[Editor’s Note: The following article was written by Jonathan Wells and published in 2002.] According to the NCSE, many of the claims in my questions “are incorrect or misleading,” and they are “intended only to create unwarranted doubts in students’ minds about the validity of evolution as good science.” It is actually the NCSE’s answers, however, that are incorrect or misleading. My original questions (in italics) are posted below; each question is followed by the NCSE’s answer (in bold), a brief outline of my response, and then my detailed response. Numbers in parentheses refer to research notes at the end. Please feel free to copy and distribute this document to teachers, students, parents, and other interested parties.

[Ed: This post was written by a legal intern at Discovery Institute who has chosen to post anonymously.] The Establishment clause of the United States Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof […].” Today the popular argument against intelligent design (ID) is that it is just an extension of creationism, which implicates ID as a religious theory. The argument begins when proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution attempt to use some definition of science to disqualify ID from being a scientific theory. Intelligent design is then equated with religion through the assertion that if the theory is not science, then it must be religious in nature. Even Judge Jones adopted Read More ›

[Ed: This post was written by a legal intern at Discovery Institute who has chosen to post anonymously.] In 2006, Martha M. McCarthy wrote an article (“Instruction About the Origin of Humanity: Legal Controversies Evolve”) arguing that “concerns have been raised…that if the ‘controversy’ is taught and ID is actually subjected to scientific criticism, this may ‘be more confrontational to students’ beliefs than most high school teachers feel is appropriate.’” (FN 68) This misguided statement assumes four things. First, it assumes that students have a set of beliefs on the origin of humanity before they take biology. The second assumption is that high school teachers are the final authority on what is taught in public school science classrooms. The third Read More ›

[Ed: This post was written by a legal intern at Discovery Institute who has chosen to post it anonymously.] Immediately following the publication of “Teaching the Origins Controversy: Science, or Religion, or Speech?” in 2000 in Utah Law Review, multiple law review articles appeared opposing the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design (ID). It seems that the law review article by Professors DeWolf and DeForrest and Meyer hit a nerve that incited various law students to ardently defend the evolutionary theory they were uncritically taught in high school. Once such student was Eric Shih, who published an article in the Michigan State Law Review in 2007 entitled, “Teaching Against the Controversy: Intelligent Design, Evolution, and the Public School Solution to the Read More ›