Alec Russell, "Darwin's defenders go into battle again" (2005)

Darwin's defenders go into battle again
> <span class="storyby">Alec Russell <span>
> <span class="filed">(Filed: 3112/2005)

James Colbert has been on the frontline of America's culture wars for 20 years but his hoped-for final victory of reason over faith is not yet in sight.

Now an associate biology professor at Iowa State University, he has found since he started teaching that about a third of the students beginning his introductory course are creationists, in many cases with no knowledge of evolution at all.

While trying to tread softly to avoid offending their sensibilities, he has increasingly had to defend his faculty and scholarship against what he sees as a far greater threat - the incursion into science faculties of backers of "intelligent design", the belief that evolution is so complex that some higher force must be behind it.

So it might be expected that he was celebrating following a high-profile ruling in America's decades-old judicial tussle over evolution.

On Dec 20, a federal judge ruled against a Pennsylvania school board that had been seeking to have intelligent design taught alongside evolutionary science.

Not only were the members of the school board condemned for their "breathtaking inanity" in trying to bring religion into science classes, but also the judge excoriated the very idea of treating i.d. as science. While delighted by the result, Prof Colbert, however, saw it as a step forward rather than a complete triumph over intelligent design. "It's a defeat at one juncture but that does not mean that it will go away."

Emotions are running high in his faculty and others across America over i.d., as academics fight for control over the minds of the nation's youth. For decades America has been riven by "culture wars" over science, religion and law, all set against the background of the ancient US debate over the separation of church and state. Traditionally the most heated argument has been over abortion but creation has emerged as a similarly contentious issue.

In tune with the Rightward shift in American opinion, the overwhelmingly evangelical Christian backers of i.d have been raising their profile and advancing the theory as science and not theology. They like to highlight holes in the evolutionary chain, arguing that the science of evolution has many unproven elements and does not deserve preferential treatment.

Stephen Meyer, the vice-president of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, said: "A designer that acted in the past is no more or less observable than the Darwinian processes. So on that standard both are equivalent."

Prof Colbert says most scientists ignored such arguments as coming from a lunatic fringe until August when President George W Bush backed teaching i.d. alongside evolution. Alarmed at what he saw as the growing influence of some i.d. supporters in the science faculty, Prof Colbert drafted a petition condemning "attempts to represent intelligent design as a scientific endeavour".

In response more than 40 Christian faculty and staff members signed a statement calling on the university to uphold their basic freedoms and to allow them to discuss intelligent design.

Guillermo Gonzales, an assistant professor of astronomy, was one of those who saw the petition as a personal attack. He is the co-author of a book, The Privileged Planet, which argues that the Earth's position in the sky is evidence of a higher hand. He dismisses the impact of the Pennsylvania judge's ruling. "Critics of i.d. might try to cite the judge's statement that "i.d. is not science"," he said. "But the judge has no competence to make such an assertion."

A similar feud is under way at the University of New Mexico. Leslie McFadden, the chairman of the Earth and Planetary Sciences, accuses i.d. proponents of ultimately believing that "the ills of modern society - feminism, choice, relativism, post-modernism - are the result of a culture gone wrong and a large part of that has to do with godless science."

On the other side of the lines, Chris Macosko, who did his MSc at Imperial College, London and is now professor of chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota, has for eight years taught a seminar: "Life by chance or design?" He says students leave his lectures saying they had not appreciated "how shaky evolution is".

He believes that intelligent design backers in academia may have to keep a low profile for a bit, particularly those without tenure. But he believes that in the end there will be a backlash against the Pennsylvania ruling.

21 December 2005: Keep the divine out of biology lessons, federal judge rules

20 November 2005: The Darwin exhibition frightening off corporate sponsors

19 June 2004: Christian dinosaur hunters dig for signs of Biblical dragons