Free Republic

(snip) But in order to attract converts and win over critics, a new scientific theory must be enticing. It must offer something that its competitors lack. That something may be simplicity (snip). Or it could be sheer explanatory power, which was what allowed evolution to become a widely accepted theory with no serious detractors among reputable scientists. So what does ID offer? What can it explain that evolution can't? (snip) Irreducible Complexity (snip) Darwin himself admitted that if an example of irreducible complexity were ever found, his theory of natural selection would crumble. "If it could be demonstrated that any...

The opening shots were fired on Monday in the first court trial to scrutinise the Intelligent Design movement. ID proposes that life is so complex it cannot have emerged without the guidance of an intelligent designer - it is seen as a religion-friendly alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. “It is going to be the role of the plaintiffs to argue that ID is a form of religious advocacy,” says Eugenie Scott of the US National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, which is advising the plaintiffs. “The defence will argue that ID is actually science and is valid....

A court case that begins Monday in Pennsylvania will be the first to determine whether it is legal to teach a controversial idea called intelligent design in public schools. Intelligent design, often referred to as ID, has been touted in recent years by a small group of proponents as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. ID proponents say evolution is flawed. ID asserts that a supernatural being intervened at some point in the creation of life on Earth. Scientists counter that evolution is a well-supported theory and that ID is not a verifiable theory at all and therefore has...

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...

Dover Area School District's federal trial began yesterday in Harrisburg with talk ranging from divine intervention and the Boston Red Sox to aliens and bacterial flagellum. After about 10 months of waiting, the court case against the district and its board opened in Middle District Judge John E. Jones III's courtroom with statements from lawyers and several hours of expert testimony from biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth Miller. On one side of the aisle, several plaintiffs packed themselves in wooden benches behind a row of attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Pepper Hamilton LLC and Americans United for...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - The second day of a trial over what students should be told about evolution and alternative views of life's origins veered briefly into a discussion of faith. Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, a witness for eight families suing the Dover Area School District for introducing the concept of "intelligent design," was asked by a school attorney whether faith and reason are compatible. "I believe not only that they are compatible but that they are complimentary," said Miller, who had earlier volunteered that he was a practicing Roman Catholic. Pressed on that point, Miller was asked why a...

Members of the national and international press gathered outside the federal courthouse in Harrisburg this morning for the start of a trial that could determine the fate of intelligent design in public school. The BBC, London Guardian and People magazine were among news agencies outside the courtroom, where the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover began at 9 a.m. Julian Borger, a Washington-based reporter for the Guardian, said the interest in the United Kingdom is in the American school system. He said people in the UK don't have the ability to vote on what is or isn't taught in school. "There...

On Sunday September 25th, the Washington Post published a story called "In Evolution Debate, Creationists Are Breaking New Ground." Out of all the potential stories about Christians out there -- murderous persecutions in China, enslavement of Christians in Africa, the role of Christians in the Katrina cleanup -- the Washington Post chose to write this one.Young Earth Creationists hold a very narrow construct of the Bible and claim that the earth is only 6,000 or so years old. I don't buy into that construct for the following scientifuc reasons: We have earthly evidence that contradict the idea of a 6,000-year...

When scientists announced last month they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome. Charles Darwin had deduced more than a century ago that chimps were among humans' closest cousins. But decoding chimpanzees' DNA allowed scientists to do more than just refine their estimates of how similar humans and chimps are. It let them put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests. If Darwin was right, for example, then...

A Pennsylvania school district's use of "intelligent design" in its high school biology curriculum goes on trial in federal court today in the nation's first legal challenge to the idea, which contends that evolutionary theory alone does not explain how life on Earth took shape. The lawsuit, brought by 11 parents in the Dover Area School District, attacks as unconstitutional the year-old policy of telling ninth-grade biology students that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution "is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence." School officials also recommend a book on intelligent design, or ID....

Charles Darwin, the 19th century geologist who wrote the treatise 'The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection' defined evolution as "descent with modification". Darwin hypothesized that all forms of life descended from a common ancestor, branching out over time into various unique life forms, due primarily to a process called natural selection. However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago, and virtually no transitional life forms have been discovered which suggest that they evolved from earlier forms. This sudden eruption of multiple, complex organisms is...

