Monday, November 27, 2006

 

Intelligent Design: Let us test Darwin, teacher says

Science teaching materials deemed 'not appropriate' by the government should be allowed in class, Education Secretary Alan Johnson has been urged.

Chemistry teacher at Liverpool's Blue Coat School, Nick Cowan, says the packs promoting intelligent design are useful in debating Darwinist evolution.

Education officials insist intelligent design is not recognised as science.

It argues that evolution cannot explain some things so the universe must have had an intelligent creator.

The packs were sent out to 5,000 secondary schools by a group of academics and clerics known as Truth in Science.

The Department for Education and Skills said they were inappropriate and not supportive of the science curriculum.

Continued at "Let us test Darwin, teacher says"

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See last week's (Monday, November 20, 2006) "Government department rejects creationist infiltration of science teaching" post:

"The Christian think-tank Ekklesia and the British Humanist Association (BHA) have welcomed a statement from the British government's Department for Education and Skills (DfES) clarifying that 'creationism' - an ideology which uses discredited readings of scriptural texts to deny fundamental scientific discoveries - can have no legitimate place in UK school science classrooms.

The issue arose after a creationist group calling itself Truth in Science, the majority of whose key supporters believe that the world is only 8-10,000 years old, sent out a pack to secondary science heads encouraging them to include creationism and its cousin 'intelligent design' in their teaching.

Ekklesia and the BHA teamed up to emphasise that this is not an issue which should divide religious and non-religious people. They wrote together to the Department for Education and Skills on 29 September 2006, asking for clear guidelines."

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