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Experts to Weigh-In on Science Standards -- Evolution vs. Intelligent Design?
Tuesday, February 5, 2002
By Catherine Candisky
Dispatch Statehouse Reporter

COLUMBUS, Ohio
Scientists from throughout the nation are being summoned to help the Ohio Board of Education decide whether students should be taught that life on Earth is the result of evolution or intelligent design.

At a special meeting yesterday, the board's standards committee decided to ask experts on both sides of the issue to participate in a panel discussion at the board's March meeting.

The move came after some board members complained that intelligent design is not included in proposed curriculum guidelines for science. Intelligent-design advocates say that some life forms are far too complex to be explained through evolution and that a higher intelligence or designer must have played a role.

Critics say that intelligent design is merely a new name for creationism, the belief that God created the Earth, and that religion has no place in public schools.

"If we put creationism or intelligent design into the standards, we could find ourselves in a court battle,'' said Martha W. Wise, a board member from Avon.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism was unconstitutional, striking down Louisiana's Creationism Act because it endorsed religion.

But intelligent designers say they don't know who the designer is. They acknowledge that it could be God, but say there are other possibilities, such as extraterrestrial life.
(More: Dispatch.com News Source)
2002 © The Columbus Dispatch.

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