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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."...

Editor's Note: This article is the first in a special LiveScience series about the theory of evolution and a competing idea called intelligent design. TODAY: An overview of the increasingly heated exchange between scientists and the proponents of intelligent design. COMING FRIDAY : Proponents argue that intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory, but a close look at their arguments shows that it doesn't pass scientific muster. Science can sometimes be a devil's bargain: a discovery is made, some new aspect of nature is revealed, but the knowledge gained can cause mental anguish if it contradicts a deeply cherished belief...

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...

Most adult Sunday school classes don't raise eyebrows, but my church is planning to hold one that's sure to. It's called "Evolution for Christians," and it will be taught this winter by David Bush, a member of the church I lead, Fairfax Presbyterian. David is an articulate government retiree who has been interested in this topic for nearly two decades, teaches a class on theories of the origins of life every five years or so, and once again has really done his homework. His view is that science and religion answer two different sets of questions about creation, with science...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution. They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply. After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry." That encounter and others like it...

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...

It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? Such a modest proposal. Why not teach "both sides" and let the children decide for themselves? As President Bush said, "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." At first hearing, everything about the phrase "both sides" warms the hearts of educators like ourselves. One of us spent years as an Oxford tutor and it was his habit to choose controversial topics for the students' weekly essays. They were required to go to the library, read about both sides of an argument, give a...

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...

WASHINGTON - Americans are divided over whether humans and other living things evolved over time or have existed in their present form since the beginning of time, according to a new poll. People on both sides of that argument think students should hear about various theories, however. Nearly two-thirds of those in a Pew Research Center poll, 64 percent, say they believe "creationism" should be taught alongside "evolution" - a finding likely to spark more controversy about what is taught in the schools. That controversy could be related to the difficulty of measuring public sentiment about teaching evolution, creationism or...

...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...."

A major three-part series in The New York Times, running August 21-23, 2005, was devoted to the ongoing evolution/creationism struggle in the political, the scientific, and the religious sphere. Accompanying the series in addition were a William Safire "On Language" column investigating the etymology of "intelligent design" and "neo-creo" and a marvelous editorial column by Verlyn Klinkenborg on deep time and evolution. (In a further acknowledgement of the importance of the issue, the Times's website now has a special section devoted to its evolution coverage.) Overall, despite a number of minor errors, the series succeeded in portraying "intelligent design" as...