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A new Gallup survey asks the question: Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings: Human beings have evolved over millions of years from other forms of life and God guided this process; human beings have evolved over millions of years from other forms of life, but God had no part in this process, or God created human beings in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it? And the poll results are: Evolved, God guided: 31% Evolved, God had no part: 12% God created exactly as Bible...

TAMPA - When the Pinellas County school district's science supervisor, Bob Orlopp, met with his science teachers before the school year began, he made sure they had one thing clear: Intelligent design is not science. Three days later, on Aug. 1, President Bush endorsed intelligent design -- the view that life is too complex to have happened by chance -- as a supplement to evolution that should be taught in school.

Why must intelligent design be stopped? Because this—God forbid—could be the moment when the theocratization of America makes a real advance. Will the Yankees win the pennant and the World Series? Don’t know, don’t really much care. It’s the same with religion: I just don’t get it. There may be a God or—I was raised Unitarian—an oversoul or divine oneness of creation, but I have no conviction one way or the other, nor any itch to shuck off my uncertainty in favor of either atheism or firm belief. I realize I’m a freak, entirely out of step with the mainstream....

In the Harrisburg federal courtroom, he sits in a pew behind the plaintiffs. At a different time in his life, he might have been on the opposite side of the courtroom, behind the people who want intelligent design in Dover Area High School science classes. That was back when he tithed money to creationists and believed Jews were going to hell. Now, he wears a tie depicting man evolving from his apelike ancestors. Dr. Burt Humburg shakes his head. An internal medicine resident at Penn State’s College of Medicine in Hershey, he talks about his personal evolution. And he talks...

It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It doesn't matter if you think it's true or not. Intelligent Design theory is destined to supplant Darwinism as the primary scientific explanation for the origin of human life. ID will be taught in public schools as a matter of course. It will happen in our lifetime. It's happening right now, actually. Here's why: 1) ID will win because it's a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years. I've said it...

A group of Nobel Prize winners should have done more homework before criticizing proposed science standards in Kansas, advocates of the guidelines said in a letter Thursday. Intelligent design advocates pushing new standards, which would expose students to more criticism of evolution, say the laureates' complaints are an attempt to suppress debate on the issue. The letter was signed by Bill Harris, a professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Greg Lassey, a former middle school science teacher, who helped draft the disputed language. "We all want good standards," the letter said. "However, demeaning rhetoric that does...

Professor focused on intelligent design as theology, not science, at Dover trial Friday. HARRISBURG — If there is a God, then he could have made the monkey and the human with similar genetic material. In the fifth day of Dover Area School District’s trial over intelligent design, John Haught, a Georgetown University theology professor, agreed that was true. So, the idea that “we came from some monkey or ape is conjecture at this point?” Dover’s lead attorney Richard Thompson asked Haught under cross-examination. Haught disagreed. In a First Amendment battle in U.S. Middle District Court in Harrisburg, the Dover district...

It's amazing that these Darwinian Fundamentalists claim they're for science only to turn around and try to destroy any contrary theories or evidence. They're really getting desperate, the ID movement really has them rattled. **** September 30, 2005 It’s happening again: another scientist, another academic institution, another attempt to stifle freedom of thought. The “Darwinist inquisition,” as a Discovery Institute press release calls it, is as predictable as it is relentless. This time the setting is Iowa State University. One hundred twenty professors there have signed a statement denouncing the study of intelligent design and calling on all faculty members...

Oral arguments began this week on a lawsuit by 11 parents in Dover, Pa., seeking to reverse the local school board’s decision to teach “intelligent design” in the system’s biology classes. The school board argues that its decision is an issue of “academic freedom.” But the 11 parents reply that the “intelligent design” curriculum is a strategy by the Christian right to repackage “creationism” in order to smuggle it into the public schools in violation of the First Amendment requirement for separation of church and state. The trial in a Harrisburg, Pa., court is being called “Scopes II,” referring to...

Supporters of intelligent design argue the concept is not religious because the designer is never identified. But this morning, in the third day of testimony in a federal court case challenging the Dover school district’s inclusion of intelligent design in biology class, an expert for the plaintiffs pointed to examples where its supporters have identified the designer, and the designer is God. Robert Pennock, a Michigan State University professor of the philosophy of science, pointed to a reproduction shown in court of writing by Phillip Johnson, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley and author of books including “Darwin...

