The latest general alternative to evolution in the US
is something known as "the theory of intelligent
design." It seems to be an approach that is more
respected than was the earlier "Creationist" approach. This
idea is certainly very far from the Torah truth, but
it represents an interesting effort to try to leave a
space for Divine influence in America's officially
secular education.
The Ohio Board of Education is in
a heated internal debate over whether to include it in the
official state science curriculum or not.
The theory of intelligent design disputes the idea underlying evolution,
that the astounding complexity of the earth's plants
and animals could have just happened through natural
selection, the force that Darwin suggested drives
evolution. An intelligent Designer must have gotten the
ball rolling, they contend. Some of them acknowledge
that the earth is billions of years old and they also
accept that organisms change over time, according to
commonly held principles of evolution.
In Ohio a majority of a school board committee favored
inserting intelligent design alongside evolution in the
state's new teaching standards. If the full 18-member state board
upholds it, it would be the first major victory for the
intelligent design movement, which has gained attention
in recent years even as creationists suffered setbacks.
Opponents of intelligent design view it as a variation
on the decades-old effort to force theism into the
public schools.
Proponents of intelligent design insist that science
taught in the schools should be supplemented with what
they call origins science, defined as the study of
intelligent causes that are empirically detectable in
nature. They are not against teaching about long-time
evolution.
John H. Calvert, a Kansas City lawyer who is co-founder
of the Intelligent Design Network, called on Ohio to
establish "a level playing field" by having science
teachers suggest in classes that "a mind or some form
of intelligence is necessary to produce life and its
diversity." Evolutionary science is elitist and
unfairly "inhibits theism," he said.
Supporters of intelligent design claim the support of
various academics and scientists, including Dr. Michael
J. Behe, a biology professor at Lehigh University in
Pennsylvania, who set out the theory in his book
Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution. He argued that various biochemical
structures in cells could not have been built step by
Darwinian step.
But critics say that testing, not credentials, must
ultimately verify any scientist's new claim.
