Darwinis and popular culture: Archbishop attacks UK exam question on ID

SEATTLE—Earlier this week, The Daily Telegraph reported attacks on the inclusion of intelligent design in a British science exam, provoking a sharp response from the intelligent design research community, led by Stephen C. Meyer, a Cambridge University-trained philosopher of science whose just-released book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) is already drawing praise from leading U.K. scientists.

Lecturer James Williams of Sussex University complained to The Telegraph, “This gives an unwarranted high profile to creationism and intelligent design as ideas of equal status with tested scientific theories.”

“Mr. Williams apparently knows very little about the scientific case for intelligent design," said Dr. Meyer, who also directs the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture in the United States. "The exam board should be commended, not attacked, for exposing students to competing ideas about the origin and development of life."

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[The question asked students to "One question asked students to compare Darwinian evolutionary theories with Lamarckian evolutionary theory, the theory of intelligent design and Biblical creationism." It would only be useful if the students actually knew what all these positions were - distinctively - about. If they did, it would be an excellent way of distinguishing "Darwinism" from "evolution."

I'm told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, also chimed in. He was last heard claiming that sharia law might be a good idea. You'd think he would, at some point, get round to his own collapsing church - but only so many hours in a day, after all.]