Intelligent Design Heads to Court as US continues Creation-Evolution Debate

It is being called the most important legal situation involving creation and evolution in the last 18 years in America. On Monday, a Pennsylvania court will hear opening arguments between a school district and parents who object to “intelligent design” theory being proposed by the district as an alternative to evolution.
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In October of 2004, the Dover Area School district instituted a policy that ordered science teachers to point out in a brief statement before a ninth grade biology class begins, that unexplained “gaps” exist in evolution theory, and refers students to a book on intelligent design theory.

“The fact that intelligent design may be harmonious with some religious beliefs does not make discussing the theory alongside evolution unconstitutional,” said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Centre, the Christian legal group defending the district.

Intelligent design theory proposes that some aspects of nature are so complex that they could not have come about by chance, but must have been the product of an intelligent designer, not necessarily God.

“This will be the first legal challenge to intelligent design, and we’ll see whether they have been able to mask the creationist underpinnings and basic orientation of intelligent design,” said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the non-profit National Centre for Science Education (NCSE), according to MSNBC.

The NCSE opposes challenges to evolution. Scott says the case “is probably the most important legal situation of creation and evolution in the last 18 years, and “will have quite a significant impact on what happens in American public school education.”

The Supreme Court decision in the 1987 case of Aguillards v. Edwards held that the teaching of creationism in public schools is unconstitutional.

The defendants in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case say that intelligent design is "an inherently religious argument or assertion that falls outside the realm of science,” and thus, a violation of the First Amendment, Establishment clause.

|QUOTE|As evidence of their claim, the defendants point to the book suggested for students, called "Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origin." The book contains states that "life itself owes its origin to a master intellect" and that "new organisms arise from a blueprint, a plan, a pattern, devised by an intelligent agent."

The defendants seek that the district policy be declared unconstitutional, that the proposed books be removed, and that damages for violating their constitutional rights and lawyers' fees be awarded.

Scientist Defends Basis for Intelligent Design

Leading proponents of intelligent design argue that the theory is scientific but do not discount that it leaves the door open to belief in God.

In a 1996 New York Times opinion piece, Michael J. Behe – associate professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and author of bestselling intelligent design books – expressed that evolution is not sufficient to explain the origin of life.

“I believe that Darwin's mechanism for evolution doesn't explain much of what is seen under a microscope. Cells are simply too complex to have evolved randomly; intelligence was required to produce them.”

In one of his most cited examples he notes that the flagellum of a bacterium, a whip-like tail that propels the cell forward could not have evolved on its own; that the complexity of the system used is so great that there must have been an intelligent designer behind its creation.

Thompson of the Thomas More Law Centre takes that approach in his defence of Intelligent Design.

“Credible scientists are looking at the same observable facts and concluding that complex biological systems are best explained by intelligent design, not undirected chance,” he said in a statement.

Discovery Institute, prominent think tank for intelligent design, advocates discussion about the “strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinian and chemical evolutionary theories,” according to Dr. John West, an Associate Director at the Discovery Institute’s Centre for Science and Culture.

However, he adds that he would oppose requiring teachers to teach intelligent design in schools, saying it politicises the theory and prevents discussion of its merits within the scientific community.






Francis Helguero
Christian Today Correspondent