Old row sparks new intelligent design debate

Eighty-five years ago two of America's most famous litigators clashed in a titanic courtroom battle. The 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial pitted prosecutor William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow, who was defending John T. Scopes against the state of Tennessee. The sensational trial, the first to be broadcast on radio, aroused passionate interest.

The contest dramatised a fundamental conflict. What was the place of religion in a society that embraced the separation of church and state?

Scopes, a high school teacher, had taught evolution to his students. This violated a law that forbade teaching "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals".

He lost. However, the US Supreme Court soon overturned the Tennessee statute and Scopes was acquitted. It seemed that ultimate victory lay with evolution.

Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1859 but the debate about evolution still rages in the US. Scientists may have been persuaded by Darwin's theory, but deeply religious Americans who believe in Adam and Eve reject evidence that humans are evolved from apes.

Now another controversial court case in a rural backwater is drawing national attention. It asks if intelligent design (ID) - a theory that challenges Darwin by insisting life is so complex it must have been created by a supernatural force - should be taught in public schools.

President Bush is all for ID - "part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought" he told reporters in August - and like the religious right, his core support group, wants it taught in classrooms.

Opponents argue that as an alternative explanation for life's origins, ID will undermine science. Indeed, Bush's support - as against his opposition to stem cell research - is seen by critics as another twist in his administration's relentless efforts to dumb down science.

The struggle has been simmering for several years. Usually the battle lines are local school boards where followers try to influence policy. Several states have also proposed laws mandating ID as a school subject.

This week the fight broke cover in a federal courtroom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The case has aroused national interest and is being widely covered by the media.

The trial, which is expected to last six weeks, was triggered after the board of the Dover Area School District voted 6 to 3 to introduce ID as a ninth-grade biology subject. The majority said Darwin's theory had "gaps" and should "be tested as new evidence is discovered". As such, ID posed an alternative theory to the origin of life and should be taught.

Angry parents, who believe that religion should be taught at home, have filed a lawsuit. The case has divided the small rural community. It has also emerged as a front in the bitter US "culture wars", combustible issues such as abortion, school prayer and gay marriage that mirror the political divisions between conservative red and liberal blue states.

The dissenters are backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which cites the 1987 US Supreme Court ruling that says teaching creationism "endorses religion" and is thus unconstitutional. "We're fighting for the first amendment, the separation of church and state, and the integrity of schools," an ACLU lawyer told the Los Angeles Times. Wags have dubbed the Pennsylvania case "Scopes 2". Echoes of the 1925 faith versus science case abound. While the Thomas More Law Centre, a Christian firm acting for the defence, touts itself as "the sword and shield for people of faith", the ACLU attacks ID as pseudo-science.

ID advocates at the Discovery Institute's Centre for the Renewal of Science and Culture [CRSC], a conservative think tank, include a biologist, a biochemist, and a law professor, Phillip Johnson, whose 1991 book, Darwin on Trial, is a key text.

So, what is ID's purpose? "The object is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism versus evolution to the existence of God versus the non-existence of God," Johnson wrote in 1999, admitting this was an overture to introducing people "to the 'truth' of the Bible".

Ultimately, the trial reflects the clash of faith and reason in America. Given the constitutional, political, religious, and education issues at stake, the reverberations of the first legal challenge to teaching ID will be felt far from the courtroom. Whichever side wins, this closely watched drama will likely go all the way to the US Supreme Court.