are many good reasons for thinking that, although all politicians to some extent use science selectively, the Bush administration is significantly different than other administrations when it comes to the cavalier treatment of science--and that, in fact, it's much worse.

First, we have the testimonials from individuals who actually served in these previous administrations: For example, former Nixon and Ford administration Environmental Protection Agency administrator Russell Train, himself a Republican. These people say they've never seen anything like what we're seeing now, and that's one powerful piece of evidence.

We also have the simple fact that no similarly broad-ranging crisis over the political abuse of science arose during previous administrations. While the relationship between science and politics did become contentious during other presidencies, the tension generally arose over specific issues, such as the "Star Wars" program during the Reagan years, rather than over the government's entire approach to science across a sweeping array of issues.

Now, thanks to all of these tactics and abuses, and the political structure that has grown up to support them, we are facing a crisis.

Unfortunately, it's a crisis that's only recognized by one side of the political spectrum, which has now begun to call for good government-style reforms, designed to safeguard the role of legitimate scientific expertise in informing government decision-making, to protect that expertise from manipulation and abuse, and more generally to restore a spirit of candor and collaboration between the scientific community and our elected officials.

For example, Reps. Henry Waxman and Bart Gordon have proposed legislation to bar political litmus tests for advisory committee membership, extend whistleblower protections to government scientists who allege abuses, and much else.

Such reforms should be coupled with attempts to restore the government scientific advisory apparatus itself: Bring back the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, dismantled by the Gingrich Republicans, and strengthen the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

But still, that's not enough. Scientists need to continue to fight back against misuses of science, and that includes getting into the trenches and battling those who would spread nonsense to our children in schools. The university community in this nation, too, needs to band together to defend the integrity of science, something we haven't seen happen yet.

There ought to be a scientific integrity movement on campuses, a natural venue for defending the scientific process and the value of inquiry.

Ultimately, all of this energy should translate into political action itself: If conservative Republicans have a bad record on science, we need to call them out on their abuses and support candidates (Democrat or Republican) with better records.

In the long term, all of these strategies must combine if we are to reverse the trend of science abuse and restore scientific integrity to the political process and to society at large.

Weekend Perspectives: Making way for intelligent design
Science and religion can get along, but in separate rooms

Saturday, September 24, 2005
By Rudolph H. Weingartner

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05267/576889.stm

Rudolph H. Weingartner, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, lives in Squirrel Hill (rudywein@ comcast.net).

The case of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District opens next week in a federal court in Harrisburg. It started last year when the Dover school board decided to allow teachers to discuss "other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design." A group of parents, supported by the ACLU, sued the school board. The event is being called the Scopes trial of the 21st century.

The latest phase of this controversy reminds me that in the latter part of the 19th century, Princeton had an endowed chair for a "Professor of the Reconciliation of Science and Religion." While I'm an emeritus professor of philosophy, that was not my job while I was in harness. But now, retired, I want to give this task a try and look at the relationship between intelligent design and the Darwinian theory of evolution it proposes to replace.

As a professor might say: I will attempt to show these two accounts to be potentially complementary.

No such effort, however, would have been possible with intelligent design's predecessor in the public eye -- Bible-based Creationism. The Earth, according to those literalists, is at most 10,000 years old, while geologists all agree that the earth's age exceeds 4 billion years. This puts a stop to reconciliation long before we get to talk about the origin of species.

Intelligent design proponents, however, make no such literalist assumptions. Their claim is that there are phenomena that natural selection cannot explain, such as the existence of certain complex systems like the human eye, or such processes as the clotting of blood. One must hypothesize, instead, that an intelligent designer was responsible.

Evolutionists, to be sure, reply that their theory can indeed explain how such complicated developments came about. But surely it will always be possible to find new ways to challenge Darwinism. While evolutionists might want to claim that their theory can in principle explain how all living entities came to be, they also know that this will never be possible in actuality. There is no way to come by all the data for such a feat, since much of it is buried in what is a very long past indeed. In this way, Darwinism resembles virtually all other scientific theories: they are incomplete, evolving and likely to remain incomplete.

