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RUNNING HEAD: INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Intelligent Design Paper
James L. Jones
CRJ 311 Forensics
Mrs. Rebecca Nieman
Nov 17, 2012

Good evening everyone. My name is Mr. James Jones the superintendent of the El Paso County school district and the topic that I will be discussing in today’s speech is the concern of thought of being intelligent design into the school system. The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the idea of intelligent design, which asserts that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a possibly undirected process such as natural selection. Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The movement arose out of the previous Christian fundamentalist and evangelistic creation science movement in the United States, and is driven by a small group of proponents. The overall goal of the intelligent design movement is to overthrow materialism and atheism. Its proponents believe that society has suffered devastating cultural consequences from adopting materialism and that science is the cause of the decay into materialism because it seeks only natural explanations, and is therefore atheistic. Many believe that the theory of evolution implies that humans have no spiritual nature, no moral purpose, and no intrinsic meaning. They seek to defeat the materialist world view represented by the theory of evolution in favor of a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.
The overarching goal of the Institute in conducting the intelligent design campaigns is religious; to replace science with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions. To accomplish this Institute has conducted a number of public relations campaigns. The governing strategy of these various campaigns is called the Wedge strategy and was first made public when the Institute's Wedge Document was leaked on the World Wide Web in 1999. The Discovery Institute argues that science, due to its reliance on naturalism, is an inherently materialistic and atheistic enterprise and thus the source of many of society's ills, and that Design theory intelligent design promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview.
The previously, attempts to introduce creationism into public high school science curricula had been derailed when this was found to have violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In an attempt to avoid repeating this violation, the Institute today avoids directly advocating for intelligent design in high school curricula. Instead, it advocates teaching methods that introduce intelligent design ideas and textbooks have indirectly through a campaign to "Teach the Controversy" by portraying evolution as a theory in crisis and presenting all the evidence, both for and against, evolution and teaching the Critical Analysis of Evolution.
In the Edwards v. Aguillard Case, (1987) was a legal case about the teaching of creationism that was heard by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1987. The Court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring that creation science be taught in public schools, along with evolution, was unconstitutional because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion. It also held that teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction (http:supreme.justia.com).
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.
During most of the 20th century, the Supreme Court held primarily to a separationist interpretation of the establishment clause. Recent Supreme Court decisions indicate that there may be a gradual shift to a mild accommodationist position in the coming years with respect to private school vouchers, federal funding for faith-based charities, and symbolic or historical affirmations of religious heritage such as: under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, or in God we trust (http:civilliberty.about.com).
The phrase wall of separation between Church and State continues to define the popular meaning of the establishment clause.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution begins with the phrase Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. This phrase is referred to as the establishment clause. Although the establishment clause and the Free exercise clause together stand for the principle of religious freedom, the two clauses are potentially in conflict ( Davis,2008).
If evolution is taught in public school science classes, shouldn't other theories about the origins and development of life also be taught at the same time? Isn't the focus on just one idea narrow-minded? Some believe that it is and therefore argue that there should be balance, if one theory evolution about life is taught, then the other theory creationism should also be taught.
In the Edwards v. Aguillard Case, Louisiana had passed a Creationism Act which prohibited any teaching of evolution in public schools unless the course also included the teaching of biblical creationism.
Neither of the two topics was actually required to be taught, but the former could not be presented without being accompanied with the latter, this is what is known as a Balanced Treatment program because it is designed to establish balance in how the origins of life are discussed in public schools. This was challenged by a group of parents for violating the Establishment Clause. According to them, any requirement of teaching creationism is an impermissible support of religion (http:atheism.about.com).

So as my speech concludes we are absent with what many people feel to be a very surprising conclusion? Was that the life was designed by an intelligent agent? In a way, though, all of the progress of science over the last several hundred years has been a steady march toward the strange. The floor is now open for any questions that you may have pertaining to intelligent design?

References
Davis, S. (2008). Corwin and Peltason’s understanding the Constitution (17th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth Publishing. http://civilliberty.about.com/od/religiousliberty/a/establishment.htm http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/482/578/case.html
http://atheism.about.com/library/decisions/evo/bldec_EdwardsAguillard.htm