The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD has clothed and girded Himself with strength; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved. Your throne is established from of old; You are from everlasting. The floods have lifted up, O LORD, The floods have lifted up their voice, The floods lift up their pounding waves.

More than the sounds of many waters, Than the mighty breakers of the sea, The LORD on high is mighty. Your testimonies are fully confirmed; Holiness befits Your house, O LORD, forevermore.

John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said he was surprised to see that teaching both evolution and creationism was favored not only by conservative Christians, but also by majorities of secular respondents, liberal Democrats and those who accept the theory of natural selection. Mr. Green called it a reflection of "American pragmatism."

"It's like they're saying, 'Some people see it this way, some see it that way, so just teach it all and let the kids figure it out.' It seems like a nice compromise, but it infuriates both the creationists and the scientists," said Mr. Green, who is also a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio.

Eugenie C. Scott, the director of the National Center for Science Education and a prominent defender of evolution, said the findings were not surprising because "Americans react very positively to the fairness or equal time kind of argument."

"In fact, it's the strongest thing that creationists have got going for them because their science is dismal," Ms. Scott said. "But they do have American culture on their side."

Activists in both Uganda and the United States say the country is now in the grip of condom shortage so severe that men are using plastic garbage bags in an effort to protect themselves.

"There is no question in my mind that the condom crisis in Uganda is being driven and exacerbated by PEPFAR and by the extreme policies that the administration in the U.S. is now pursuing in the emphasis on abstinence," Lewis told journalists on a teleconference.

"That distortion of the preventive apparatus ... is resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred."

Many health experts say condoms are the most effective bulwark against AIDS....

The Ugandan government, which in 2004 recalled free condoms over quality fears, has failed to provide alternatives -- pushing the price of store-bought condoms up threefold, Ugandan activist Beatrice Were told the teleconference.

"From this you can see where Uganda is going ... people are desperate for condoms," she said.

Why is the left going to such lengths to propagandize that abortion is painless, using the spurious scientific cover of a report produced by abortionists? One immediate rationale for cooking up the report is to head off Sam Brownback's bill in Congress, the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act," which would require doctors to tell women before performing abortions after 20 weeks that abortion causes pain to the child and that requires doctors to offer anesthesia for the child.

The left, which insists on anesthesia-softened executions of murderers on death row, doesn't want unborn children receiving any anesthesia, arguing that it poses an "unnecessary" risk to the lives of women. Practices the left wouldn't permit at animal hospitals or penitentiaries are apparently so essential to its abortion agenda it will fake up scientific claims designed to make people feel better about not even affording the unborn child the slight courtesy of anesthesia.

While the left treats the obviously guilty as innocent, they treat unborn children as the guilty, unworthy of any basic humane considerations. As Alexander Sanger, the grandson of Margaret Sanger, blurted out honestly, the unborn child is a "liability, a threat, and a danger to the mother and to the other members of the family."

I don't remember him ever demanding perfection of any kind. All I remember him demanding was love...for the Father and for your neighbor.

Taking on one of the most highly charged questions in the abortion debate, a team of doctors has concluded that fetuses probably cannot feel pain in the first six months of gestation and therefore do not need anesthesia during abortions....The finding poses a direct challenge to proposed federal and state laws that would compel doctors to tell women having abortions at 20 weeks or later that their fetuses can feel pain and to offer them anesthesia specifically for the fetus....

The authors of the paper said that even crying or grimacing in a very premature infant did not necessarily signify pain because such infants often cry at even the lightest touch. Dr. Eleanor A. Drey, one of Dr. Rosen's co-authors, said that as an obstetrician who performed abortions and the medical director of an abortion clinic, she would find it troubling to be compelled to bring up the subject of fetal pain with her patients. "I would be forced to drag them through potentially a lot of misinformation," Dr. Drey said. "Our systematic review has shown it's extremely unlikely that pain exists at a point when abortions are done. I'm going to have to talk about something I know will cause the patient distress, something that by our best assessment of the scientific data is not relevant."

