Penn. Lawmakers Weigh Testimony in Intelligent Design Debate
by Jim Brown
June 29, 2005
(AgapePress) - In Pennsylvania, experts on both sides have had their say in a debate over whether public schools should teach "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution. A state House subcommittee heard testimony last week on a bill that would allow local school boards to mandate that science lessons include intelligent design.Proponents of intelligent design, or ID, study objects in nature and consider empirical evidence in an attempt to isolate what they consider to be signs of intelligence -- physical properties that necessitate design. The concept of ID holds that the complexity of the universe is such that it must have been created by an intelligent guiding force.
One of the sponsors of the intelligent design bill, Representative Dennis Leh, feels school children need to be taught an alternative to evolution to ensure they are receiving a balanced science education. School children "need to realize that evolution is only a theory. It's not backed by sound science," he says, "and there are many, many scientists -- [including] bio-scientists and physicists – who do not believe in evolution."
Critics of the legislation claim ID theory is a secular form of Bible-based creationism. Leh admits that he would prefer to see children taught that the universe and everything in it were created and did not evolve out of primordial slime.
"Personally, I am a creationist," the Pennsylvania lawmaker says. "I don't hide that, and I certainly don't apologize for it. I think it takes far more faith to believe in evolution -- that things just appeared out of nothing -- than [to believe] they were created by an intelligent Creator, in the Christian sense."
But although he is personally convinced that all life and nature were created by "the one true God" and that evolution is a false theory, Leh says he and other supporters of the intelligent design bill "believe that these two teachings should be taught at least side by side." However, the future of the legislation that would permit state schools to teach ID along with evolution is currently uncertain.
Pennsylvania's Dover Area School District is scheduled to go to trial this fall over accusations that the school board members violated the so-called "separation of church and state" when they required the teaching of intelligent design.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
