2/11/2006

Sanford OK with intelligent design

Sees theory as alternative to evolution

By Chris Dixon

The Post and Courier

Gov. Mark Sanford sees no problem with teaching intelligent design in the classroom.

In an appearance Sunday on WIS-TV's "Newswatch" program, Sanford said there's nothing wrong with presenting students with alternatives to the theory of evolution.

"I think that it's just ... that there are real chinks in the armor of evolution being the only way we came about," Sanford told program host David Stanton.

Intelligent design posits that life on earth is too complex to be fully explained by evolutionary theory alone.

Final approval of state biology standards hinges on whether South Carolina's Education Oversight Committee will adopt a set of four teaching "indicators" related to the teaching of evolution for high school biology students.

Final approval of these indicators will be taken up Feb. 13 by the full committee. Members - including director Robert Staton, a Republican candidate for state school superintendent; Sen. Mike Fair, R-Greenville, and Rep. Robert Walker, R-Landrum - argue that the state should consider including intelligent design, and in Walker's case biblical Creationism, in the science curriculum.

Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer reiterated the governor's position. "What the governor said is simply that different people believe different things, and that we should have an educational system that recognizes and responds to the diversity of beliefs that exist among the people of South Carolina."

But intelligent design isn't provable by experimentation and thus doesn't meet a definition for a teachable science topic, according to College of Charleston physics professor Bob Dukes and biology associate professor Robert Dillon Jr.

Dillon is a founding member of South Carolinians for Science Education, which a group of scientists and educators formed after state legislators made statements similar to Sanford's and in an effort to address contention over the final approval of state biology teaching standards.

The pair took the governor to task for his televised statements. They argued that there aren't "chinks" in the armor of evolution, and said a later citation of the second law of thermodynamics was taken out of context.

In his Sunday statement, for example, the governor said, "The idea of there being a, you know, a little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being is completely at odds with, you know, one of the laws of thermodynamics."

"That's what the governor is confused about," Dukes said. "The earth is not a closed system and we can get order from disorder."

In December an intelligent design teaching measure in Dover, Pa., was struck down by a federal judge, who decried the school board's "breathtaking inanity." Dillon said Sanford and others were leading South Carolina down a similar path toward a lawsuit.

Transcript of the governor's statements on intelligent design on WIS-TV's "Newswatch."

David Stanton: What do you think about the idea of teaching alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution in public schools - for instance intelligent design?

Gov. Sanford: I have no problem with it.

Stanton: Do you think it should be done that way? Rather than just teaching evolution?

Sanford: "Well I think that it's just - and science is more and more documenting this - is that there are real chinks in the armor of evolution being the only way we came about. The idea of there being a . little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being is completely at odds with . one of the laws of thermodynamics, which is the law of, of . in essence, destruction.

"Whether you think about your bedroom and how messy it gets over time or you think about the decay in the building itself over time. Things don't naturally order themselves towards progression, . in the natural order of things. So it's . against fairly basic laws of physics and so I would not have a problem in teaching both. Uh, you saying 'This is one theory and this is another theory.'"

Contact Chris Dixon at cdixon@postandcourier.com or 745-5855.