Undoing Darwin

Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet have written a comprehensive review of media coverage of the discussion of evolution, intelligent design, and creationism.

Undoing Darwin
By Chris Mooney and Matthew C. Nisbet

On March 14, 2005, The Washington Post’s Peter Slevin wrote a front-page story on the battle that is “intensifying across the nation” over the teaching of evolution in public-school science classes. Slevin’s lengthy piece took a detailed look at the lobbying, fund-raising, and communications tactics being deployed at the state and local level to undermine evolution. The article placed a particular emphasis on the burgeoning “intelligent design” movement, centered at Seattle’s Discovery Institute, whose proponents claim that living things, in all their organized complexity, simply could not have arisen from a mindless and directionless process such as the one so famously described in 1859 by Charles Darwin in his classic, The Origin of Species.

The End of Science Education

Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne warn accepting 'intelligent
design' in science classrooms would have disastrous
consequences.

Thursday September 1, 2005
The Guardian

"It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? Such a modest proposal.
Why not teach "both sides" and let the children decide for
themselves? As President Bush said, "You're asking me
whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the
answer is yes." At first hearing, everything about the phrase "both
sides" warms the hearts of educators like ourselves."

"Without needing to make a single good point in any argument, [Intelligent Design theory] would have won the right for a form of supernaturalism to be recognised as an authentic part of science. And that would be the end of science education in America."

www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1559743,00.html