Darwin vs God case opens in US

Correspondents in Harrisburg
September 28, 2005
A COURT case that has gripped the US, pitting Darwin's theory of evolution against the idea that the universe was created by "intelligent design", opened in Pennsylvania yesterday with the world watching.

Eighty years after the so-called Scopes "Monkey" Trial in Tennessee, which set proponents of evolutionary theory against adherents of the biblical account of creation, this trial is being dubbed "Scopes II".

It puts Charles Darwin's theory that life evolves through natural selection and random mutation up against intelligent design, which holds that certain features of life, unexplained by evolution, are too complex to have developed through an undirected process and are best attributed to an unnamed and unseen intelligent agent.

The non-jury trial, expected to last about five weeks, is being heard by federal court judge John Jones III, who was nominated in 2002 by US President George W. Bush.

Judge Jones presided over a courtroom yesterday where the 47 credentialed members of the media, including many foreign correspondents, far outnumbered the 17 members of the public who sought admission, according to the court clerk.

The case has been brought by 11 parents of the Dover Area School District, which makes reference to intelligent design in its ninth-grade biology curriculum.

Represented by a team of lawyers led by the American Civil Liberties Union, the parents maintain that the school board is violating the constitutional separation of church and state. They argue that the statement read to the biology students denigrates the theory of evolution and introduces intelligent design as an alternative explanation of the origin of life.

"Intelligent design isn't science. It's old theology," said Eric Rothschild, lawyer for the 11 parents.

"It's a clever tactical repackaging of creationism," he said, adding that the US Supreme Court outlawed teaching creationism in public schools in 1987.

Pat Gillen, a lawyer for the Dover school district, said intelligent design was anchored in science and was not creationism in disguise. He also rejected the accusation that it was unconstitutional to teach the theory to students.

"They (the Dover students) are merely made aware of the existence of another theory," Mr Gillen said. Teaching intelligent design "helps students grasp the controversy that surrounds science".

Devoid of any reference to the Bible or the divine, intelligent design so far has skirted the constitutional ban on advancing religious beliefs in public school classrooms.

Dover, a primarily rural school district of 3700 students in central Pennsylvania, may be the first district in the country to require mention of intelligent design in its schools, but it is hardly the only place to entertain the idea.

More than two dozen state and local authorities have sought to include intelligent design in public school curriculums over the past year, according to the National Centre for Science Education, a California-based, non-profit group devoted to defending the teaching of evolution in public schools.

A CBS poll in November last year found 65 per cent of Americans favoured teaching creationism with evolution while 37 per cent wanted creationism taught instead of evolution. The poll found that 55 per cent of respondents believed God created humans in their present form.

Agencies

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Tennessee v John Scopes



The Monkey Trial

In 1925, John Scopes, a high-school teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution and put on trial. Learn more about the highly













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