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	Following on Jonah's posting this from the Washington Post.

  Bush Remarks  On 'Intelligent Design' Theory Fuel Debate

  By Peter Baker and Peter Slevin

   President Bush invigorated proponents of teaching alternatives to
evolution in public schools with remarks saying that schoolchildren should
be taught about "intelligent design," a view of creation that challenges
established scientific thinking and promotes the idea that an unseen force
is behind the development of humanity.

  Although he said that curriculum decisions should be made by school
districts rather than the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper
reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he
believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as
competing theories.

  "Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand
what the debate is about," he said, according to an official transcript of
the session. Bush added: "Part of education is to expose people to
different schools of thought. . . . You're asking me whether or not people
ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."

  These comments drew sharp criticism yesterday from opponents of the
theory, who said there is no scientific evidence to support it and no
educational basis for teaching it.

  Much of the scientific establishment says  that intelligent design is not
a tested scientific theory but a cleverly marketed effort to introduce
religious -- especially Christian -- thinking to students. Opponents say
that church groups and other interest groups are pursuing political
channels instead of first building support through traditional scientific
review.

  The White House said yesterday that Bush's comments were in keeping with
positions dating to his Texas governorship, but aides say they could not
recall him addressing the issue before as president. His remarks heartened
conservatives who have been asking school boards and legislatures to teach
students that there are gaps in evolutionary theory and explain that life's
complexity is evidence of a guiding hand.

  "With the president endorsing it, at the very least it makes Americans who
have that position more respectable, for lack of a better phrase," said
Gary L. Bauer, a Christian conservative leader who ran for president
against Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries. "It's not some backwater
view. It's a view held by the majority of Americans."

  John G. West, an executive with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based
think tank supporting intelligent design, issued a written statement
welcoming Bush's remarks. "President Bush is to be commended for defending
free speech on evolution, and supporting the right of students to hear
about different scientific views about evolution," he said.

  Opponents of intelligent design, which a Kansas professor once called
"creationism in a cheap tuxedo," say there is no legitimate debate. They
see the case increasingly as a political battle that threatens to weaken
science teaching in a nation whose students already are lagging.

  "It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has
really taken over much of the Republican Party," said Rep. Barney Frank
(D-Mass.), a leading liberal lawmaker. Noting Bush's Ivy League education,
Frank said, "People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally
impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education."

  Bush's comments were "irresponsible," said Barry W. Lynn, executive
director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He said
the president, by suggesting that students hear two viewpoints, "doesn't
understand that one is a religious viewpoint and one is a scientific
viewpoint." Lynn said Bush showed a "low level of understanding of
science," adding that he worries that Bush's comments could be followed by
a directive to the Justice Department to support legal efforts to change
curricula.

  Bush gave no sign that he intended to wade that far into the debate. The
issue came up only when a reporter from the Knight Ridder news service
asked him about it; participants said the president did not seem especially
eager to be asked. "Very interesting question," he told the reporter
playfully.

  At a morning briefing yesterday, White House press secretary Scott
McClellan said  Bush was simply restating long-standing views. "He has said
that going back to his days as governor," McClellan said. "I think he also
said in those remarks that local school districts should make the decisions
about their curriculum. But it's long been his belief that students ought
to be exposed to different ideas, and so that's what he was reiterating
yesterday."

  In comments published last year in Science magazine, Bush said that the
federal government should not tell states or school boards what to teach
but that "scientific critiques of any theory should be a normal part of the
science curriculum."

  The president's latest remarks came less than two months after Cardinal
Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna and an influential Roman Catholic
theologian, said evolution as "an unguided, unplanned process of random
variation and natural selection" is not true.

  "Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the
overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science,"
Schonborn wrote in the New York Times. He said he wanted to correct the
idea that neo-Darwinism  is compatible with Christian faith.

  Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, warned this
year in a "Dear Colleagues" letter of "increasingly strident attempts to
limit the teaching of evolution."

  The most prominent debate is underway in Kansas, where the conservative
state board of education is expected to require the teaching of doubts
about evolution to public high school students. A challenge to the teaching
of intelligent design is scheduled for trial in Dover, Pa., while a federal
court in Georgia said textbook stickers questioning evolution were
unconstitutional.

  Slevin reported from Chicago.




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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/emailafriend?contentId=AR2005080201686&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle
-- 
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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