Saturday, September 17, 2005

Nobel Prize Winners Support Teaching Evolution

Thirty-eight Nobel laureates led by Holocaust survivor and noted author Elie Wiesel have turned their attention to the Kansas State Board of Education.

The Nobel Prize winners are asking the board to reject science standards that criticize evolution.

In a letter to the board released Thursday, the group of leading scientists and thinkers from around the world said Darwinian evolution was the foundation of biology.

“ ... its indispensable role has been further strengthened by the capacity to study DNA,” the group wrote.

The conservative majority on the State Board of Education have accepted science standards that were proposed by proponents of intelligent design, which holds that the complexities of life point toward evidence of a master planner. A final vote on the standards is expected in October or November.

The Nobel winners, however, said intelligent design could not be tested as a scientific theory “because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent.”

The group said it wanted to defend science and reject “efforts by the proponents of so-called intelligent design to politicize scientific inquiry.”

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