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 From the National Center for Science Education 
(http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2005/XX/247_royal_society_president_slams__11_30_2005.asp)

Royal Society President slams "intelligent design"

	Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society of 
London, criticized "intelligent design" -- which he described as a 
"disguised variant" of creationism -- in the course of his fifth and 
final anniversary address to the Society on November 30, 2005. His 
address was webcast and also posted in PDF form on the Royal 
Society's website. In the published version of his address, he wrote 
(pp. 21-22, notes omitted):

	Today, however, fundamentalist forces are again on the march, 
West and East. Surveying this		phenomenon, Debora MacKenzie 
has suggested that -- in remarkably similar ways across countries and 
cultures -- many people are scandalised by "pluralism and tolerance 
of other faiths, non-traditional gender roles and sexual behaviour, 
reliance on human reason rather than divine revelation, and 
democracy, which grants power to people rather than God." She adds 
that in the US evangelical Christians have successfully fostered a 
belief that science is anti-religious, and that a balance must be 
restored, citing a survey which found 37% of Americans (many of them 
not evangelicals) wanted Creationism taught in schools. 
Fundamentalist Islam offers a similar threat to science according to 
Ziauddin Sardar, who notes that a rise in literalist religious 
thinking in the Islamic world in the 1990s seriously damaged science 
there, seeing the Koran as the font of all knowledge.

	In the US, the aim of a growing network of fundamentalist 
foundations and lobby groups reaches well beyond "equal time" for 
creationism, or its disguised variant "intelligent design", in the 
science classroom. Rather, the ultimate aim is the overthrow of 
"scientific materialism", in all its manifestations. One major 
planning document from the movement's Discovery Institute tells us 
that "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the 
materialist world view, and to replace it with a science consonant 
with Christian and theistic convictions". George Gilder, a senior 
fellow at the Discovery Institute, has indicated that this new, 
faith-based science will rid us of the "chimeras of popular science", 
which turn out to be ideas such as global warming, pollution 
problems, and ozone depletion.

	Lord May has won a number of international awards, including 
the 1996 Crafoord Prize for "pioneering ecological research in 
theoretical analysis of the dynamics of populations, communities and 
ecosystems". Between 1995 and 2000 he was Chief Scientific Adviser to 
the UK Government and Head of the Office of Science and Technology. 
He became a member of the House of Lords in 2001 and was appointed to 
be a member of the Order of Merit in 2002. Founded in the 1660s, the 
Royal Society is one of the most prestigious scientific societies in 
the world.
-- 
Martin Weiss, Ph.D
Vice President, Science
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111 th Street
Corona, New York 11368
718 699 0005 x 356

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