Look now at the other side. One intelligent design proponent is quoted in The New York Times saying that "All ideas go through stages -- first they're ignored, then they're attacked, then they're accepted." But surely not all ideas. Early in the 19th century the supposed science of phrenology was first accepted by quite a few, then attacked, and finally completely discredited. Those bumps on peoples' heads turned out not to signify anything at all. Intelligent design will go the way of phrenology as long as its adherents think of their doctrine to be a science that competes with evolutionary theory.

But is it a science? For a claim to be scientific, it must -- in principle, at least -- be falsifiable. We must be able, in other words, to envisage some condition, however unlikely it might be, that would show the claim to be false. When that condition is ignored, every kind of nonsense becomes possible.

I could invent, on the spot, my own creation science and propose that the living beings surrounding us were created by a spirit that hovers over the Earth but returns home to the center of Sirius every time you look for him. Given this mini-theory, no condition can even be imagined that would show the claim to be false; there is no way to confirm or disconfirm it. You can believe in my hovering spirit or, better, dismiss the assertion as silly.

But surely intelligent design need not be dismissed in so summary a manner. A closer look suggests that its account belongs to a most significant tradition. The intelligent designer is not some ludicrous spirit from Sirius, but God in the Judeo-Christian tradition of God the Creator. We are now not speaking of an object of science, such as atoms or molecules. Nor do we expect, within that tradition, to be able to envisage a condition --however improbable -- that would show that there is no God after all.

In short, it is not news that the belief in God is a matter of faith. There are no definitive arguments that prove that God exists nor are there relevant scientific experiments. Indeed, most theologians in the Judeo-Christian tradition regard faith to be at the center of religion, a faith that sets religion apart from the realm of science.

That brings me, finally, to my role as conciliator of science and religion.

To those whose religious faith tells them that all living species were created by God, the intelligent designer, I say: Why assume that He kept incredibly busy throughout the ages creating and snuffing out the huge number of species that fossil records show there to have been? Why not suppose, instead, that the intelligent designer devised the clever method of natural selection that his faithful servant, Charles Darwin, was able to discern so many eons later?

Indeed, not long after Darwin published "The Origin of Species," a distinguished orthodox rabbi, Samson Raphael Hirsch, made the same point more eloquently. If natural selection is indeed the way species come to be, he declared, it would call for "even greater reverence than ever before to the one sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus, and one single law ... in order to bring forth ... the infinite variety of species we know today."

"Teach the controversy," say the adherents of intelligent design, that between their views and that of the Darwinians. There is no such controversy, I reply. Teach both -- teach evolutionary theory in biology class and intelligent design in Sunday School.

Editorial: Intelligent define / Science must be prepared to defend itself

Saturday, September 24, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05267/576863.stm

Pennsylvania is about to become ground zero in the national debate about teaching "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in public schools.

In a first-of-its-kind case set for trial in U.S. District Court Monday in Harrisburg, parents from Dover in York County will challenge a local school board order introducing intelligent design into high school biology courses. Parents charge -- correctly, in our view -- that the board is putting religion into the classroom in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Similar conflicts have been flaring around the country, as fundamentalist believers wage a new battle against Charles Darwin. President Bush even weighed in on the national debate a few weeks ago, suggesting that schools should teach both topics, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

The debate is about perhaps the longest and most serious conflict in modern times between science and religion. The Dover case comes 80 years after the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tenn., first tested the legality of teaching evolution.

Make no mistake. Intelligent design is old-time, Bible-thumping creationism given a new name. It maintains that living things are far too complex to have arisen through natural selection and other tools of evolution. That demands the biblical version of the origin of the universe and life.

Scientists can roil, scoff and point to massive amounts of evidence that the first true humans appeared at least 1.2 million years ago, but some people believe otherwise. Opinion polls show that about half of the American population rejects evolution. More than half believe that God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

The debate has festered, in part, because of a fundamental failure of the scientific community to accept the magnitude of public uneasiness with evolution, and respond effectively. What response is needed?

Education, of course, to better inform the public about a bedrock concept of modern science. Ironically, the debate itself is distracting school boards from badly needed efforts to improve science teaching.

Research is also essential to resolve minor uncertainties about evolution that creationists exploit with skill. Science should close those gaps, however small or seemingly unimportant.