Mr. Robertson has said other stupid things in the course of his career, but this is especially shocking even by his standards. When a Christian evangelist departs from a gospel of love and forgiveness to advocate murder, his example provides a clarifying moment for anyone who is paying attention.

One thing it clarifies is the hypocritical nature of some of those who belong to the religious right. ("By their fruits, ye shall know them"). In fairness, we won't say that Mr. Robertson, 75, represents everyone in that constituency but he does speak for millions and he is a founder of the Christian Coalition of America. He is no fringe figure -- indeed, he once ran for president, which makes his assassination suggestion all the more destructive to America's reputation overseas.

As a group, people of his ilk scorn the idea that there is -- or should be -- a separation of church and state. The 700 Club recognizes no such distinction as daily it goes about its business of using religion to propagate a right-wing political agenda. His reckless statement is a direct result of this unholy entanglement, something he might have known had he remembered another piece of Scripture: "You cannot serve God and mammon."

A religious extremist has called for the assassination of a foreign leader. This time, however, it is not some Islamic ayatollah issuing a fatwa to murder some infidel. It's our own Pat Robertson, a Christian broadcaster who has done the math and concluded it would be cheaper if the United States just murdered Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to keep his country from becoming "a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."...Before calling for Chavez's assassination, Robertson apparently never bothered to ask himself this question: What would Jesus do?

Still, it is curious how some of Mr. Robertson's fellow travelers have not been able to locate their tongues over this latest Robertson-inspired international disturbance. The Family Research Council and Traditional Values Coalition spare no moments in rushing forth to denounce irresponsibility on the part of those they dislike. Not so with Mr. Robertson, who only called for the United States to murder a foreign head of state.

When the veteran televangelist called Monday for assassinating Chavez, it was small-bore news in an American context -- notable mostly because it's not every day that you hear a Christian activist advocating murder....Now, the Christian Coalition founder publicly advocated immoral and illegal action. What part of "Thou shalt not kill" is it that he fails to grasp?

As promising as this work might be, however, it is still nascent. Opponents of relaxing President Bush's restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research cite alternative procedures for creating stem cells as one reason Congress should proceed slowly. But as the new study's authors insist, their technique is not yet ready for prime time. Researchers have not figured out how to remove excess DNA from the cells they create -- which contain genetic material from both the skin cell and the embryonic "starter" cell. In other words, lawmakers cannot yet bank on this procedure -- or any other alternative procedure -- to relieve themselves of the duty of deciding whether current stem cell research warrants federal support. It does. The Senate will soon take up a bill, already passed by the House, to free up federal money for this potentially life-saving research. Senate passage is still necessary.

Listing same-sex marriages and commitment ceremonies in the traditional ''Weddings" pages of newspapers was controversial when it began a few years ago. But anyone reading about the gay couples in the newspaper cannot help but see how utterly ordinary they are -- or should be.

Fifteen months after the first gay marriages were performed in Massachusetts, opponents still insist that they somehow undermine society. Not content with a proposed compromise constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage but approve civil unions -- which this page opposes as discriminatory -- they continue to roil emotions by pressing for government decrees that sharing a lifetime is something reserved for heterosexuals.

The stories of the gay marriages already happening are simply tales of commitment, hope, and love. They are not even a reason to stop the presses.

The essay's an articulate explanation of why the author -- who's 32 and single -- believes women like herself should be abstinent until marriage. Its sentiments are surprisingly conservative for a mainstream newspaper. Sandoval delivers several smackdowns to popular culture, especially the inescapable "Sex and the City," and takes apart typical rationalizations for sex before marriage....

As a fellow chaste woman in her 30s, I know it's easy to write off sexually active singles as "weak-minded." But I don't think it's truly wise to do so, any more than it is for a recovering alcoholic to label his old drinking buddies as people who just need a little more will power. Sexual activity outside of marriage is a search for pleasure and, like alcohol or drug abuse, it is very often an attempt to escape pain.

