Please read "The problem with using the term "Darwinism" and why I had to use it in the title of the petition" for clarification on the title of the petition

Read the original on the PrNewWire Press Release page

NEWS RELEASE

October 19, 2005

THOUSANDS OF SCIENTISTS SIGN PETITION
OPPOSING THE TEACHING OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN AS SCIENCE

No Debate Among Scientists Regardless of Faith, Intelligent Design Is Not Science.

Archaeologist R. Joe Brandon has organized a massive four-day online campaign in the scientific community in response to the Discovery Institute’s ongoing efforts to include Intelligent Design content in public school science classes. The petition, at www.ShovelBums.org, was circulated between September 28^th and October 1^st to scientists trained in evolutionary theory and gave them an opportunity to publicly state that Intelligent Design should not be taught in public schools within the science curriculum. The results were overwhelming—7,733 signatories, more than half of whom are scientists with Ph.Ds. “I organized this project as a response to the Discovery Institute's four-year petition initiative which gathered only 400 scientist signatures opposing evolution and promoting Intelligent Design as a scientific theory,” said Brandon. “During my short, four-day campaign, I received about 20 times as many signatures at a rate 690,000% higher than what Discovery Institute can claim.”

Scientists who signed the petition, including 21 National Academy of Science members, nine MacArthur “genius” awardees, and a Nobel laureate, object to efforts to place Intelligent Design on par with scientific theory, Brandon said. Signatory Dr. Steve Brill of Rutgers University agrees. “To be called a scientific theory, Intelligent Design must be at the very least, disprovable. Since there is no way for Intelligent Design to be disproved, it fails the simplest test of scientific theory,”.

Michael Behe, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, is often at the center of the controversy pushing for ID’s acceptance. Yet, twenty of his peers at Lehigh University remarked collectively that "As Michael J. Behe’s faculty colleagues… we lend our voices to the chorus of nearly all scientists who conclude that ‘Intelligent Design’ is not a scientific theory, but rather a loosely veiled attempt to explain natural phenomena by invoking the concept of a supernatural entity. Intelligent Design is not a scientific alternative to Darwinian evolution and has no place in the biology classroom."

The Discovery Institute introduced a "Friend of the Court" brief in the ongoing Kitzmiller v. Dover case on October 3^rd in an attempt to divert attention from the fact that scientists agree that there is no scientific theory in Intelligent Design. The brief, signed by a comparatively scant 85 scientists, asserts that “the nature of science is not a question to be decided by the courts.” . Signatory and biologist Mark Siddall of the American Museum of Natural History replied, "This is not a fight about what the nature of science is. Scientists have already determined that. It's a fight about what our daughters and sons will be taught is the nature of science." Siddall, who helped Brandon analyze the massive response to the petition, added, "R. Joe's efforts elicited an overwhelming response from the scientific community—one that cut across lines of faith as deeply as it did across fields of scientific study."

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