From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Scientific Support for Darwinism (and for public schools not to teach Intelligent Design as science) was a four day, word of mouth petition of scientists in support of evolution. Inspired by Project Steve, it was initiated by R. Joe Brandon to produce a public response to the Discovery Institute's 2001 petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. The Discovery Institute's petition was publicized in 2005 by media coverage of the Discovery Institute's efforts to introduce "intelligent design" in science classrooms and the opposition to those efforts in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case.

The statement that was signed by all signatories read:

Our Petition
"We, as scientists trained in fields that utilize evolutionary theory, do not consider Intelligent Design to be a fact-based science appropriate for teaching in public schools because it is theistic in nature, not empirical, and therefore does not pass the rigors of scientific hypothesis testing and theory development. As such, we petition that Intelligent Design not be presented in public schools as a viable science within the scientific curriculum." ^[1]

A graph showing the number of signatures over four days.

In four days in October 2005, the petition supporting Darwinism gathered 7733 signatories from scientists.^[2]
Among the signatories were 21 U.S. National Academy of Science members, nine MacArthur Fellowship awardees, and a Nobel laureate. Signatory Dr. Steve Brill of Rutgers University has stated, "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."

In his press release Brandon drew attention to the point that Michael Behe, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, is a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University where twenty of his peers 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."

• Intelligent design movement
• Project Steve
• Creation-evolution controversy
• Clergy Letter Project, a signed statement by 10,000 Christian clergy members rejecting Creationism.
• Level of support for evolution

1. ^ "We, as scientists trained in fields that utilize evolutionary theory, do not consider Intelligent Design to be a fact-based science appropriate for teaching in public schools because it is theistic in nature, not empirical, and therefore does not pass the rigors of scientific hypothesis testing and theory development. As such, we petition that Intelligent Design not be presented in public schools as a viable science within the scientific curriculum." Results of The Four Day Petition
2. ^ "R. Joe organized the Four Day Petition with no outside funding or professional societies assistance and generated 7,732 verified signatories of concerned scientists, all by word of mouth (well e-mail actually). Of those signatories 6,965 are US residents including 4066 with a PhD." Results of The Four Day Petition

• PRNewsWire official text of press release