In making a conscious decision to be chaste until marriage, one is not merely guarding one's heart, as Sandoval suggests. One is allowing oneself to be, in a sense, more vulnerable -- because one has to find meaning elsewhere in one's life.

Belief in the supernatural, especially belief in God, is not only incompatible with good science, Dr. Hauptman declared, "this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race."

But disdain for religion is far from universal among scientists. And today, as religious groups challenge scientists in arenas as various as evolution in the classroom, AIDS prevention and stem cell research, scientists who embrace religion are beginning to speak out about their faith.

"It should not be a taboo subject, but frankly it often is in scientific circles," said Francis S. Collins, who directs the National Human Genome Research Institute and who speaks freely about his Christian faith.

Although they embrace religious faith, these scientists also embrace science as it has been defined for centuries. That is, they look to the natural world for explanations of what happens in the natural world and they recognize that scientific ideas must be provisional -- capable of being overturned by evidence from experimentation and observation. This belief in science sets them apart from those who endorse creationism or its doctrinal cousin, intelligent design, both of which depend on the existence of a supernatural force.

One of the most powerful limits to the human imagination is our inability to grasp, in a truly intuitive way, the depths of terrestrial and cosmological time. That inability is hardly surprising because our own lives are so very short in comparison. It's hard enough to come to terms with the brief scale of human history. But the difficulty of comprehending what time is on an evolutionary scale, I think, is a major impediment to understanding evolution....

Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth -- and humans with it -- was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education.

The purpose of the campaign for intelligent design is to deepen that failure. To present the arguments of intelligent design as part of a debate over evolution is nonsense. From the scientific perspective, there is no debate. But even the illusion of a debate is a sorry victory for antievolutionists, a public relations victory based, as so many have been in recent years, on ignorance and obfuscation.

While it is important to change the makeup of the Supreme Court, social conservatives -- especially those concerned about abortion -- need not and should not be counting on such a change in the judiciary to accomplish their goals. What they ought to be doing instead is looking to the power of facts. Simply getting out the truth to the public has already done far more than any court or legislative action to reverse the trend toward abortion.

Consider the proliferation of pro-life pregnancy centers in the United States, now estimated to number more than 3,200. Helping spur that growth have been the tremendous advancements in medical ultrasound technology, now capable of showing three-dimensional images of the child in the womb....

Abortion opponents want judges appointed to the courts who will protect defenseless lives, as they should. But some are putting too many eggs in this basket at the expense of developing what could well be more fruitful resources in the battle....The evidence shows that a better investment could be made.

Scientists for the first time have turned ordinary skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells -- without having to use human eggs or make new human embryos in the process, as has always been required in the past, a Harvard research team announced yesterday.

The technique uses laboratory-grown human embryonic stem cells -- such as the ones that President Bush has already approved for use by federally funded researchers -- to "reprogram" the genes in a person's skin cell, turning that skin cell into an embryonic stem cell itself....

But if further studies confirm its usefulness, the technique could offer an end run around the heated social and religious debate that has for years overshadowed the field of human embryonic stem cell research.

Since the new stem cells in this technique are essentially rejuvenated versions of a person's own skin cells, the DNA in those new stem cells matches the DNA of the person who provided the skin cells. In theory at least, that means that any tissues grown from those newly minted stem cells could be transplanted into the person to treat a disease without much risk that they would be rejected, because they would constitute an exact genetic match.

At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an unseen higher being?

The proponents of intelligent design, a school of thought that some have argued should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools, say that the complexity and diversity of life go beyond what evolution can explain.

Biological marvels like the optical precision of an eye, the little spinning motors that propel bacteria and the cascade of proteins that cause blood to clot, they say, point to the hand of a higher being at work in the world....

But mainstream scientists say that the claims of intelligent design run counter to a century of research supporting the explanatory and predictive power of Darwinian evolution, and that the design approach suffers from fundamental problems that place it outside the realm of science. For one thing, these scientists say, invoking a higher being as an explanation is unscientific.

