Creation

The glass display case, soon to be filled with a variety of finches, could be in any natural history museum. It is set among exhibits on frogs and lizards, across from a gift shop and a diorama of life in ancient times. But this is something different: the Creation Museum, a $27-million destination that is expected, on its Memorial Day opening, to bring a new level of high-tech polish to argument against evolution.

A school board rescinded its policy of presenting "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in high school biology classes, two weeks after a federal judge found the concept was religious and not scientific. There was no discussion by members of the Dover Area School Board before the voice vote. The original policy, approved in October 2004, required that a statement be read to students about intelligent design before ninth-grade lessons on evolution.

A group of parents in the small Tehachapi mountain community of Lebec on Tuesday filed the first lawsuit challenging the teaching of "intelligent design" in a California public school. The suit targets what appears to be the latest wrinkle in the continuing national fight between supporters and opponents of teaching evolution in public schools -- a course that says it examines the debate as an issue of "philosophy."

Tucked in the raw folds of the Tehachapi Mountains, 63 miles north of Los Angeles and a time warp away in ambience, this town is not used to being the center of attention. But this far-flung place, one of half a dozen close-knit communities in these mountains, has become the latest focal point in the national debate over teaching "intelligent design" in public schools. Usually, big news in the region is heavy snow shutting down Interstate 5.

In a second defeat in a month for proponents of teaching "intelligent design" in public schools, a rural school district in Kern County agreed Tuesday to stop a course that had included discussion of a religion-based alternative to evolution. As part of a court settlement, Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec will terminate the course one week earlier than planned, and the El Tejon Unified School District agreed never to offer such a course in its classrooms again.

Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as a sinister tangle of lies. "Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, \o7were you there\f7?' Can you remember that?"

Three years after it first pushed science teachers to raise doubts about evolution, the Ohio Board of Education reversed course Tuesday, voting 11 to 4 to drop a much-disputed curriculum standard that became a model for several other states. In 2002, the board voted to require Ohio's 10th-graders to learn how "scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory."

The spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans does not believe that creationism should be taught in schools. "I don't think it should, actually. No, no," said Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, reflecting on the education debate over religion and science that has divided the United States.

Foes of Kansas' controversial science standards that recommend questioning evolution appeared to have ousted one of its most vocal supporters Tuesday night, paving the way for the state board of education to reverse the policy. The conservative school board last year passed the standards, which recommend teaching alternative theories to evolution, by a 6-4 vote. Moderates challenged three of the conservatives in the Republican primary but were unable to oust two.

Pope Benedict XVI has appointed a new director of the Vatican Observatory, replacing the Rev. George Coyne, a vocal opponent of "intelligent design" theory who had held the post since 1978. It was unclear whether the move reflected disapproval over Coyne's opposition to the theory that the world is too complex to have been created by natural events alone. He has attacked the theory as a "religious movement" lacking scientific merit. He could not be reached for comment.