Bill would allow 'intelligent design' in Pennsylvania schools

Excerpts from CNN.com:

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Experts on both sides of the debate over whether public schools should teach "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution -- a question already before a federal court -- sparred in front of a state legislative panel in Pennsylvania.

The House Subcommittee on Basic Education heard testimony Monday on a bill that would allow local school boards to mandate that science lessons include intelligent design, a concept that holds the universe must have been created by an unspecified guiding force because it is so complex.

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But a federal judge will consider the issue this fall, when a lawsuit against the Dover Area School District is scheduled to go to trial. The suit alleges that the school board violated the constitutional separation of church and state when it voted in October to require ninth-grade students to hear about intelligent design during biology class.

Michael J. Behe, a biological sciences professor at Lehigh University, told the subcommittee that intelligent design has no religious underpinnings. Critics argue that it is a variation of creationism, the biblical-based view that regards God as the creator of life.

Behe said intelligent design merely contends that evidence of complex physical structures shows that design, rather than evolution, is responsible for an organism or cell.

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The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that filed the federal lawsuit, contends that allowing intelligent design to be taught would undermine the state's science standards, which specify the teaching of evolution.

Read the entire CNN article here.