"One of the rules of science is, no miracles allowed," said Douglas H. Erwin, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution. "That's a fundamental presumption of what we do."

That does not mean that scientists do not believe in God. Many do. But they see science as an effort to find out how the material world works, with nothing to say about why we are here or how we should live.

This slim novel recounts what happens when a hard-driving young businessman accepts an invitation for dinner with Jesus Christ. In the market it may become another book that--like Rick Warren's "Purpose-Driven Life"--crosses over to sell as well at Barnes & Noble as in religious stores. In substance it raises important questions about how contemporary American life is shaping conceptions of the Christian faith....

In traditional Christianity, teaching about a personal relationship with Christ is common but usually hedged about with other, more demanding themes. Catholics, Orthodox and some older Protestant communions hold that membership in a church is an intrinsic feature of any relationship with God. In "Dinner," by contrast, the church is mentioned only as an institution that formalized and then obscured Christ's true mission....

So it is, as well, in a modern America marked by the increasing demands of work, strain between the generations, political acrimony, international uncertainty and peripatetic lifestyles. Into such a culture a Christian message stressing the possibility of an enduring--and often less demanding--personal relationship with the loving Creator of the universe sounds very appealing. But does such an adaptation retain enough of historic Christianity's other dimension? Or does dinner with a perfect stranger fit a little too conveniently into our lives?

The Israeli abandonment of Gaza is a withdrawal of despair. Unlike the Oslo concessions of 1993, there is not even the pretense of getting anything in return from the Palestinians. Nonetheless, unilateralism is both correct and necessary. Israel has no peace partner -- Mahmoud Abbas has nothing to offer and has offered nothing -- and in the absence of a partner, there is only one logical policy: Rationalize your defensive lines and prepare for a long wait.

Gaza was simply a bridge too far: settlements too far-flung and small to justify the huge psychological and material cost of defending them. Pulling out of Gaza leaves behind the first truly independent Palestinian state -- uncontrolled and highly militant, but one from which Israel is fenced off....

The Gaza withdrawal is not the beginning but the end. Apart from perhaps some evacuations of outlying settlements on the West Bank, it is the end of the concession road for Israel. And it is the beginning of the new era of self-sufficiency and separation in which Israel ensures its security not by concessions but by fortification, barrier creation, realism and patient waiting.

Waiting for the first-ever genuine Palestinian concessions. Waiting for the Palestinians to honor the promises -- to recognize Israel and renounce terrorism -- that they solemnly made at Oslo and brazenly betrayed. That's the next step. Without it, nothing happens.

KS--As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University....

"Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the 'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,' and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."

As editor of the hitherto obscure Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Sternberg decided to publish a paper making the case for "intelligent design," a controversial theory that holds that the machinery of life is so complex as to require the hand -- subtle or not -- of an intelligent creator.

Within hours of publication, senior scientists at the Smithsonian Institution -- which has helped fund and run the journal -- lashed out at Sternberg as a shoddy scientist and a closet Bible thumper...."I am not convinced by intelligent design but they have brought a lot of difficult questions to the fore," Sternberg said. "Science only moves forward on controversy."...

When the article appeared, the reaction was near instantaneous and furious. Within days, detailed scientific critiques of Meyer's article appeared on pro-evolution Web sites. "The origin of genetic information is thoroughly understood," said Nick Matzke of the NCSE. "If the arguments were coherent this paper would have been revolutionary-- but they were bogus."

A senior Smithsonian scientist wrote in an e-mail: "We are evolutionary biologists and I am sorry to see us made into the laughing stock of the world, even if this kind of rubbish sells well in backwoods USA."

An e-mail stated, falsely, that Sternberg had "training as an orthodox priest." Another labeled him a "Young Earth Creationist," meaning a person who believes God created the world in the past 10,000 years.

