ID text: creationism wrapped in a new book cover

During her testimony in the Federal lawsuit about the Dover school board's decision to require ID references in biology classes teaching evolution, Philosophy Professor Barbara Forrest confirmed that ID is just creationism retitled as a stealth method of taking US science education back to the dark ages. Forrest, who was involved in the review of early drafts of the texbook that would become the ID centered science fiction Of Panda's and People, testified that the evolution of the text for the book originally titled Biology and Creation included replacing use of the term creationism with the words intelligent design in the final product.

She said her conclusion is that creationism and intelligent design "are interchangeable, that they are virtually synonymous."

[snip]

The book, published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics, was titled Biology and Creation in a 1986 draft. But its authors, Dean Kenyon and Perceval Davis, shifted to intelligent design after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1987 banned the teaching of creationism in public schools, Forrest said. [Inky]

The ID folkies had filed a losing motion to prevent Forrest from testifying on the grounds that she is not a scientist but the judge presiding over the case allowed her testimony calling her a "unique hybrid" expert. Her involvement of reviewing the early drafts of the text book when an open attempt at infusing religion into public school education turned into a clandestine one allows her to provide a unique first hand report of the genesis of the ID movement.

Pam notes the Discovery Institute has found 85 scientists to sign a friend-of-court brief supporting the school district stating, in part, they agree that "protecting the freedom to pursue scientific evidence for intelligent design stimulates the advance of scientific knowledge." They seem to forget that nobody is fighting against scientific research to support the ID theory, the fight is against using public school science classes as a petri dish in which to foster a belief in the theory before proponents supply legitimate & testable scientific research with evidence supporting hypothesis. We didn't start teaching Linus Pauling's embarassing triple helix theory in 1953, we shouldn't teach ID now. To paraphrase Discovery Institute senior fellow David DeWolf: this should be resolved in the laboratory, not the [public school] classroom.

Tags:evolution; Intelligent Design; Religion; fundamentalism; christianity

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