Mind the Gaps - Intelligent design as an answer to all life's great conundrums. By Dahlia Lithwick

Mind the Gaps - Intelligent design as an answer to all life's great conundrums. By Dahlia Lithwick: "The good people of Dover, Penn., are in court this week fighting for their right to tell high-school students that evolution is an elective, not a requirement. Intelligent design isn't just your great-grandpa's creationism, they contend. Instead, it fills in the myriad 'gaps' and 'problems' in Darwin's theory of evolution with an unnamed, omnipotent 'designer.' (Hint: His name rhymes with 'Todd.') For this exceedingly pluralistic and tolerant worldview, Dover School Board members have gotten themselves into a world of trouble with parents, the ACLU, and pundits across the land."

Grow Some Testables - Intelligent design ducks the rigors of science. By William Saletan

Grow Some Testables - Intelligent design ducks the rigors of science. By William Saletan: "Four months ago, when evolution and 'intelligent design' (ID) squared off in Kansas, I defended ID as a more evolved version of creationism. ID posits that complex systems in nature must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The crucial step forward is ID's concession that 'observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building'—not scriptural authority—define science. Having acknowledged that standard, advocates of ID must now demonstrate how hypotheses based on it can be tested by experiment or observation. Otherwise, ID isn't science."

Intimidation Alleged On 'Intelligent Design'

Intimidation Alleged On 'Intelligent Design': "HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 27 -- Parents in federal court Tuesday described an atmosphere of intimidation and anger when school board members in Dover, Pa., last year decided to require high school biology teachers to read a statement that casts doubt on the theory of evolution.

Bryan Rehm, a parent who also taught physics at Dover High School, testified of continual pressure from board members not to 'teach monkeys-to-man evolution.' He said that the board required teachers to watch a film critical of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and that board members talked openly of teaching creationism alongside evolution."

A Web of Faith, Law and Science in Evolution Suit

A Web of Faith, Law and Science in Evolution Suit - New York Times: "DOVER, Pa., Sept. 23 - Sheree Hied, a mother of five who believes that God created the earth and its creatures, was grateful when her school board here voted last year to require high school biology classes to hear about 'alternatives' to evolution, including the theory known as intelligent design."

Biblical tour masquerades as science

DenverPost.com - LOCAL NEWS: "The Earth is 6,000 years old. Noah took dinosaurs on the ark. God 'spoke fish into existence.' And, by the way, 'evolution gives the platform for racism,' 'Hitler was an evolutionist,' and so were Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

You might refer to Saturday's 'biblically correct' tour of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science as Colorado's scientific conundrum:

How much shall we monkey with this state's future?"

DenverPost.com - LOCAL NEWS

DenverPost.com - LOCAL NEWS: "God made dinosaurs on the sixth day of Creation, the same day he made people, according to Rusty Carter's interpretation of the Bible.

'The word 'dinosaur' was not invented back then, but in Job 38, there's two large creatures, behemoth and leviathan,' said Carter, director of the Littleton-based Biblically Correct Tours, as he prepared to give his first tour of the school year."

New evolution spat in U.S. schools goes to court - Yahoo! News

New evolution spat in U.S. schools goes to court - Yahoo! News: "PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A new battle over teaching about man's origins in U.S. schools goes to court for the first time next week, pitting Christian conservatives against educators and scientists in a trial viewed as the biggest test of the issue since the late 1980s."

Court Case Threatens to 'Drag Science into the Supernatural' - Yahoo! News

Scopes, 2005: 'Design' Theory Faces Legal Test

WSJ.com - Scopes, 2005: 'Design' Theory Faces Legal Test: "Debates about the boundaries of science and religion that marked the famous Scopes trial in 1925 are likely to unfold next week at a Harrisburg, Pa., federal courthouse in the first legal test of an anti-evolution doctrine known as 'intelligent design.'

Aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, 11 parents of Dover, Pa., schoolchildren have filed a federal lawsuit against that town's school board, accusing it of violating the principle of separation of church and state. The school board requires that at the beginning of the 9th grade unit on evolution, teachers are supposed to read a statement to a biology class: 'Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact...Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view.'"

Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back - New York Times

Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back - New York Times: "ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution."

Nobel Winners Defend Evolution

CBS News | Nobel Winners Defend Evolution | September 16, 2005 15:00:05: "Thirty-eight Nobel Prize laureates asked state educators to reject proposed science standards that treat evolution as a seriously questionable theory, calling it instead the 'indispensable' foundation of biology.

The group, led by the writer Elie Wiesel, said it wanted to defend science and combat 'efforts by the proponents of so-called intelligent design to politicize scientific inquiry.' "

'The Universe in a Single Atom': Reason and Faith - New York Times

'The Universe in a Single Atom': Reason and Faith - New York Times: "It's been a brutal season in the culture wars with both the White House and a prominent Catholic cardinal speaking out in favor of creationist superstition, while public schools and even natural history museums shy away from teaching evolutionary science."

Political Science

Political Science - New York Times: "Yet what remains most divisive, according to Kennedy, is not the Bush administration's specific policies, but a more general sense that ''scientific conclusions, reached either within agencies or by people outside of government, are being changed for political reasons by people who have not done the scientific work.'' It is this sense that science is being ''misused'' that has given rise to two Congressional bills."

In Chimpanzee DNA, Signs of Y Chromosome's Evolution - New York Times

In Chimpanzee DNA, Signs of Y Chromosome's Evolution - New York Times: "Scientists have decoded the chimp genome and compared it with that of humans, a major step toward defining what makes people human and developing a deep insight into the evolution of human sexual behavior."

Scientists Complete Genetic Map of the Chimpanzee

Scientists Complete Genetic Map of the Chimpanzee: "The fresh unraveling of chimpanzee DNA allows an unprecedented gene-to-gene comparison with the human genome, mapped in 2001, and makes plain the evolutionary processes through which chimps and humans arose from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago."