EVOLUTION is once more under attack in Kansas schools from what pro-science groups have branded a creationist 鈥渟how trial鈥�.
Six conservative Christians on the state鈥檚 10-member board of education want state school standards to admit alternatives to evolution. This week public hearings in Topeka are being concluded, at which advocates of 鈥渋ntelligent design鈥� argued that life is too complex to have arisen entirely by natural processes, and so requires a designer.
The US prohibits teaching certain religions in state schools, but supporters of intelligent design claim it is science. Even so, a witness in Topeka admitted that the Judaeo-Christian God is the intelligent designer. And lawyer John Calvert for the witnesses charged that science is itself 鈥渆ndorsing an ideology鈥� 鈥� atheism.
Advertisement
The Kansas Academy of Science and other pro-science groups boycotted what they called 鈥渟how-trial hearings, whose purpose is to make it appear that intelligent-design creationism and the well-established science of evolution are on equal footing.鈥� Pedro Irigonegaray, a lawyer for scientists at the hearings, says, 鈥淲e should not allow the minority to hijack education and send it back to the 16th century.鈥�
In 1999 the Kansas board of education adopted standards for schools that called for children to be taught alternatives to evolution. These were reversed in 2001 after a new board was elected.
