- Was the landscape around the small town of Dover in Pennsylvania
created in just six days? Were the gently curving hills perfected, the
streams formed and finished, the wide, empty skies fixed in place beneath
the firmament and the narrow wooded valleys completed? Was it all really
done in less than a week?
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- It was, at least according to the creationist beliefs
of much of the town's population of 1,800, who have little time for Charles
Darwin's theory of evolution. And their fundamental beliefs are set to
gain further currency.
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- As of next month, in a hugely controversial move, the
town's high school will become the first in the US for several generations
to teach a form of creationism as part of its curriculum.
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- But the controversy that has split the town of Dover,
an hour's drive north of Baltimore, is not simply some local squabble.
Rather it is a debate that is taking place in communities across the US.
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- Classrooms, courtrooms, public places, even the very
pledges that officials swear when taking office have become the focus of
a bitterly contested and growing dispute about whether Christianity should
be officially incorporated into civic life or if there should be a real
and meaningful separation of church and state.
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- It is a row that has pitched Christian against Christian,
scientist against scientist.
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- It has led to accusations of lies and deliberate misrepresentation
and even claims that America is turning its back on its traditions. And
now that President George Bush, a bornagain evangelical, has won a second
term in office with the assistance of a large turnout by evangelicals at
the polls, the dispute is likely to get even more heated.
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- At the eye of this storm is Dover, where a legal battle
that could end up costing local taxpayers very dear has been launched.
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- "I was very surprised. I would not have thought
it [would come to this]," said Steven Sough, one of 11 parents who
last week filed a lawsuit with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
to try to prevent the change to the curriculum, arguing it would breach
the US Constitution. "I have a daughter, Ashley, who will be 14 in
two-weeks time. This is a personal issue. I want her learning science at
school. I want her learning religion at home with me or at church."
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- The dispute in Dover blew up in October when the elected
members of the district school board voted 6-3 that the biology course
for 15-year-olds should be amended to include a theory about the origins
of life known as intelligent design or ID.
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- The proponents of ID claim life is so complex that its
origins must in some way have been directed by a supernatural actor. The
Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a leading proponent of ID theory, says
"certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained
by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection".
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- In addition to ordering that pupils be taught about ID
and "made aware in the gaps or problems in Darwin's theory",
the board arranged for the donation to the school of 60 copies of a controversial
biology book, Of Pandas and People. Copies of the text, which is critical
of Darwin's "natural selection", were placed in the classrooms
for pupils to browse.
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- After a meeting of the board on 18 October, two members,
Carol and Jeff Brown, resigned in protest. The Browns, both Christians,
said they believed religion had no place in science. "This country
was founded on the belief of freedom of religion and freedom from religion,"
said Mrs Brown, sitting at her kitchen table, knitting with a ball of electric-blue
wool.
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- Her husband said he also had practical concerns. "It
is going to get shot-down in court. We cannot afford it."
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- The lawsuit filed last week by the ACLU, accuses the
school board of breaching the First Amendment of the US Constitution which
prohibits the establishment of an official religion.
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- In its lawsuit it argued: "ID is a non-scientific
argument or assertion, made in opposition to the scientific theory of evolution
that an intelligent, supernatural actor has intervened in the history of
life and that life 'owes its origin to a master intellect'." It also
noted that in 1987 the US Supreme Court ruled that creationism was a religious
belief that could not be taught alongside evolution.
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- The school board has insisted it is not trying to force
religion into the classroom. Vice-president Heather Geesey said its aim
was simply to make information about ID available. "All I want to
do is have anything the kids [could] learn, there for them to learn. That
is our job, to teach children everything we can. "I think [the row]
has been [ the result of] a misconception. Most of the people I know are
in favour of it, or else are once I explain it."
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- But what of intelligent design? Is it, as critics claim,
simply creationsim-lite? Glenn Branch, vice-president of the National Centre
for Science Education, which promotes Darwinism, said: "There is nothing
wrong with the idea of a creator but teaching it as [a part of science]
leads to detriment of both religion and science. There is a blurring of
the two and it involves a lot of misrepresentation of science."
