INTELLIGENT DESIGN - Harvard? Don't count eggs before chickens!

I suppose it's good news that a prestigious internationally known American Ivy League school has announced a study into the origins of life ... I suppose.

Harvard University is planning a scientific study of how life emerged on Earth, thrusting one of America's most prestigious universities into a growing and politically-charged debate over alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

But this is the same university, which was founded as a Christian University (here & here), whose purpose was to prepare a future generation of enlightened ministers to replace those who would ultimately pass on, which did an extensive scientific study to determine the origins of life over a century ago, and which resulted in God being thrown off campus.

Now they're telling thousands of graduates they might, just might, have been mistaken. Can graduates of their technical disciplines get a refund?

So I wouldn't get too excited with this effort. Don't forget the recent brouhaha over legitimate gender inquiries on feminism by Lawrence Summers, President of this institution of higher learning (here & here). If they can't see past that one, how will they find their way around this one?

And with the MSM misstating and misunderstanding the debate, who's to know the truth at the end of this particular race? Only the PC crowd will know for sure.

At Harvard, the "Origins of Life in the Universe" study will call on the expertise of various disciplines including biology, chemistry and astronomy to seek scientific answers to long-standing questions about evolution, according to a Harvard official.

One of the things I've noticed in this debate is the tendency of the naturalist's experts to 1) overstate and understate the ID contentions, 2) to dismiss serious ID intellectuals and scientists as puppets of religious fundamentalists, and 3) to run their scientific investigations much like the LAPD used to investigate its own.

The most important aspect of the announcement is a subtle one ...

... opponents of evolution theory, who have been highly vocal in the US, said the project seemed to indicate that science has yet to fully prove Darwin's theory and claimed it showed there was still room for doubt.

John West, a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a think-tank that backs intelligent design theory, jumped on the announcement of the research. "This is... a stunning admission that the current theories do not explain it, and it has not refuted the idea that things are the product of intelligent cause," he said.

For this blogger the issue is two-sided: on the one hand, my faith demands not just an Intelligent Designer but that the Designer be none other than the God of the Bible; on the other hand, my rational intellect and common sense tell me our kids, worldwide, deserve a better educational explanation for the origin of life than the hogwash heaped on them by naturalists for the past two centuries.

ALSO REPORTING ON THIS: National Post (HT: Christian Headlines)