Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Traipsing Into Evolution

Here's a program note you may be interested in -- this Saturday evening, August 26th, from 7 to 9 Eastern Standard Time, C-Span's Book TV will air a discussion of Traipsing Into Evolution: Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision. This book covers the court case which challenged the Dover, Pennsylvania school board's decision to make students aware of the theory of intelligent design. The judge in the case ruled that the board's policy violated the Constitution because intelligent design amounts to little more than a religious theory.

In the program, two of the the book's four authors (John West and Casey Luskin) respond to Judge John Jones's obscurantist decision. Dr. John G. West is the chairman of the political science department at Seattle Pacific University and Casey Luskin is an attorney and program officer for public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute. They contend that the theory of intelligent design is based on science not religion, and that proponents of intelligent design want to challenge the teaching of evolution on scientific grounds not religious ones.