Free Republic

AUSTIN — The verdict from Texas scientists is nearly unanimous: 98 percent favor the unadulterated teaching of evolution in public school classrooms, according to a report released Monday as the State Board of Education prepares to weigh in on the controversy. A vast majority of the scientists say students would be harmed if the state requires the teaching of the "weaknesses" of evolution, according to the survey conducted for the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, an organization that works on issues involving religious freedom, civil liberties and public education.

One in three teachers believes schoolchildren should be taught that creationism is just as valid as evolution, according to a survey. The poll also disclosed that pupils in almost a third of schools already learn about the controversial divine explanation of the universe, with even science teachers thinking it has a place in classrooms. Almost all of those questioned by Teachers TV, a satellite television channel, agreed that children with strong religious beliefs would feel excluded from science lessons if their views were ignored. The findings support the views of the Rev Professor Michael Reiss, who lost his job as...

Humans show big DNA differences DNA comparisons: Gains (green), losses (red), the same (yellow) Scientists have shown that our genetic code varies between individuals far more than was previously thought. A UK-led team made a detailed analysis of the DNA found in 270 people and identified vast stretches in their codes to be duplicated or even missing. A great many of these variations are in areas of the genome that would not damage our health, Matthew Hurles and colleagues told the journal Nature. But others are - and can be shown to play a role in a number of disorders....

Four months ago, when evolution and "intelligent design" (ID) squared off in Kansas, I defended ID as a more evolved version of creationism. ID posits that complex systems in nature must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The crucial step forward is ID's concession that "observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building" not scriptural authority define science. Having acknowledged that standard, advocates of ID must now demonstrate how hypotheses based on it can be tested by experiment or observation. Otherwise, ID isn't science. This week, ID is on trial again in Pennsylvania. And so far, its...

Dear Colleagues: I write to alert you to efforts by the National Academies to confront the increasing challenges to the teaching of evolution in public schools; your help may be needed in your state soon. On February 7, 2005, Michael Behe, a founder and leading proponent of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, published a long Op-Ed in the New York Times in response to an editorial that the Times had released the previous week. In that letter, Dr. Behe claimed that some words I wrote support his view that scientific explanations for the evolution of life on the Earth need...

In a poll released last week, two-thirds of Americans said they wanted to see creationism taught to public-school science pupils alongside evolution. Thirty-seven percent said they wanted to see creationism taught instead of evolution. So why shouldn't majority rule? That's democracy, right? Wrong. Science isn't a matter of votes -- or beliefs. It's a system of verifiable facts, an approach that must be preserved and fought for if American pupils are going to get the kind of education they need to complete in an increasingly global techno-economy. Unfortunately, the debate over evolution and creationism is back, with a spiffy new...