Evolution debate raging in local district court

AMANDA POPOVITCH STAFF WRITER AVP722@CABRINI EDU

History seems to be repeating itself as the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg hears a case involving the mandatory exposure of students to the theory of intelligent design.

Last year the Dover Township School Board voted for an addition to the science curriculum that mandated that biology teachers read their students a piece on the theory of intelligent design before teaching evolution theory in class.

Eleven parents are suing the school board claiming that the reading of the theory promotes the Biblical story of creation and violates the First Amendment by teaching religious beliefs in a public school.

Basically the theory of intelligent design states that Darwin’s theory of evolution does not adequately explain the emergence of life on earth and therefore, life on earth must be the result of intervention from an unknown intelligent force.

Many opponents of the theory regard this idea as simply a badly disguised version of the creationist theory.Defenders of the theory contest that the particular unknown intelligent force is never identified specifically as being of a religious nature and that this is simply a theory that has been created to account for gaps in Darwin’stheory.

The controversy over these two theories and the theory of intelligent design are by no means new ideas. The battle over religious and scientific ideas on evolution began in 1925 with the now infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in which a Tennessee biology teacher was fined for violating astate law that forbade the teaching of evolution theory.

After the trial, only two states adopted laws forbidding the teaching of evolution theory and these state laws were finally outlawed in 1968 by another landmark Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court also forbade the teaching of creationism or creation science, an obviously religious theory on the origins of life, in 1987. All of these cases have established firm laws on the teaching of evolution and partic- ularly the separation of church and state in public schools. However it appears that this trial will again challenge those established precedents.

Dr.Kimberly Boyd, an associate professor of biology here at Cabrini, emphasized that the focus in any science class is still on the scientific method and those theories that can be proven using the scientific method. Boyd pointed out that there are two major flaws in the intelligent design theory.

The first is that the theory cannot be tested using the scientific method. The second is that science deals with the natural world and the concept of an unknown intelligent being is a supernatural idea.

Boyd did also maintain that it was not necessarily wrong in any way to talk about the idea of intelligent design in class. “I like to pose everything out to my students and let them make their own choices,” Boyd said.

Both the plaintiff and the defendants will be battling it out to try and prove their points. The plaintiffs are doing their best to establish the religious nature of intelligent design. The plaintiffs had John Haught, a

Evolution, page 4 hallway. An image was created to appear like a black puppet, with the use of a black sock, a white sock and string tied around the neck area. The image was taped to a bathroom stall.

The Diversity Support steering committee met to discuss the events.

T he committee includes Stroud, Schaffner, Dr. Christine Lysionek, vice president for student development, Dr. Charlie McCormick, dean of academic affairs, Margaret Fox-Tully, vice president for mission integration a nd human resources, and Shirley Dixon, coordinator of diversity initiatives.

Public Safety and residence life staffs have documented and are now investigating the incidents. Schaffner, director of public safety, filed a report about the incidents with the Radnor Police. Dr. Antoinette Iadarola, president of Cabrini College, was also informed of the events and the actions of the committee.

Class attendance on the morning that the third incident occurred has been recorded, and