Banners are flying today in Gaza that read: "The blood of martyrs has led to liberation." They are the banners of the popular militant Palestinian group Hamas, and they enunciate an unpleasant truth that proponents of the so called peace process would be well advised to ponder. Translated from the language of hagiography, the message of the banners is blazingly transparent: Terrorism works. It gets us what we want. Look what the intifada was able to achieve: the liberation of Gaza. Just think what more terrorism can do for our cause. If the blood of martyrs has led to the liberation of Gaza, may we not expect the blood of martyrs to lead to the liberation of Jerusalem. As the popular Palestinian T-shirt says, "Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem."

Now there may be all sorts of good reasons for the Israelis to order the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza strip, just as there may be all sorts of good reasons for the Bush administration to consider this as a step forward on the famous roadmap of what we are fond of calling the peace process. But all these good reasons notwithstanding, it is still necessary for us to grasp the fact that, from the Palestinian perspective, the liberation of Gaza is a triumph for those who were willing to blow themselves up (along with any innocent bystanders) in the name of the liberation of Palestine. Furthermore, it is equally necessary for us to realize that it would be insane for the Palestinians to interpret the Gaza pull out as anything other than a victory for those among them who urged violent resistance as opposed to negotiated settlements.

A child who has discovered that by screaming at the top of his lungs he can bring his parents to make concession to him is apt to continue to deploy the same policy whenever his parents attempt to thwart his will. He has learned a trick that infallibly works for him, and why should he abandon the use of this trick so long as it brings him success?

Conclusion: America is pro Roe v. Wade. But what that means varies greatly; individuals draw the prochoice line in different places.

Why? Antiabortion advocates successfully altered public opinion. Science and medical technology changed it as well. Also, the women's rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s is not the driving social force it once was. And frankly, abortion rights activists cried wolf too often.

"All the passion is on the other side," said Michael Goldman, a longtime Democratic political consultant who now works as the liberal host of a radio talk show for Bloomberg News....

The Democratic Party is trying to readjust its message. In the last presidential campaign, Senator John Kerry tried to walk a line between a prochoice record and a campaign statement that he believes that life begins at conception. In a speech this year, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York endorsed legal abortion, but said fewer abortions should be everyone's goal.

What should NARAL's message be? "We need to be promoting civil but thorough dialogue," said Melissa Kogut, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, which played no role in the development of the anti-Roberts ad. "The public is behind us. They care about Roe v. Wade and they want a justice who is open-minded and is not going to overturn it....We have our work cut out for us. We have to make people understand what's at stake."

The American vision for Middle East peace sees exit from Gaza as a first step. Next comes an Israeli withdrawal from those settlements in the West Bank that aren't already de facto parts of Israel, and then the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

These concessions are wildly unpopular with people who once voted for Mr. Sharon. Many of them spent the day in Gaza loudly denouncing the prime minister and his policies. Mr. Sharon's chief Likud Party rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, is currently trying to capitalize on this by warning that abandoned territories will inevitably turn into bases of Islamic terror. Mr. Netanyahu offers Gaza as Exhibit A.

Mr. Netanyahu may well be right, and Mr. Sharon knows it. But the deal Mr. Sharon cut with President Bush takes that into account. It comes with an escape clause. Further Israeli concessions are predicated on the Palestinian Authority -- led by President Mahmoud Abbas -- taking control and disarming the Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas gunmen.

You say you don't have a problem (or at least a legal problem) with the man withdrawing his kids from saying the pledge. Why is that? I would think you would be saying the pledge is sacred or something or other.

In my case, I have no problem at all with the words "under God" in the pledge. But pledging your full fledged allegiance to a nation which might sometimes claim or even try to follow God, but is inevitably imperfect and flawed, is a scarier though. I think our nation has a lot of good qualities for our citizens that other places don't have. But for one moment to put more trust in a legal establishment where the rulers many times become corrupt is far scarier than saying that this nation is "under God."

The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained.

"My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.

