Confiscation of Science Books

ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 21 /U.S. Newswire/ — A simmering yearlong dispute over the Gull Lake Community School District superintendent’s order that seventh grade science teachers teach Darwin’s theory of evolution and his confiscation of thirty copies of the book Of Pandas and People, which the teachers had been using for the past two years as a supplemental text supporting the theory of intelligent design, may soon end up in a federal court.

For the past two years, science teachers, Dawn Wendzel and Julie Olson, have been spending part of their classroom instruction teaching the theory of Intelligent Design alongside the theory of evolution. However, this past Fall they were told that they could no longer teach intelligent design, they could not teach the controversy between the theory of evolution and intelligent design and that they could only teach the scientific evidence for evolution.

The Theory of Intelligent Design, accepted by a growing number of credible scientists, holds that “intelligent causes” are necessary to explain the complex information- rich structures of biology and that these causes are empirically detectable.

The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on April 14, 2004, sent a six-page letter ( http://www.usnewswire.com/attach/gull_lake.pdf ) to the school board asking that the books be returned to the classrooms and that the teachers be allowed to teach the theory of intelligent design as they had been. The school board has been given fourteen days to respond.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Law Center commented, “This may turn into the Scopes Monkey trial in reverse. Now that Darwinism has achieved dominance, it is being forced on all teachers regardless of gaps in the theory or the scientific evidence to the contrary. The actions of the Gull Lake superintendent not only violates the academic freedom of teachers to teach their subject, but also the freedom of their students to receive important information on the growing controversy surrounding the theory of evolution. Confiscation of the books the superintendent doesn’t like smacks of “book burning.”

Continued Thompson, “This is not a case of science versus religion, but science versus science.”

Since the late 1950s advances in biochemistry and microbiology, information that Darwin was not privy to in the 1850’s, have revealed that the machine like complexity of living cells – the fundamental unit of life- possess the ability to store, edit, transmit and use information so as to regulate biological systems. This suggests that the theory of intelligent design offers the best explanation for the origin of life and living cells.

The Thomas More Law Center is already defending a Dover, PA school district, which adopted a policy to make students aware of Intelligent Design, against an ACLU lawsuit.

U.S. Newswire : Releases : “Lawsuit Threatened Over Confiscation of Science Books…”: “Lawsuit Threatened Over Confiscation of Science Books on Intelligent Design, Order That Teachers Teach Evolution as A Fact

4/21/2005 12:09:00 PM”