A national survey of 1,472 physicians indicates more than half -- 63 percent -- believe the theory of evolution over that of intelligent design. The responses were analyzed according to religious affiliation. When asked whether they agree more with intelligent design or evolution, 88 percent of Jewish doctors and 60 percent of Roman Catholic physicians said they agree more with evolution, while 54 percent of Protestant doctors agreed more with intelligent design. When asked whether intelligent design has legitimacy as science, 83 percent of Jewish doctors and 51 percent of Catholic doctors said they believe intelligent design is simply "a...

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The concept of "intelligent design" is a form of creationism and is not based on scientific method, a professor testified Wednesday in a trial over whether the idea should be taught in public schools. Robert T. Pennock, a professor of science and philosophy at Michigan State University, testified on behalf of families who sued the Dover Area School District. He said supporters of intelligent design don't offer evidence to support their idea. "As scientists go about their business, they follow a method," Pennock said. "Intelligent design wants to reject that and so it doesn't really fall...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A former physics teacher testified that his rural school board ignored faculty protests before deciding to introduce the theory of "intelligent design" to high school students. "I saw a district in which teachers were not respected for their professional expertise," Bryan Rehm, a former teacher at Dover High School, said Tuesday. Rehm, who now teaches in another district, is a plaintiff in the nation's first trial over whether public schools can teach "intelligent design." Eight Dover families are trying to have the controversial theory removed from the curriculum, arguing that it violates the constitutional separation of church...

(snip) But in order to attract converts and win over critics, a new scientific theory must be enticing. It must offer something that its competitors lack. That something may be simplicity (snip). Or it could be sheer explanatory power, which was what allowed evolution to become a widely accepted theory with no serious detractors among reputable scientists. So what does ID offer? What can it explain that evolution can't? (snip) Irreducible Complexity (snip) Darwin himself admitted that if an example of irreducible complexity were ever found, his theory of natural selection would crumble. "If it could be demonstrated that any...

At the heart of the argument over teaching evolution in the classroom is the claim that some scientists, not just religious believers, support the concept of "intelligent design." Advocates of intelligent design argue that living things are too complex to be explained by natural forces alone. Therefore, they say, only a higher power - God or an unnamed "designer" - could create life and empower it to evolve into the myriad species of organisms on Earth today. The vast majority of working scientists contend that biological evolution is an established fact supported by overwhelming evidence. They say that evolution's mechanism...

The opening shots were fired on Monday in the first court trial to scrutinise the Intelligent Design movement. ID proposes that life is so complex it cannot have emerged without the guidance of an intelligent designer - it is seen as a religion-friendly alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. “It is going to be the role of the plaintiffs to argue that ID is a form of religious advocacy,” says Eugenie Scott of the US National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, which is advising the plaintiffs. “The defence will argue that ID is actually science and is valid....

A court case that begins Monday in Pennsylvania will be the first to determine whether it is legal to teach a controversial idea called intelligent design in public schools. Intelligent design, often referred to as ID, has been touted in recent years by a small group of proponents as an alternative to Darwin's theory of evolution. ID proponents say evolution is flawed. ID asserts that a supernatural being intervened at some point in the creation of life on Earth. Scientists counter that evolution is a well-supported theory and that ID is not a verifiable theory at all and therefore has...

Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, the first witness called Monday by lawyers suing the Dover Area School District for exposing its students to the controversial theory, sprinkled his testimony with references to DNA, red blood cells and viruses, and he occasionally referred to complex charts on a projection screen.Even U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III was a little overwhelmed."I guess I should say, 'Class dismissed,'" Jones mused before recessing for lunch.Dover is believed to be the nation's first school system to mandate students be exposed to the intelligent design concept. Its policy requires school administrators to read a brief...

Dover Area School District's federal trial began yesterday in Harrisburg with talk ranging from divine intervention and the Boston Red Sox to aliens and bacterial flagellum. After about 10 months of waiting, the court case against the district and its board opened in Middle District Judge John E. Jones III's courtroom with statements from lawyers and several hours of expert testimony from biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth Miller. On one side of the aisle, several plaintiffs packed themselves in wooden benches behind a row of attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Pepper Hamilton LLC and Americans United for...

HARRISBURG, Pa. - The second day of a trial over what students should be told about evolution and alternative views of life's origins veered briefly into a discussion of faith. Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, a witness for eight families suing the Dover Area School District for introducing the concept of "intelligent design," was asked by a school attorney whether faith and reason are compatible. "I believe not only that they are compatible but that they are complimentary," said Miller, who had earlier volunteered that he was a practicing Roman Catholic. Pressed on that point, Miller was asked why a...