The "Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative" is still in its early stages, scientists told the Boston Sunday Globe. Harvard has told the research team to make plans for adding faculty members and a collection of multimillion-dollar facilities....

Harvard has not been seen as a leader in origins of life research, but the university's vast resources could change that perception.

"It is quite gratifying to see Harvard is going for a solution to a problem that will be remembered 100 years from now," said Steven Benner, a University of Florida scientist who is one of the world's top chemists in origins-of-life research.

Human beings, in nearly all cultures, have long engaged in a rather strange activity. They have taken a literary text, given it special status and attempted to live according to its precepts. These texts are usually of considerable antiquity yet they are expected to throw light on situations that their authors could not have imagined. In times of crisis, people turn to their scriptures with renewed zest and, with much creative ingenuity, compel them to speak to their current predicament. We are seeing a great deal of scriptural activity at the moment.

This is ironic, because the concept of scripture has become problematic in the modern period. The Scopes trial of 1925, when Christian fundamentalists in the United States tried to ban the teaching of evolution in the public schools, and the more recent affair of The Satanic Verses, both reveal deep-rooted anxiety about the nature of revelation and the integrity of sacred texts. People talk confidently about scripture, but it is not clear that even the most ardent religious practitioners really know what it is.

Protestant fundamentalists, for example, claim that they read the Bible in the same way as the early Christians, but their belief that it is literally true in every detail is a recent innovation, formulated for the first time in the late 19th century. Before the modern period, Jews, Christians and Muslims all relished highly allegorical interpretations of scripture. The word of God was infinite and could not be tied down to a single interpretation. Preoccupation with literal truth is a product of the scientific revolution, when reason achieved such spectacular results that mythology was no longer regarded as a valid path to knowledge.

A suit filed by Edward Myers of Sterling, Va., a father of three, raised the objection to the phrase "one nation under God."

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the pledge is a patriotic exercise, not an affirmation of religion similar to a prayer.

"Undoubtedly, the pledge contains a religious phrase, and it is demeaning to persons of any faith to assert that the words 'under God' contain no religious significance," Judge Karen Williams wrote. "The inclusion of those two words, however, does not alter the nature of the pledge as a patriotic activity."

Myers' attorney, David Remes, said the 4th Circuit judges failed to examine the pledge's effect on children.

"The problem is that young schoolchildren are quite likely to view the pledge as affirming the existence of God and national subordination to God," Remes said. "The reference to God is one of the few things in the pledge that children understand."

Remes said he and his client had not yet discussed whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

First we need a definition of science. Unfortunately there is no one universally accepted definition. However, some things are widely accepted. A good definition should not just describe science, but also tell us what makes it unique. The definition I favor here does that. It is also substantially the same as the one proposed by Ian G. Barbour in his book, "Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues".
1) Science must rely only on data that is public and/or reproducible. Other forms of evidence may be perfectly valid in other human endeavors, for example testimony in law. But science must restrict itself to verifiable data inputs.
2) Science should make no other assumptions beyond the assumptions it needs in order for inductive and deductive logic to operate. That is - science should induce things from data, and make logical deductions to demonstrate what is probable about nature, but make no assumptions beyond that.
3) Other things we could say about science may be useful in describing it, but they will not tell us what makes science unique.

...

Even if we allow that "design" should be valid type of scientific explanation, stopping with that would not be widely accepted as science. And most importantly, without the assumption of Dualism evidence of design is not evidence against evolution. By presenting evidence of design as evidence that explicitly contradicts evolution, Intelligent Design advocates are implicitly advocating an unstated philosophy of Dualism, a basis of traditional monotheistic religion.

An ideological war is being fought in the US over the school curriculum. In one camp are believers in Evolution, the theory that humanity appeared on the Earth by a process of natural selection.They have the full weight of scientific evidence on their side. In the other camp are Creationists, those who believe the Bible holds the key to explaining our origins. They have the President on their side. Last week, for the first time, George Bush made public his view that 'intelligent design' -- a quasi-scientific awe that puts God at the centre -- should be taught alongside evolution. Darwin, in other words, should be seen as one idea among many.

