Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

"It's a way to help young people to look at things more realistically."

wande quoted-

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New evolution proposal puts 'critical analysis' in all subjects

They better not go too far or they might shut the schools down.

A nation that forms detailed opinions on the basis of detailed fact which is askew from the subtle reality becomes a nation of citizens whose psyches are skewed,item by detailed item,away from any reality.

McGill challenges federal agency's denial of funding for evolution research
(Nelson Wyatt, Canadian Press, April 05, 2006)

MONTREAL (CP) - McGill University wants a federal agency to review its decision to deny funding to a research project examining how intelligent design theory is being accepted in Canada.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council refused $40,000 in funding to McGill professor Brian Alters, saying he didn't prove scientifically accepted evolutionary theory in his proposal.

Alters acknowledged there could be other reasons he was turned down but he was amazed he was expected to prove established scientific fact.

"Evolution is not an assumption - it's a fact of science," he said in an interview. "If someone was writing a proposal to investigate how people think about gravity, the researcher would not have to justify gravitation theory in the proposal."

A spokesman for the council was not immediately available for comment.

He said he is challenging the situation on behalf of future applicants who might get turned down for the same reasons.

"Applicants should not have to justify a fundamental fact of science to anyone," he said. "The occurrence of evolution has not been argued since long before I was born, in the scientific community."

He said he's never seen a rejection justification like this before. McGill is arguing the rejection contains factual errors.

Alters wanted to study how the increasing popularity in the United States of intelligent design is affecting acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada.

Intelligent design is a controversial creationist theory suggesting life was brought about by an intelligent agent or agents and not necessarily through natural evolution.

Alters said he was surprised the review committee also found his proposal did not adequately substantiate its premise that the popularization of intelligent design theory had detrimental effects on Canadians.

"That's what the study is about," Alters said.

"It's rather strange and it's also rather strange that one would think I need to make a justification that advancing a pseudo-science is detrimental to people. It's automatically assumed that popularizing a pseudo-science would be detrimental."

Alters said he hadn't heard personally of any decision by the council to review his project.

"Evolution is not an assumption - it's a fact of science," he said in an interview. "If someone was writing a proposal to investigate how people think about gravity, the researcher would not have to justify gravitation theory in the proposal."

Reproduction is a fraught subject.

'Intelligent design' debate evolves into funding fracas
(Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service, April 06, 2006)

It's been the source of wrenching debate for years in the United States seen by critics as a politically driven assault on the theory of evolution and other pillars of modern science, and by proponents as a long-overdue recognition that an unmistakable "guiding hand'' is responsible for the elegant ordering of our universe.

But the theory of "intelligent design'' is now generating controversy in Canada: A McGill University researcher is at odds with a federal funding agency over the issue, and nine other university professors recently signed an international petition denouncing the dominance of Darwin's ideas about how life evolved on Earth.

"It is starting to affect the public here,'' says Brian Alters, the McGill professor whose plan to study the growing influence of intelligent design in Canada was turned down last month for funding because according to a federal panel from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council his proposal hinged on the assumption that evolution is unassailable.

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Intelligent design drew some attention in this country in February when nine Canadian university professors signed a U.S.-based petition challenging the theory of evolution.

Established by the Discovery Institute in Seattle, a conservative think-tank that has championed intelligent design since the early 1990s, the petition has been cited by anti-evolutionists as evidence that not all members of the scientific community are devotees of Darwinism.

"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life,'' reads the petition's preamble. "Careful examination of the evidence of Darwinian theory should be encouraged.''

Among the Canadians supporting the campaign were Rene Boere, chairman of the University of Lethbridge chemistry department, Braxton Alfred, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of British Columbia; and A.D. Harrison, emeritus professor of biology at the University of Waterloo. Alters says the professors' petition and a poll published last year which showed 26 per cent of Canadians believe intelligent design should be taught in classrooms are proof that the "pseudo-science" of ID is catching on in this country.

"That's why I originally wrote to SSHRC,'' he said, noting that the funding agency's response has, "ironically,'' underscored the soundness of his premise that intelligent design is gaining support throughout Canadian society.

The research council's peer-review committee denied Alters' request for $40,000 to examine the "detrimental effects'' of popularizing the "anti-evolution'' theory in Canada. A rejection letter sent to Alters, the director of McGill's Evolution Education Research Centre, argued there was inadequate "justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of evolution, and not intelligent-design theory, was correct.''

Jennifer Robinson, McGill's associate vice-principal, believes the committee made a "factual error'' in rejecting Alters' application and has urged the research council to revisit its decision.

Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago.

Palaeontologists have said that the find, a crocodile-like animal called the Tiktaalik roseae and described today in the journal Nature, could become an icon of evolution in action - like Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds.

As such, it will be a blow to proponents of intelligent design, who claim that the many gaps in the fossil record show evidence of some higher power.

Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, said: "Our emergence on to the land is one of the more significant rites of passage in our evolutionary history, and Tiktaalik is an important link in the story."

"Irreducible complexity" explained

the specific partnership of the hormone aldosterone, which regulates behavior and kidney function, along with the receptor protein that allows the body's cells to respond to the hormone.

"So-called irreducible complexity was just a reflection of a limited ability to see how evolution works.

Irreducible complexity is a scientific hypothesis. When tested, this hypothesis has failed over and over. Therefore, natural selection is a superior hypothesis.

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"Evolution is not an assumption - it's a fact of science," he said in an interview. "If someone was writing a proposal to investigate how people think about gravity, the researcher would not have to justify gravitation theory in the proposal."

Exactly. How much more clear can anyone make it.