Toledoans concerned about how Ohio's school districts will interpret new state language on life science will hold an organizational meeting today of the Defenders' Club, a group that seeks “to defend a biblical world view.”

Mark Siffer, morning host of Christian radio station WPOS-FM (102.3), said there has been “an enormous amount of interest” on the topic among his listeners and he expects up to 200 people at today's meeting.

After months of public hearings that drew national attention, the Ohio Board of Education last month adopted new language that, for the first time, specifies that local school districts can critically analyze the theory of evolution. The wording also mentions the term “intelligent design,” making Ohio the first state to acknowledge the theory that some intelligent entity was responsible for creating life on Earth.

“It was hardly a victory for the so-called intelligent design side,” said Mr. Siffer, who offers a daily “Creation Moment” spot on his radio show. “The evolutionists were kept at bay from advancing forward. They wanted to make evolution even more dogmatically taught instead of theoretically taught.”

Dr. Robert Lattimer, a senior research chemist for the Cleveland firm Noveon, Inc., was on the Ohio Board of Education's writing committee that drafted the new wording for state science curriculum.

He said he was the only one of eight members on the high school subcommittee that wanted to include teaching the controversy over biological origins and to include the concept of intelligent design.

“That's me. I was the one,” Dr. Lattimer said. “It was a very cordial group but it was very frustrating at times.”

The issue, he said, is a matter of science and not religion. The distinction is critical because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that creationism is a biblically based belief and cannot be taught in public schools.

Creationism teaches that life on Earth was created by God as described in the biblical book of Genesis.

Intelligent design, on the other hand, asserts that living cells and life systems are too complex to have developed randomly and that an unspecified designer must have been responsible. The ID theory, Dr. Lattimer said, does not seek to identify the designer - which could be God, space aliens, an inherent feature of nature, or some other entity.

“Intelligent design looks for intelligent cause in natural phenomena,” he said, adding that the principle of design detection is used in many branches of science.

Yet there is no doubt that evolution, intelligent design, and creationism all have strong religious implications.

Some advocates of intelligent design assert that the theory of evolution created by Charles Darwin is rooted in atheism.

“The process of natural selection through random chance forsakes the need for God and promotes atheism,” said N. Gary Solomon, a Toledoan who twice addressed the Ohio Board of Education during its curriculum hearings.

Many advocates of evolution counter that intelligent design is a thinly veiled version of Bible-based creationism.

“As far as intelligent design, it's my position and the position of the overwhelming majority of professional scientists that it's not science, it's religion,” said David Simmons, chairman of the science department at St. John's Jesuit High School. “It is our position that in the science classroom we teach evolution.”

Evolution is “the central organizing principle of modern biology,” Mr. Simmons said, and only a tiny fraction of professional scientists would dispute that.

Dr. Lattimer acknowledged that “there is only a small number of scientists who oppose evolution, but that's because many have not studied it. Once one delves into the subject and looks at the evidence, it's very hard to support. A growing number of scientists with good reputations are coming out in support of intelligent design and the controversies over evolution.”

Mr. Solomon, a member of the Scientific Educational Foundation, said those who support teaching intelligent design are battling decades of cultural bias in the classrooms.

“There is very compelling evidence against the theory of evolution and if you teach the theory of evolution, you should also teach that there are people who disagree with it,” Mr. Solomon said. “If you don't teach that there is controversy, students will be led to believe that evolution is a fact and not just a theory. Somebody who goes through the educational system today is not exposed to the controversy until graduate school, and by then they are pretty well indoctrinated.”

Mr. Solomon said that for years he was a “theistic evolutionist,” believing that evolution occurred under God's guidance. But now he believes that evolution and the Bible are mutually exclusive. “You can't give your heart to God and your mind to Darwin,” he said. “God wants our hearts, minds, and everything.”

Dr. Lattimer said neither evolution nor intelligent design can be proved. “They are both theories about what happened in the distant past and cannot be verified by scientific methods. They are both theories,” he said.

Mr. Siffer said he hopes the Defenders' Club will give teachers information that they can take into the classrooms.

“Teachers only can teach what they are taught to teach,” he said. “If a teacher knows it's OK to teach the controversy, what have they been taught about the controversy? They have to find it out on their own. That's what the Defenders' Club is about. What we are trying to do is cut through a lot of the misinformation, if you will, on both sides.”

The Defenders' Club will meet at 4 p.m. today at WPOS-FM, 7112 Angola Rd., Holland. Information: 419-865-5551.

First Published January 18, 2003, 11:28 a.m.