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- The Discovery Institute's Centre for Science and Culture
counters that labelling creationism and ID together is simply an attempt
by Darwinists to limit scientific debate. Rob Crowther, a spokesman for
the group, said: "We advocate that schools teach more about evolution,
not less. We think that the scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution
should be discussed in the classroom, but that is much different from teaching
any alternative theory."
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- And what about Of Pandas and People? Now more than 15
years old, the book is considered one of the seminal texts of ID. One of
its co-authors, Dean Kenyon, a controversial academic, is a fellow of the
right-leaning Discovery Institute.
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- But Professor Kenneth Miller of Brown University's biology
department, who wrote a stinging critique of the text during an earlier
creationism row in Kansas, said: "It's an awful book. It's filled
with scientific mistakes and misrepresentations. It is also out of date."
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- It is clear from even a day in the quiet town of Dover
that behind the rather academic argument about the strengths and weaknesses
of Darwinism and about its alleged gaps, the debate that is taking place
here, as elsewhere across the US, is really about two fundamentally different
views of the world. One says that America has for too long been in retreat
from its Christian traditions while the other argues that America's very
traditions include a separation of church and state.
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- In Dover, for instance, while the proponents of ID insist
they do not wish to put religion in the classroom, they readily admit their
own fundamentalist beliefs. The move to change the curriculum was initiated
by a school board member, William Buckingham, who at one public meeting
declared: "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't
someone take a stand for him?"
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- Mr Buckingham has declined to speak to reporters but
his wife, Charlotte, who works at one of the town's evangelical churches,
told The Independent: "All ID is saying is that the origin of life
is so complex that it had to be created by a higher power. That is all
it says. It gives the students a chance of going to think about that."
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- Asked whether she believed schools ought to be allowed
to teach religion, she said: "There are many people who homeschool
their children because they cannot get what want they want elsewhere, the
truth about what we believe about our creator."
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- Rumours suggest that the 60 copies of Pandas were donated
to the school by Irene and Don Bonsell, whose son is a board member. Mrs
Bonsell, who described herself as a creationist, refused to confirm or
deny whether they had donated the books. She said she approved of the books
being available to the students even though she also denied religion was
being placed in the classroom. "I think it's a good idea that students
should learn this theory," she said. "I'm a creationist. I don't
understand what the problem is [with ID]. It's another theory. Darwinism
has never been proved, it's just a theory. They are trying to take God
out of everything, out of the pledge, off our money."
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- Pandas also has evangelical links. The book is published
by the Texas-based Foundation for Truth and Ethics, a small conservative
think-tank which has published two other books, one promoting abstinence
before marriage and another which disputes that America's founding principles
came from Greek, Roman and Enlightenment traditions but rather from Christianity.
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- The foundation's president, John Buell, who formerly
worked to promote Christianity on university campuses, said Pandas was
not a religious book even though he conceded that ID implied a "supernatural
power".
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- In Dover, the school board will meet lawyers this week
to discuss its options and decide whether to go ahead with the changes
to the curriculum and fight the lawsuit. The members' decision will be
carefully scrutinised not just by the townsfolk of Dover but by school
boards across the US which are considering similar measures.
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- In Grantsburg, Wisconsin, for instance, a school board
has revised its curriculum to teach "various scientific models of
theories of origin" though it has since argued that it will only be
teaching students "about the controversy surrounding evolution"
and not ID.
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- In Charles County, Maryland, the school board is considering
a proposal to eliminate textbooks "biased toward evolution" from
classrooms. Similar proposals have been considered this year in Missouri,
Mississippi and Oklahoma. In Cobb County, Georgia, school textbooks have
for the last two years contained a sticker which informs students: "Evolution
is a theory, not a fact."
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- Indeed, if recent polls are accurate, the Dover school
board members may not be lacking in support. A poll last month by Gallup
suggested that 45 per cent of Americans believe that humans were created
by God in their current form within the past 10,000 years.
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- It is less clear what the students in Dover think about
the proposed changes. On a freezing afternoon last week, Melissa Owen,
16, and 18-year-old Alex Jones, were waiting for a lift home. They both
believed that the teaching of ID should be allowed in classes that were
elective rather than mandatory.
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- Melissa confirmed that all the students were talking
about the controversy. "It was freezing today, there was no heat,"
she said. "People were joking that the school was saving money to
pay for the lawsuit."
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=594808
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