Scientists also must get out more -- into their own communities -- and speak up on critical issues like intelligent design. Most importantly, they must seek positions on school boards and other offices that fall into the hands of individuals who exploit public misunderstanding of science to advance their personal religious agendas.

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50 % don't believe in evolution. No wonder our education system is falling far below other countries in math and science.

Intelligent design's evolution
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
By Reg Henry

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05242/562111.stm

Intelligent design has been much in the news lately, and as a reader service today my column will examine this origin-of-life issue from several perspectives: the scientific, the theological and the ridiculous, the last to tweak those few readers who have not evolved sufficiently to have a sense of humor.

According to the theory of evolution, all life forms developed from primitive organisms that, by way of chance mutations and a process of natural selection, were able to rise out of the prehistoric ooze and establish themselves as new species, just like social climbers in our own time.

Thus, a short fin might become over eons a primitive leg that could get the creature out of the swamp, and a rudimentary nose might develop into a big hooter that could lead it to the earliest equivalent of Dunkin' Donuts.

One could imagine such a simple creature emerging from the primal slime for the first time, standing unsteadily on its vestigial fins and cranking up its elementary vocal chords to declare: "Hi, I'm Bob Flagwaver and I wish to be your congressman." Insurance salesmen and lawyers soon followed.

Yes, this is a hideous thought, but science is not for wusses. The scientific mind trades in truth, not sentimentality. It looks unblinkingly at the facts.

On the other hand, who wants to do that? It is positively un-American to face uncomfortable truths, especially when a simple alternative exists to scientific inquiry. For many people, it's more convenient to read the grand poetic story in Genesis as a literal explanation rather than as a powerful allegory.

Of course, this means that dinosaurs had to exist at the same time humans did -- and unfortunately those spoilsport scientists point out that no credible evidence exists for that. Lucky for Adam and Eve, I say! It would have been very hard to keep their fig leaves straight while being pursued by dinosaurs. And throwing apple cores at the dinosaurs would have been futile.

As it was, the Good Book's explanation of life's origins was a hard sell to pass off as science, especially in public schools, because plainly it was religion. Creationism, as it was called, had to evolve so that it would be the fittest theory to survive in a secular world. And so it has, according to Nature's law.

Creationism is now newly emerged as intelligent design. It really should be called intelligent deception, because it is the same old thing but more coy. Don't mind the man behind the curtain (he's probably a preacher or a friend of a preacher). The irony is that those who support this supposed theory must actually think the rest of us are descended from monkeys if we can't figure out what's going on.

Intelligent design postulates that some things are so complex that we just can't explain them except in terms of an intelligent designer. I must say I always thought that about algebra. Gosh, I wonder who that Intelligent Designer could be in this theory? Ask the man behind the curtain after school.

Actually, I do believe in an Intelligent Designer. I also believe that the Lord moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. The really intelligent view is that evolution is His way of working the business of creation.

Consider those dinosaurs, for example. They roamed the Earth for millions of years, then suddenly disappeared. What intelligent designer would have done that? They were magnificent beasts. Are we to believe the Designer suddenly tired of them? Sounds more capricious than intelligent. Such a waste of lizards!

This raises a very alarming theological possibility: That there is a Mrs. Almighty. She sees the Designer organizing the Earth, stocking it with life and marking the boundaries of the oceans, and then in typical fashion, decides in the blink of the eternal eye that He isn't doing the job right and the whole furniture of life must be rearranged. I've seen it happen myself on a lesser scale.

Faced with this dreadful possibility, I'll continue believing in evolution, thank you very much, because religion is religion and science is science. And the twain shall never meet? Yes, they must meet, but in our hearts, not the science class.
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(Reg Henry can be reached at rhenry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1668.)

online cafe forum on this subject:

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...ST&f=16&t=38438

The other forum talks about what teachers should teach in what classes.

My nephew is a history major teaching social science classes (civics, geology, history, government and sometimes religions). He is NOT a science major. Many more teachers have no formal science training to teach science let alone teach "social science".

