Darwinism:

Emboldened by the important role social conservatives played in the re-election of Bush, believers in the biblical account of man’s origins are redoubling their efforts to have it made an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools.

Intelligent design tries to skirt the church vs. state line by theorising that the sheer complexity of organisms requires an intelligent designer. God is not mentioned explicitly. The principal exponent of the view is a Seattle-based organisation called the Discovery Institute. It wants the public to believe that peer-reviewed science backs up this explanation for the development of man and other species, but that is not the case. Critics of Darwinism make much of saying it is only a theory. But it is one that has stood the test of scientific inquiry and brings together a wealth of observable phenomena. Among scientists, there is disagreement about the pace of species development and about the events that caused the extinctions of species. But biologists do not challenge the basic genius of Darwin’s discovery. US students have trouble enough keeping up with their counterparts in foreign lands in mastering the sciences. In biology, they should not have to contend with religion-based efforts of misinformation. Genesis has a place in comparative religion classes, not public school science classes. — The Boston Globe