Nobel Laureates urge rejection of intelligent design
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Lawrence Journal-World
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/sep/15/nobel_laureates_urge_rejection_intelligent_design/?breakingTOPEKA  A group of 38 Nobel Laureates headed by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel have asked the Kansas State Board of Education to reject science standards that criticize evolution.
In a letter to the board released today, the group from several countries said Darwinian evolution is the foundation of biology.
“ … its indispensable role has been further strengthened by the capacity to study DNA,†the group wrote. (See entire letter.)
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 cannot be tested as a scientific theory “because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent.â€Â
The Nobel winners also said science and faith are not mutually exclusive.
The signers of the letter from the New York-based Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity includes leading physicists, chemists and medical experts. Wiesel earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
This is remarkable. Note the part of the letter that the LJW article left out:
Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.
Evolution is an “unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.” Unguided? Unplanned? Eugenie Scott, where are you? Didn’t you advise these people? Whatever happened to evolution and religion not being in conflict?
As one of my colleagues notes: “Ironically, these scientists have just provided key ammunition to the Kansas board on one of the disputed points of the new science standards. The evolutionists in Kansas are up in arms about the proposed definition of evolution in Kansas because it posits evolution as unguided and unplanned. Evolutionists in Kansas rightly fear that such a definition sounds anti-religious. So here a group of Nobel laureates come and use the very definition evolutionists in Kansas want eliminated! The Nobel laureates have come to the rescue of the Kansas board and they don’t even know it!”
Let’s hope this isn’t a hoax.