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Two in one.

1) Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Holiday Lectures 2005 are on 
Evolution. There are four lectures available on the web. 
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/lectures/. You can order a DVD as 
well.

2) Intelligent Design meeting its Maker?

Perhaps at an intellectual level but we still have the problem of the 
public's lack of understanding of evolution. None of the museum 
programs are/were  designed to counter the arguments of intelligent 
design but to inform the public of the science involved. That it may 
disappear from scholarly and or school board arguments is good but 
what about the public's perception and their support for evolution as 
a science that they and their children have to understand. Lets not 
be lulled by this; evolution is still an important issue.

Martin


December 4, 2005
Ideas & Trends
Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
TO read the headlines, intelligent design as a challenge to evolution 
seems to be building momentum.
In Kansas last month, the board of education voted that students 
should be exposed to critiques of evolution like intelligent design. 
At a trial of the Dover, Pa., school board that ended last month, two 
of the movement's leading academics presented their ideas to a 
courtroom filled with spectators and reporters from around the world. 
President Bush endorsed teaching "both sides" of the debate - a 
position that polls show is popular. And Pope Benedict XVI weighed in 
recently, declaring the universe an "intelligent project."
Intelligent design posits that the complexity of biological life is 
itself evidence of a higher being at work. As a political cause, the 
idea has gained currency, and for good reason. The movement was 
intended to be a "big tent" that would attract everyone from biblical 
creationists who regard the Book of Genesis as literal truth to 
academics who believe that secular universities are hostile to faith. 
The slogan, "Teach the controversy," has simple appeal in a democracy.
Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of 
inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. 
It has gained little support among the academics who should have been 
its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the 
case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement's 
credibility.
On college campuses, the movement's theorists are academic pariahs, 
publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have 
published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to 
reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few 
grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they 
asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.
"They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice 
president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was 
skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were 
initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.
"From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the 
intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of 
scientific review," he said.
While intelligent design has hit obstacles among scientists, it has 
also failed to find a warm embrace at many evangelical Christian 
colleges. Even at conservative schools, scholars and theologians who 
were initially excited about intelligent design say they have come to 
find its arguments unconvincing. They, too, have been greatly swayed 
by the scientists at their own institutions and elsewhere who have 
examined intelligent design and found it insufficiently substantiated 
in comparison to evolution.
"It can function as one of those ambiguous signs in the world that 
point to an intelligent creator and help support the faith of the 
faithful, but it just doesn't have the compelling or explanatory 
power to have much of an impact on the academy," said Frank D. 
Macchia, a professor of Christian theology at Vanguard University, in 
Costa Mesa, Calif., which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, 
the nation's largest Pentecostal denomination.
At Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical university in Illinois, 
intelligent design surfaces in the curriculum only as part of an 
interdisciplinary elective on the origins of life, in which students 
study evolution and competing theories from theological, scientific 
and historical perspectives, according to a college spokesperson.
The only university where intelligent design has gained a major 
institutional foothold is a seminary. Southern Baptist Theological 
Seminary in Louisville, Ky., created a Center for Science and 
Theology for William A. Dembski, a leading proponent of intelligent 
design, after he left Baylor, a Baptist university in Texas, amid 
protests by faculty members opposed to teaching it.
Intelligent design and Mr. Dembski, a philosopher and mathematician, 
should have been a good fit for Baylor, which says its mission is 
"advancing the frontiers of knowledge while cultivating a Christian 
world view." But Baylor, like many evangelical universities, has many 
scholars who see no contradiction in believing in God and evolution.
Derek Davis, director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State 
Studies at Baylor, said: "I teach at the largest Baptist university 
in the world. I'm a religious person. And my basic perspective is 
intelligent design doesn't belong in science class."
Mr. Davis noted that the advocates of intelligent design claim they 
are not talking about God or religion. "But they are, and everybody 
knows they are," Mr. Davis said. "I just think we ought to quit 
playing games. It's a religious worldview that's being advanced."
John G. West, a political scientist and senior fellow at the 
Discovery Institute, the main organization supporting intelligent 
design, said the skepticism and outright antagonism are evidence that 
the scientific "fundamentalists" are threatened by its arguments.
"This is natural anytime you have a new controversial idea," Mr. West 
said. "The first stage is people ignore you. Then, when they can't 
ignore you, comes the hysteria. Then the idea that was so radical 
becomes accepted. I'd say we're in the hysteria phase."
In the Dover trial, where intelligent design finally got its day in 
court, the movement faces perhaps the greatest potential for a 
serious setback.
The case is the first to test whether intelligent design can be 
taught in a public school, or whether teaching it is unconstitutional 
because it advances a particular religious belief. The Dover board 
voted last year to read students a short statement at the start of 
ninth-grade biology class saying that evolution is a flawed theory 
and intelligent design is an alternative they should study further.
If the judge in the Dover case rules against intelligent design, the 
decision would be likely to dissuade other school boards from 
incorporating it into their curriculums. School boards might already 
be wary because of a simple political fact: eight of the school-board 
members in Dover who supported intelligent design were voted out of 
office in elections last month and replaced by a slate of opponents.
Advocates of intelligent design perceived the risk as so great that 
the Discovery Institute said it had tried to dissuade the school 
board in Dover from going ahead and taking a stand in favor of 
intelligent design. The institute opposed the Dover board's action, 
it said, because it "politicized" what should be a scientific issue.
Now, with a decision due in four or five weeks, design proponents 
like Mr. West of Discovery said the Dover trial was a "sideshow" - 
one that will have little bearing on the controversy.
"The future of intelligent design, as far as I'm concerned, has very 
little to do with the outcome of the Dover case," Mr. West said. "The 
future of intelligent design is tied up with academic endeavors. It 
rises or falls on the science."

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