On Monday, the Utah House of Representatives defeated a bill (similar to one initially approved by the State Senate in January) that would have compelled high school science teachers to include anti-evolution caveats when teaching the subject in class. The New York Times’reports that opposition to the “Origins of Life” bill included the surprising — at least surprising to those who had banked on conservative Utah leading the country in adopting Intelligent Design theory — objections of Mormon representatives who argued either that science and religion should be independent of one another, or that Intelligent Design was incompatible with Mormon beliefs: a criticism that probably caught I.D. flagship, the Discovery Institute, by surprise, though when asked, Institute spokespeople wrote off the defeat as a “purely local Utah matter.”
“Origins of Life” Dies in Utah
01 March 2006