If ID is to be taught in schools it should be taught as a religious belief by religious teachers. Leave the regular teachers out of this argument. Science teachers should only teach science.

I was educated in catholic grade school and high school. In Biology classes we discussed biology which included evolution of man. In religion classes we learned about creation. The science and religion were taught and we were educated in these classes to understand that creation was the point we believe god created or interceded in the development of the world or man.
As an adult I understand that the big bang is still an act of our higher power we call god. If you cannot believe in the biology of man then how do you explain death and the decomposition of our bodies. Many believe life force, soul or our energy leaves are body and goes to space, heaven, up in the sky?
Now if you cannot believe in the science of creation and evolution can go hand in hand then you should get into micro biology-their you can see god do his/her best work!

Delete

Intelligent design tied to creationism in Dover trial

Wednesday, September 28, 2005
By Bill Toland, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05271/578955.stm

HARRISBURG -- Board members who succeeded in introducing "intelligent design" to students in Dover Area School District were wary of evolutionary theory and explicit in their desire to balance the teaching of evolution with a more Christian-friendly philosophy, three plaintiffs testified yesterday during the second day of a landmark federal trial.

Two board members in particular -- William Buckingham and Alan Bonsell -- were mentioned frequently. Bonsell wanted students to hear about creationism, the Biblical account of the earth's origins, testified Aralene Callahan, a parent and also a former school board member in Dover, York County.

"If evolution was part of the biology curriculum, creationism should be shared 50-50," Callahan quoted Bonsell as saying.

Buckingham, according to the testimony, expressed fears that the biology textbooks he'd reviewed were "laced with Darwinism," and too one-sided in their deference to evolution. At a board meeting, Buckingham criticized a college student who studied evolution, saying the man had been "brainwashed."

Buckingham said somebody needed to take a stand for Jesus, witnesses said. His wife, Charlotte, quoted Old Testament verses during public board meetings, one plaintiff testified.

Throughout the second day, attorneys for the plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area tried to show that the school board, over a two-year period, had discussed God, religion and creationism and shown a general antipathy toward evolutionary theory, before ultimately voting to inform ninth-grade biology students that evolutionary theory has inexplicable gaps, and that intelligent design "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."

The theme of the discussions will be crucial as U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III considers whether the Dover board violated the Constitution's church-state separation clause, as the plaintiffs claim in their lawsuit, filed last year. The school's policy took effect in January, when the statement was first read to students.

The subtext is crucial because the judge will apply two tests -- first, he'll consider whether the statement that's read to students has the effect of bringing religion into the public school setting. If he can't find that effect, he will look for the intent behind the action.

That intent seemed boldly clear to the three plaintiffs who testified yesterday.

The plaintiffs specifically seek to knock down the four-paragraph statement, but more broadly, the case is about more than permanent injunctions. It is America's first court test of whether the term "intelligent design" can be taught, or at least mentioned, to students taking a science course.

And the world is watching this case -- educators and scientists, conservatives and liberals, clergy and politicians, not to mention dozens in the media, including a radio station from New Zealand.

Bryan Rehm -- a parent, a plaintiff, and a former Dover Area science teacher -- said that the science faculty had been forced to watch a video explaining why Charles Darwin's theories on evolution were being improperly taught to school students.

Board members seemed especially concerned with the idea that modern man had evolved from an earlier relative, even though that subject wasn't directly addressed at Dover. "We don't teach monkey-to-man," he said yesterday.

The plaintiffs' testimony has been largely corroborated by local newspaper accounts of the school board meetings. But Buckingham and Bonsell have denied making some of the statements attributed to them or have suggested those comments were taken out of context by newspaper reporters.

That's why the legal team representing the 11 parents who sued has subpoenaed two freelance reporters, Heidi Bernhard-Bubb of the York Dispatch, and Joe Maldonado of the York Daily Record. "The reporters are needed to validate the historical record," said Witold Walczak, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

The reporters were deposed yesterday, but Walczak said he was uncertain whether they would testify today, when the non-jury trial resumes.

Before the plaintiffs took the stand, Dover's defense team, a firm that litigates for free on behalf of "Christians and time-honored family values," completed their cross-examination of expert witness Kenneth Miller, a biology professor at Brown University and co-author of a popular biology textbook.