Most scientists and teachers in Britain see the US debate as a curious byproduct of a society more fanatically religious than our own. But Creationism is crossing the Atlantic....Faith-based schools are not new. Indeed, the Church is one of the oldest teaching institutions in the land. Religious communities of various faiths have always wanted to help provide education for their children. But no amount of money or lobbying power will make Creationism right. At its core is the belief that the Book of Genesis is a literal description of the beginnings of the universe. To teach this as fact is wrong and mocks centuries of scientific progress.

''Intelligent design" boils down to the claim sarcastically summed up by aerospace engineer and science consultant Rand Simberg on his blog, Transterrestrial Musings: ''I'm not smart enough to figure out how this structure could evolve, therefore there must have been a designer." Simberg, a political conservative, concludes that this argument ''doesn't belong in a science classroom, except as an example of what's not science."...

Is evolutionary theory a vehicle for anti-God ideas? One of the more extreme ''theo-conservatives," National Review writer David Klinghoffer, has even argued that evolution should be regarded as a doctrine of the ''religion" of secularism. But this is nonsense; plenty of people who follow traditional religions do accept evolution. Yes, some champions of evolution such as British scientist Richard Dawkins are militant atheists, but there were militant atheists long before Darwin....

If some public school teachers are using evolution as a vehicle for atheist propaganda, that's outrageous, and a proper matter for school boards to deal with. If schools want to offer classes on religion and philosophy that explain religious views of the origins of life, fine. But to make science classrooms a platform for a pseudoscience whose sole intent is to counter ''godless" natural selection is a travesty of both science and faith. And this effort may well alienate many scientifically literate people from the Republican Party and conservatism, making the caricature of evolution as left-wing dogma a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Scientists hold many different interpretations of the significance of Darwinism. The evidence at its best explains how and why certain species change, survive or become extinct. There are holes in the theory, as intellectually honest scientists -- including Darwin himself -- have always readily conceded. Intelligent design, on the other hand, depends not on evidence but belief. Religious values, like fashion, depend on belief in "the designer."

What this debate shows is how intellectuals, so called, are quick to ridicule religious folk, much in the way that Bishop Wilberforce made fun of Huxley. If religion was once regarded as the key to history, as Lord Acton observed, "in today's intellectual circles ... it's more like the skunk at the table," as Os Guinness recalls in the Wilson Quarterly. He advocates a public discussion of religion in American life today as a way to get a firmer grasp of the way that religious belief, whether the Darwinians like it or not, has shaped who we are, where we came from, where we're going. The debate over "intelligent design" vs. Darwinism, as demonstrated by the furor over the president's innocent remarks, is not likely to evolve into such a discussion. More's the pity.

Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures, but in certain specific times and places -- mostly in Britain and America, but also in various parts of Europe.

In America, as in Britain, multiculturalism has become the fashion in large swathes of our society. So the Founding Fathers are presented only as slaveholders, World War II is limited to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the bombing of Hiroshima. Slavery is identified with America, though it has existed in every society and the antislavery movement arose first among English-speaking evangelical Christians.

But most Americans know there is something special about our cultural heritage. While Harvard and Brown are replacing scholars of the founding period with those studying other things, book-buyers are snapping up first-rate histories of the Founders by David McCullough, Joseph Ellis and Ron Chernow.

Mutilculturalist intellectuals do not think our kind of society is worth defending. But millions here and increasing numbers in Britain and other countries know better.

What's going on in this man's head? First he says abortion is an option women should have. Then he votes to ban PBA. Then he votes against Roe. Then he says he doesn't want the federal government meddling in abortion decisions generally. Then he endorses embryo-destructive research....

