[Mb-civic] Pa. Case Is Newest Round in Evolution Debate - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Pa. Case Is Newest Round in Evolution Debate
'Intelligent Design' Teaching Challenged

By Michael Powell
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 27, 2005; Page A03

HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 26 -- New barrages sounded in the evolution war 
Monday as lawyers for a group of parents challenged the teaching of 
"intelligent design" as nothing more than an old argument for God's hand 
wrapped in fancy new cloth.

"This clever tactical repackaging of creationism does not merit 
consideration," Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania 
American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer for the parents, told U.S. 
District Judge John E. Jones in opening arguments. "Intelligent design 
admits that it is not science unless science is redefined to include the 
supernatural."

This is, he added, "a 21st-century version of creationism."

Eleven parents from Dover, in central Pennsylvania, are seeking to block 
their school board from requiring that high school biology teachers read 
a four-paragraph statement to students that casts doubt on Darwin's 
theory of evolution. This mandatory statement notes that intelligent 
design offers an alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life 
-- namely, that life in all of its complexity could not have arisen 
without the help of an intelligent hand.

The foremost advocates of intelligent design are silent on whether that 
intelligent hand belongs to God or some other intelligent force, even 
including a space alien. The school board, represented by the Thomas 
More Law Center, a conservative, religiously grounded nonprofit firm, 
took the position that the case was about freedom of speech.

"There is in fact a controversy over Darwin's theory," Richard Thompson, 
chief counsel for the law center, said afterward during an impromptu 
news conference on the courthouse steps. "Clearly both theories have 
religious implications. But this is not about God."

Last year, however, Dover school board members -- who voted 6 to 3 for 
the new policy -- made it clear that they believed that the origin of 
life was guided by a heavenly hand. Several of them suggested that their 
views on evolution are far closer to Young Earth Creationism, which 
holds that God created the world 6,000 years ago and that Noah's flood 
covered Earth, than to intelligent design.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/26/AR2005092600817.html?nav=hcmodule
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