On Monday, he testified that "intelligent design is not science," and aimed to refute several core claims made in the book "Of Pandas and People," which is the beginner's manual to intelligent design, and is mentioned in the four-paragraph statement read to students.

Yesterday, the defense team danced through a list of renowned biologists -- Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and Francis Crick included -- and offered quotes and book snippets from these biologists, showing that they can talk about religion and God without compromising their standing as scientists.

Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning DNA researcher, suggested in a book that life could have been put on Earth by space aliens. That fits neatly into the intelligent design concept, whose supporters try not to identify the designer whom they believe is behind nature's complex machinery.

One "need not be a fundamentalist Christian to believe in intelligent design," said defense attorney Robert Muise. He also noted that Miller describes himself as a "creationist," in that Miller, a Roman Catholic, believes that "God is the author of nature." Later, Miller said that "just because a scientist makes a statement, doesn't make it scientific."
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(Bill Toland can be reached at btoland@post-gazette.com or 1-717-787-2141.)

Michael McGough: The theology of intelligent design
Christians must ask: What sort of creator is the creator?

Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Michael McGough is an editor at large in the Post-Gazette's National Bureau (mmcgough@nationalpress.com). He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

As a federal court in Harrisburg considers whether alternatives to Darwin's evolutionary theory should be offered in the Dover Area School District, let's put aside the question of whether "intelligent design" is good science. The more interesting question is whether it is good theology.

ID argues, supposedly on purely scientific grounds, that the complexity of life, especially at the cellular level, points to an Intelligent Designer. Its adherents won't call that designer God, but the conventional wisdom is that Christians can only be pleased if ID gains traction. But that's not necessarily so, though ID has its Christian cheerleaders, and they aren't all fundamentalists.

In July, for example, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Vienna, published an op-ed article in The New York Times assailing "neo-Darwinism" and sounding a lot like a supporter of intelligent design.

"The Catholic Church," he wrote, "while leaving to science many details about the history of life on Earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world."

Schoenborn conceded that Pope John Paul II said in 1996 that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis" (a statement science writer Michael Shermer once paraphrased as "evolution happened -- deal with it"). But the cardinal also argued that this "rather vague and unimportant" papal pronouncement must be read in light of John Paul's comment 11 years earlier that "the evolution of living beings ... presents an internal finality which arouses admiration [and which] obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator."

But is acceptance of ID (and rejection of Darwinism) really required by the basic belief contained in the Apostles' Creed?: "I believe in God ... creator of Heaven and Earth"? It all depends, as Bill Clinton might say if he were a theologian, on what the definition of "creator" is.

Long before Darwin, Christian thinkers struggled with the paradox that portraying God as "maker of heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible" (in the words of another creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan) could give the Deity less than his due.

The problem, Protestant theologian Langdon Gilkey explained in his 1965 book "Maker of Heaven and Earth," is that a "maker" could be a mere craftsman, shaping raw material, rather than a truly omnipotent God. The solution was to emphasize that God created ex nihilo, "from nothing."

"In the Christian doctrine of creation," Gilkey wrote, "God is the source of all and creates out of nothing. Thus the Christian idea, far from merely representing a primitive anthropomorphic projection of human art upon the cosmos, systematically repudiates all direct analogy from human art." God instead is the "transcendent source of all existence."

Moreover, Gilkey wrote, human beings discover God the creator "not from a careful scientific or metaphysical analysis of the general experience of nature and of finite existence, but rather from the illumination that comes from special encounters with God in revelatory experiences."

And that points to a different problem with a naive embrace by the church of intelligent design. Christian faith cannot be produced by a reflection on scientific knowledge or supposed gaps in that knowledge.

The Catholic theologian Luke Timothy Johnson makes a similar point. "The Christian confession of God as creator," he writes in "The Creed," "is not theory about how things came to be, but a perception of how everything is still and is always coming into being.

"God's self-disclosure in creation, therefore, is not like the traces of the watchmaker in his watch. God is revealed in the world first of all not through the 'whatness' of things but through the 'isness' of things. That anything exists at all is the primordial mystery that points us to God."

