The evolution of a fight to the end

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

Hoping to avoid a bitter public showdown, defenders of evolutionary theory boycotted four days of hearings over the science curriculum in Kansas, where members of the state Board of Education critical of the standard theory are considering changes to give more weight to creationist ideas.

Advocates of a philosophy called “intelligent design” and critics of evolution joined flocks of reporters and cameras in Topeka, where the hearings ended Thursday.

But mainstream science organizations spurned invitations to participate, dismissing the hearings as an effort “to attack and undermine science,” in the view of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science. As a result, the only witnesses were advocates of intelligent design or critics of evolution.

Spreading across the nation
The hearings resembled a trial, as three school board members heard arguments from champions of both sides. The panelists — all three of them conservative Republicans who have questioned evolution — will report to the full school board, which is expected to approve new science standards next month.

Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka lawyer representing what he called mainstream science, was the only pro-Darwin voice during the hearings. At its close Thursday, he criticized the board members for abdicating their “responsibility to the children and the future of this state.”

Defenders of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection acknowledged that their boycott left opponents of evolution otherwise unchallenged, but they said they hoped to defuse the publicity that a media-saturated argument over science and the Bible could stir up.

Nonetheless, a showdown is inevitable. Efforts to compel schools to teach or, at least, give equal time to the purported errors of evolution are under way in nearly two dozen states, led by two groups of activists united by their belief in a supreme being who set history in motion.

One group is made up of religious conservatives who espouse the traditional biblical account in which God created the world in six days. The Supreme Court, however, barred the teaching of creationism in a 1987 decision striking down a Louisiana law that said evolution could be taught only if “creation science” was also taught. So today, the movement has shifted to the campaign by intellectual thinkers, some of them scientists, who argue that life on the planet is too complex to have come about without some sort of guiding intelligence.

That supposition is called “intelligent design.” Its leaders say that as a matter of science their principles are not religious. But mainstream scientists have labeled them "creationism lite," and Christian activists have latched onto them as an alternative stick with which to whack Darwin.

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