9.27.2005
New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory (WashingtonPost.com)
'Intelligent Design' Teaching Challenged
By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 27, 2005; Page A03
HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 26 -- New barrages sounded in the evolution war Monday as lawyers for a group of parents challenged the teaching of "intelligent design" as nothing more than an old argument for God's hand wrapped in fancy new cloth.
"This clever tactical repackaging of creationism does not merit consideration," Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer for the parents, told U.S. District Judge John E. Jones in opening arguments. "Intelligent design admits that it is not science unless science is redefined to include the supernatural."
This is, he added, "a 21st-century version of creationism."
Eleven parents from Dover, in central Pennsylvania, are seeking to block their school board from requiring that high school biology teachers read a four-paragraph statement to students that casts doubt on Darwin's theory of evolution. This mandatory statement notes that intelligent design offers an alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life -- namely, that life in all of its complexity could not have arisen without the help of an intelligent hand.
The foremost advocates of intelligent design are silent on whether that intelligent hand belongs to God or some other intelligent force, even including a space alien. The school board, represented by the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative, religiously grounded nonprofit firm, took the position that the case was about freedom of speech.
(More ... New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory) ¶ 19:45
By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 27, 2005; Page A03
HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 26 -- New barrages sounded in the evolution war Monday as lawyers for a group of parents challenged the teaching of "intelligent design" as nothing more than an old argument for God's hand wrapped in fancy new cloth.
"This clever tactical repackaging of creationism does not merit consideration," Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer for the parents, told U.S. District Judge John E. Jones in opening arguments. "Intelligent design admits that it is not science unless science is redefined to include the supernatural."
This is, he added, "a 21st-century version of creationism."
Eleven parents from Dover, in central Pennsylvania, are seeking to block their school board from requiring that high school biology teachers read a four-paragraph statement to students that casts doubt on Darwin's theory of evolution. This mandatory statement notes that intelligent design offers an alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life -- namely, that life in all of its complexity could not have arisen without the help of an intelligent hand.
The foremost advocates of intelligent design are silent on whether that intelligent hand belongs to God or some other intelligent force, even including a space alien. The school board, represented by the Thomas More Law Center, a conservative, religiously grounded nonprofit firm, took the position that the case was about freedom of speech.
(More ... New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory) ¶ 19:45
