W Supports Teaching Intelligent Design
President Bush set off a new wave of debate over whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in public schools when he gave his opinion in a roundtable discussion with Texas newspaper reporters Aug. 1. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes." The President also said he believes the matter should be decided by local school boards, not by a federal government mandate, according to The Houston Chronicle. While running for President in 1999, Bush said school children "ought to be exposed to different theories about how the world started." But he has not said publicly which theory he supports. As could be expected, Bush's conservative base welcomed his remarks and used the opportunity to further emphasize their desire for the teaching of intelligent design. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told The New York Times he was pleased with Bush's stance. "It's what I've been pushing; it's what a lot of us have been pushing," Land said, adding that evolution "is too often taught as fact," and that "if you're going to teach the Darwinian theory as evolution, teach it as theory. And then teach another theory that has the most support among scientists."