More on Intelligent (?) Design

Did God turn monkeys into men?
DAMIEN HENDERSON August 11 2005

IT began life as a radical challenge to the biblical version of
how we began.

Nearly 150 years on, however, it is the opponents of Charles
Darwin's theory of natural selection who have been forced to
evolve.
Intelligent design (ID), the latest religious challenge to
Darwinism, has received backing as far apart as Kansas and
Australia this week, to the alarm of secular educationists.
The theory, which argues that a creator played a hand in human
evolution, yesterday won the tentative support of the Kansas
board of education after months of debate over science and
religion.
The move is regarded as a significant milestone in the US, where
a strict separation between church and state has historically
been observed.
In Australia yesterday, Brendan Nelson, the education minister
in John Howard's conservative government, also gave his support
to teaching the theory, but stressed that it should not be seen
as replacing scientific thinking on the origins of mankind.
It follows the public intervention of George W Bush on the
subject last week, when he said that teaching ID would help
children understand the debate over the origins of the universe.
But his comments, given at a press conference in Texas, have
alarmed some educationists who have perceived it as an attack on
the values of secular teaching.
ID has been championed by US churches as a credible alternative
to the theory that mankind evolved gradually through a process
of natural selection. It differs from biblical creationism in
that it does not follow the literal teachings of the Bible in
the book of Genesis.
While accepting that evolution has played a role in man's
development, ID argues that life is too complex to be reduced to
a series of chance developments and that an "unseen power" must
have helped in the process.
However, its critics have derided ID as "creeping creationism"
without scientific backing.
ID has sparked debate in American Christian circles over whether
it should be taught in the classroom.
Rick Santorum, a Republican senator on the religious right, said
he was cautious about how ID should be taught. "I'm not
comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science
classroom.
"What we should be teaching are the problems and holes in the
theory of evolution."
But the theory has gained significant popular support among the
American public, which holds creationist theory in high esteem.
An opinion poll conducted in June found that 55% of a sample of
1000 American adults believed that creationism and ID should be
taught in schools. The same survey found that 54% did not
believe that humans had developed from an earlier species.
Mr Bush's championing of ID has added weight to the movement,
which is making in-roads across America.
The theory has so far failed to gain a foothold in Britain,
where creationism is viewed with far greater scepticism than in
America.
Terry Sanderson, vice-president of the National Secular Society,
said the theory was "mythology posing as science".
He added: "The idea that George Bush, the most powerful man in
the world, is going along with this stone-age mentality is
extraordinarily dangerous.
"We are very worried at the fact that some wonderful advances in
scientific research would become retarded if intelligent design,
which has no evidence to support it, was to catch on."
Dr Richard Holloway, the former Episcopalian bishop of
Edinburgh, said he had sympathy with some versions of ID, but
that it had no place being taught in classrooms.
"I think that if religions want to teach their version of the
natural order it's up to them. But I don't think it's the
purpose of schools, which are there to teach science and
history."
However, Ronnie Smith, general secretary of the Educational
Institute of Scotland, said he would be relaxed about such
theories being taught in a religious studies context.
Alternative theory
Intelligent design has received its most reputable support from
the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank established
in 1990 in Seattle.
The theory has been developed by hundreds of mostly Christian
scientists, engineers, philosophers and theologians as an
alternative to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, unveiled
150 years ago in the Origin of Species.
In Darwin's Black Box, one of the most influential expositions
of ID, author Michael Behe argues that living organisms
containing ingenious structures such as the eye, are too complex
to have evolved by chance, and that therefore a creator must
have been involved.
William Dembski, head of the centre for intelligent design at
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, is among
those using mathematical models to argue that natural selection
cannot account for nature's complexity.
The promotion of ID in American schools follows a Supreme Court
ruling which banned the teaching of creationism alongside
evolutionism as a violation of the separation of church and
state.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/44774-print.shtml
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