In all of Frist's years in the Senate, this is the only time he speaks of a "right to life" during a discussion of abortion legislation. But he doesn't attribute this right to all unborn children. He attributes it to those that are "mature." Maybe, in his view, a fetus that has matured to the point of a PBA has earned that right. Maybe he objects to Roe because he thinks the same is true of late second-trimester fetuses -- or maybe he just thinks states should be allowed to ban most abortions, though he personally wouldn't. Either way, it's clear from his speeches on stem-cell research that he doesn't think embryos have matured enough. His policy would leave embryos to what he calls, in the abortion context, "human whim." And the government would pay for the use of their remains.

Now, however, Frist says that only 22 stem cell lines, of uncertain and declining quality, remain eligible for federal funding. So he endorses the House legislation that would expand federal funding of research. But it would encompass only cells from surplus embryos that have been created in vitro and frozen for couples who, having completed their fertility enhancement, donate them for research. These embryos would otherwise remain frozen or be destroyed.

The legislation would not allow funding for research on cells derived from embryos created for the purpose of harvesting cells. Nevertheless, many thoughtful people fear that the House-passed legislation puts the nation's foot on a slippery slope leading to such a commodification of life.

Life, however, is lived on a slippery slope: Taxation could become confiscation; police could become gestapos. But the benefits from taxation and police make us willing to wager that our judgment can stop slides down dangerous slopes.

Of course the president is right that, in the context of a philosophical debate, it would be appropriate to discuss both sides of an issue before arriving at a conclusion. In the context of a religious discussion, it would also be very interesting to ponder whether the human race exists on Earth for a purpose or merely by accident. But the proponents of intelligent design are not content with participating in a philosophical or religious debate. They want their theory to be accepted as science and to be taught in ninth-grade biology classes, alongside the theory of evolution. For that, there is no basis whatsoever: The nature of the "evidence" for the theory of evolution is so overwhelming, and so powerful, that it informs all of modern biology. To pretend that the existence of evolution is somehow still an open question, or that it is one of several equally valid theories, is to misunderstand the intellectual and scientific history of the past century.

Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schonborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schonborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation....

How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.

President Bush waded into the debate over evolution and ''intelligent design" yesterday, saying schools should teach both theories on the creation and complexity of life....

Bush declined to state his personal views on ''intelligent design," the belief that life forms are so complex that their creation cannot be explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory alone, but rather points to intentional creation, presumably divine.

The theory of evolution, first articulated by British naturalist Charles Darwin in 1859, is based on the idea that life organisms developed over time through random mutations and factors in nature that favored certain traits that helped species survive.

Scientists concede that evolution does not answer every question about the creation of life, but most consider intelligent design an attempt to inject religion into science courses.

Bush compared the current debate to earlier disputes over ''creationism," a related view that adheres more closely to biblical explanations. As governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution.

The president said yesterday that he favors the same approach for intelligent design ''so people can understand what the debate is about."

Yes, any inquiry related to a nominee's religion risks being seen as a form of bigotry, and of course there should be no "religious tests." This nomination will properly be settled on other issues, particularly Roberts's views on the court's right to void economic, labor and environmental laws. Most Democrats will, in any event, run far away from any religious questions.

But why are we so afraid of acknowledging the obvious? At this moment in our history, religion is playing an important part in our public debates. If Roberts's religious views are important to him, why should they be off-limits to honest discussion?...

Conservatives have long argued, correctly, that religiously inspired voices have a legitimate place in the public square. Limiting religion to the private sphere relegates it to what the theologian David Tracy has called the "harmless reservations of the spirit."

But if religion is to play a serious role in politics, believers have to accept the obligation to explain themselves publicly. That's why it would be helpful if Roberts gave an account of how (and whether) his religious convictions would affect his decisions as a justice. President Bush has spoken about the political implications of his faith. His nominee should not be afraid to do the same.

Everyone knows the Supreme Court ruled that one kind of Ten Commandments display on government property is unconstitutional, but that another kind is acceptable. But no one -- including the Supreme Court itself -- seems to be able to explain why....

The Court stands on shifting sa