Religion & Law

Darwin's theory of natural selection plays a key role in most Lehigh Valley public school science curricula.

None of the public schools interviewed for this article includes the controversial idea of intelligent design, a theory that living organisms are so complex a higher power must have created them.

"The only place I would see a place for it in the curriculum would be if we had a comparative religions class," said Bethlehem Area School District Science Supervisor Eric Smith. "It is not really science so we keep it out of the science curriculum."

Behe said he believes intelligent design is an empirical conclusion based on the physical evidence of life that's been discovered in the last 50 years.

"It might be friendly to some religions but it comes through empirical reasoning, observation and experiment," said Behe, who testified in the 2005 Dover Area School District intelligent design trial.

Scientific ideas are constantly evolving and things that half a century ago seemed impossible, such as the genetic code, are now accepted, Behe said.

"There is no reason other than prejudice to deny intelligence in biology," he said.

There is no controversy," Smith said. "Intelligent design is not a scientific theory. I didn't teach 'Hamlet' in my physics class because it's not physics."

Behe said he feels students should be given "the blunt truth" that there are many ideas out there.