The efforts of conservative Christians to undermine any science that might challenge their religious beliefs continues to move at full speed. It's even being noticed in other nations and people abroad find the entire situation just as ridiculous as scientists in America do.

According to The Economist:

[I]f intelligent design has few friends among scientists, it has won a significant following among the general public. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, evolution itself seems to stick in the craw of anyone with strong beliefs...

Religious conservatives have a special reason for disliking natural selection. There may be nothing necessarily anti-Christian about Darwin's theory (which was hailed by Charles Kingsley, a contemporary clergyman, as evidence of the majesty of God), but if God has a plan for the world and everyone in it, as most American Protestants and President George Bush say they believe, then it is much easier to imagine evolution occurring under divine guidance than as a result of random mutations and the survival of the fittest. By providing an explanation consistent with those beliefs, intelligent design has proved tempting to conservative Christians everywhere, not just in America....

Second, though there has been no big increase in opposition to evolution, there is enough to be going on with without it. Two-thirds of Americans think humans were directly created by God (as opposed to 22% who think people “evolved from an earlier species”). Half do not think apes and men had a common ancestor.

It might be easier to think of evolution proceeding under “divine guidance,” but the author of this article should have realized that the belief that humans were specially created by God exactly as they are right now contradicts evolution, whether under divine guidance or otherwise. A significant number of Americans reject evolution outright.

Whichever way the argument over intelligent design is finally resolved, it is likely to damage science teaching. This is not because bad science standards will necessarily be adopted but because...the biggest threat to high standards is the unwillingness of state Boards of Education to offend any sort of pressure group, whether right or left. Instead, they avoid controversial topics altogether. In 2000, a survey by the Fordham Foundation found that only ten states taught evolution fully, six did so skimpily and in 13 the treatment was considered useless or absent. (Kansas received an F minus, and “disgraceful”.) These failings shame American evolution teaching, and the manufactured controversy over intelligent design will do nothing to make them better.

This is the situation that proponents of Intelligent Design want to see: naturalistic, materialistic science cut out of schools in order to avoid giving offense to ignorant Christians who believe everything that the Christian Right spews out about evolution. What The Economist fails to explain, however, is the long-term political and social agenda which the Intelligent Design movement has. That is a significant error on their part and it really doesn’t make sense — unless, of course, part of their purpose is to discredit the science of Intelligent Design without impugning those religious goals as well.

Read More:

• Evolution vs. Creationism
• Science vs. Religion
• What is Science?