Growing challenge of Darwin's detractors

Evolutionary biologists in the US got a little early seasonal cheer in December with a detailed and comprehensive attack on the increasingly widespread notion of intelligent design. A Pennsylvania judge ruled that it could not be taught alongside Darwin’s theory of natural selection in biology classes. Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified, intelligent cause, the US district judge, John Jones, said. “The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for the intelligent design policy,” Jones wrote. The board’s attorneys had said members were seeking to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Intelligent-design proponents argue that it cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms. The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of creationism, which the courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools. The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement said Charles Darwin’s theory is ‘not a fact’, has inexplicable ‘gaps’, and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, Of Pandas and People, for more information. But the judgement amounted to a coruscating attack on the intelligent design case. “Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom,” the judge said. Unsurprisingly, proponents of intelligent design did not accept the judge’s ruling. A key part of their campaign has been to ‘teach the controversy’, flagging up the claims to be an alternative to the Darwinian view. They have exploited the expectation of