Darwin's defenders go into battle again

Darwin's defenders go into battle again
Alec Russell
(Filed: 31/12/2005)

James Colbert has been on the frontline of America's culture wars for 20 years but his hoped-for final victory of reason over faith is not yet in sight.

Now an associate biology professor at Iowa State University, he has found since he started teaching that about a third of the students beginning his introductory course are creationists, in many cases with no knowledge of evolution at all.

While trying to tread softly to avoid offending their sensibilities, he has increasingly had to defend his faculty and scholarship against what he sees as a far greater threat - the incursion into science faculties of backers of "intelligent design", the belief that evolution is so complex that some higher force must be behind it.

So it might be expected that he was celebrating following a high-profile ruling in America's decades-old judicial tussle over evolution.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/31/wdesign31.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/31/ixworld.html

"Darwin's Defenders"

Fighting to teach evolution is not defending Darwin. It is defending science and truth.