In 1993, the journalist Jonathan Rauch published a book called Kindly Inquisitors, in which he catalogued contemporary threats to the Enlightenment tradition of seeking truth through logical or empirical discourse. One of Rauch's points was that, while this (classical) liberal system for amassing knowledge appeared to be under attack from both the religious right and the multicultural left, in fact the two groups were making a version of the same argument: Mainstream science didn't accord their beliefs the respect they deserved, whether it was creation science on the one hand or feminist or Afro-centric science on the other. Rauch's book...

The brawl between evolutionists and religious neo-conservatives over how life began is coming down to the survival of the slickest. For about 150 years Charles Darwin's evolution theory has held sway. But a new American theory, intelligent design, is getting a lot of press as scientists and intellectuals rush to the barricades to dismiss intelligent design as little else than "creationism" rebadged. Already a DVD featuring American scientists claiming intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and life has become Australia's biggest-selling religious video and intelligent design is starting to permeate school courses. Next year, hundreds of...

The trial in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the first legal challenge to the constitutionality of teaching "intelligent design" in the public schools, is scheduled to begin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on September 26, 2005, and the media are already focusing attention on the case. As the York Dispatch (September 23, 2005) reports, journalists from The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and National Public Radio have already reserved space in the courtroom; Court TV sought but was denied permission to televise the trial. Paula Knudsen of the ACLU remarked, "It's the first time ["intelligent design"] has ever been in...

Theory's largest national supporter won't back district The Dover Area School District and its board will likely walk into a First Amendment court battle next week without the backing of the nation's largest supporter of intelligent design. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based nonprofit that describes itself as a "nonpartisan policy and research organization," recently issued a policy position against Dover in its upcoming court case. John West, associate director of Discovery's Center for Science & Culture, calls the Dover policy "misguided" and "likely to be politically divisive and hinder a fair and open discussion of the merits of intelligent design."...

Intelligent design? Not on this campus Talk of evolutionary challenge absent from Penn courses; most want to keep it that way By Trang Do September 21, 2005 Penn offers over 30 courses focused on evolution, and countless others cover the theory in some respect. What Penn does not offer, however, is a course exclusively covering intelligent design. As the movement to incorporate the religion-based explanation of life into classrooms across the country has gained momentum, Penn professors have been largely resistant to teaching the concept. The absence of intelligent design -- which makes the assertion that certain features of an...

So what would Charles Darwin have to say about the dust-up between today's evolutionists and intelligent designers? Probably nothing. [snip] Even after he became one of the most famous and controversial men of his time, he was always content to let surrogates argue his case. [snip] From his university days Darwin would have been familiar with the case for intelligent design. In 1802, nearly 30 years before the Beagle set sail, William Paley, the reigning theologian of his time, published "Natural Theology" in which he laid out his "Argument from Design." Paley contended that if a person discovered a pocket...

Buttars' pitch can't sway unanimous 'no' vote To borrow a line from Dorothy: We're not in Kansas anymore. Unlike the Kansas School Board, which earlier this summer approved allowing educators to teach theories in addition to evolution that explain life on Earth, the Utah Board of Education on Friday unanimously approved a position statement supporting the continued exclusive teaching of evolution in state classrooms. Only two people out of the dozens who attended Friday's meeting sided with Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, and his proposal to allow teaching "intelligent design" as a theory to explain the origins of life. Intelligent...

Cardinal Ratzinger's Thoughts on Evolution An Excerpt From "Truth and Tolerance" ROME, SEPT. 1, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn's July 7 editorial in the New York Times entitled "Finding Design in Nature" provoked a flurry of reactions, both supportive and critical. Requests have begun to arrive in Rome for Benedict XVI to make some sort of clarification on the Church's stand regarding evolution. The following text, delivered in 1999 as part of a lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Benedict XVI) and subsequently published in the 2004 book "Truth and Tolerance" (Ignatius), can give...

...he co-authored with theologian Jay W. Richards called "The Privileged Planet." The book claims that Earth is so unique, it must have been created by an "intelligent designer." One Iowa State professor, Hector Avalos, accused Gonzalez of having a hidden religious agenda...Gonzalez's academic archenemy at Iowa State is Hector Avalos, an associate professor of religious studies at Iowa State who is also the faculty adviser for the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society. "I didn't expect this level of vitriol," he says after hanging up. "This level of intense hostility, just knee-jerk emotional response from people...."