A first-of-its kind case in the national debate about teaching "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in public schools is set for trial, starting today, in a federal courthouse in Pennyslvania.
Parents from Dover, a town 100 miles west of Philadelphia, will challenge a local school board order introducing intelligent design into high school biology courses. Parents charge that the board is putting religion into the classroom in violation of the U. S. Constitution.
Similar conflicts have been flaring around the country, as fundamentalist believers wage a new battle against Charles Darwin. President Bush even weighed in on the national debate a few weeks ago, suggesting that schools should teach both topics, "so people can understand what the debate is about."
The debate is about perhaps the longest and most serious conflict in modern times between science and religion. The Dover case comes almost exactly 85 years after the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee first tested the legality of teaching evolution.
Make no mistake. Intelligent design is old-time creationism given a new name. Living things, it maintains, are far too complex to have arisen through natural selection and other tools of evolution. That demands the biblical version of the origin of the universe and life.
Scientists can roil, scoff, and point to massive amounts of evidence that the first true humans appeared at least 1.2 million years ago. Much of the public believes otherwise. Opinion polls consistently show that about half of the American population rejects evolution. More than half believe that God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years.The debate also is about a fundamental failure of the scientific community to accept the magnitude of public uneasiness with evolution, and respond effectively.
What response is needed? Education, of course, to better inform the public about a bedrock, thoroughly proven concept in science. Ironically, the debate itself is distracting school boards from badly needed efforts to improve science teaching.
Research is essential to resolve minor uncertainties about evolution that creationists exploit with such skill. Science should close those gaps, however small or seemingly unimportant.
Scientists also must get out more into their own communities, and speak up on critical issues like this. Most importantly, they must seek positions on school boards that now fall into the hands of individuals who exploit public misunderstanding of science to advance their own personal religious agendas.
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