Johnson sees this vision of creation as being "entirely compatible with theories of evolution." He adds: "The theories of the natural and biological sciences address, and can only address, the interconnecting causes of beings that have been or are now already in existence. They cannot account for existence itself."

And although Johnson doesn't refer specifically to intelligent design, he calls its close relative, creationism, a "failed enterprise lacking ... intellectual integrity."

For atheists, the distinction between these accounts of the doctrine of creation and intelligent design might seem a distinction without a difference. After all, they both see a God of some sort behind or under (pick your metaphor) physical reality. Yet for many Christians, it is not only possible but necessary to reject the idea of God as the watchmaker, the mere Intelligent Designer, who walks away from his work.

You can call anything you don't understand "God"! What you can't do is shove that opinion down everyone elses throat! Until you can PROVE (or provide compelling massive evidence) that "God" (as you define Him/Her/It) exists, and has created everything, you have no right to demand that everyone pay for teaching that belief to everyone! Period!

If you don't like that, then start your own country, and demand that everyone believe as you do. Otherwise get out of my face, and get your hand out of my pocket!

Are ALL scientific theories provable?

theory - an idea or set of ideas that is intended to explain something about life or the world, especially one that has not yet been proven to be true

EG Einstein's theory of relativity.

I agree that religion should be separate from science. You cannot prove God exists obviously, and if you teach religion perhaps it should include all religions equally and leave the rest to the parents to talk about the family's particular religion. I believe it is better for children to have some set of beliefs rather than nothing at all.

Scientific theories should not be taught as facts. I do not know whether evolution has really been proven. After all a giraffe has been a giraffe for a long, long time without evolving. On the other hand our intervention - changing the environment has shown to have sudden and drastic results regarding the development of species. Usually negative results.

So if we teach evolution we should teach about the endangered species and our part in that.

Forum: Don't let the 'intelligent design' myth take hold
Pennsylvania will suffer if the latest creationism theory can be taught in a public school, says Chris Beard. We should be moving forward in science, not regressing
Sunday, October 09, 2005

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05282/584712.stm

Analysis: 'Intelligent design' case to undergo 2-pronged test
Sunday, October 02, 2005
By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05275/581245.stm

Ex-official: Board broke with curriculum policy
Witness testifies was called an 'atheist' for evolution-only stance
Friday, September 30, 2005
By Bill Toland, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05273/580258.stm

Witness: 'Intelligent design' not science
Thursday, September 29, 2005
By Bill Toland, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05272/579709.stm

Editorial: Hard to believe / Pennsylvania hosts its own Scopes trial
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05272/579442.stm

Analysis: 'Intelligent design' case to undergo 2-pronged test
Sunday, October 02, 2005

By Bill Toland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05275/581245.stm

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Evolution debate: Who are the real ideologues?
Monday, October 03, 2005

By Ruth Ann Dailey
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05276/581590.stm

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Forum: Don't let the 'intelligent design' myth take hold
Pennsylvania will suffer if the latest creationism theory can be taught in a public
school, says Chris Beard. We should be moving forward in science, not regressing
Sunday, October 09, 2005

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05282/584712.stm

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Witness faults school district's 'intelligent design' policy
'Probably the worst thing I've ever heard of in science education'
Thursday, October 13, 2005

By Tracie Mauriello, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05286/587790.stm

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Professor defends intelligent design
Tuesday, October 18, 2005

By Tracie Mauriello, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05291/590339.stm

I find this whole argument about evolution laughable. It's like arguing whether the sun is hot. It's a senseless argument. While they're "devolving" teacher's lesson plans the bacteria are continuing to evolve more and more drug resistance and the viruses like H5N1 (avian influenza) are continuing to evolve as well. We don't need to look millions of years in the past for proof that evolution exists. All you have to do is look at the evolution of the H5N1 virus in the last year and a half and you'll see all the proof in the world that evolution exists and that it affects every one of us.

We can dumb down our kids all we want. That ain't going to change the fact that viruses evolve and bacteria evolve and every form of life on the planet evolves and that if we want to continue to EVOLVE economically we'd best stop dumbing down our kids and instead start smartening them up!

Spot on !