I mean, since there are other viewpoints on how God created mankind.
Anyway…
Evolution, 'intelligent design' share deskspace
Pa. school board is presenting another challenge for evolution
By Michael Powell
The Washington Post
Updated: 6:22 a.m. ET Dec. 26, 2004
DOVER, Pa. - "God or Darwin?"
Lark Myers, a blond, 45-year-old gift shop owner, frames the question and answers it. "I definitely would prefer to believe that God created me than that I'm 50th cousin to a silverback ape," she said. [P6: Neither belief makes you more or less human. Neither belief changes your nature or the challenges you must respond to in life.]"What's wrong with wanting our children to hear about all the holes in the theory of evolution?"
[P6: Nothing. It's just that science class is the wrong place to do it.]
Charles Darwin, squeeze over. The school board in this small town in central Pennsylvania has voted to make the theory of evolution share a seat with another theory: God probably designed us.
If it survives a legal test, this school district of about 2,800 students could become the first in the nation to require that high school science teachers at least mention the "intelligent design" theory. This theory holds that human biology and evolution is so complex as to require the creative hand of an intelligent force.
"The school board has taken the measured step of making students aware that there are other viewpoints on the evolution of species," said Richard Thompson, of the Thomas More Law Center, which represents the board and describes its overall mission as defending "the religious freedom of Christians." [P6: By his actions it seems "the religious freedom of Christians" requires the masking of any other faith ("faith" being "any systemic explanation for events that doesn't immediately validate his theology).]
Board members have been less guarded, and their comments go well beyond intelligent design theory. William Buckingham, the board's curriculum chairman, explained at a meeting last June that Jesus died on the cross and "someone has to take a stand" for him. Other board members say they believe that God created Earth and mankind sometime in the past ten thousand years or so.
"If the Bible is right, God created us," said John Rowand, an Assemblies of God pastor and a newly appointed school board member. "If God did it, it's history and it's also science."
This strikes some parents and teachers, not to mention most evolutionary biologists, as loopy science. Eleven parents have joined the American Civil Liberties Union and filed suit in federal court in Harrisburg seeking to block mention of intelligent design in high school biology, arguing it is religious belief dressed in the cloth of science.
"It's not science; it's a theocratic idea," Bryan Rehm, a former science teacher in Dover and a father of four. "We don't have enough time for science in the classroom as it is — this is just inappropriate."
