Archbishop says creationism shouldn't be taught

The Archbishop of Canterbury, senior clergyman of the Church of England, has recently spoken out against teaching creationism in schools.

"If creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's just been a jarring of categories," Archbishop Williams said in an article appearing in The Guardian newspaper yesterday.

This follows almost three months after the completion of the landmark Intelligent Design (ID) case against the Dover, Pennsylvania school district, who wanted to teach Intelligent Design, the idea that life is too complex to be explained by Darwin’s theory of natural selection and that it must have been made by God or some other intelligent cause or designer, alongside evolution in Dover schools.

By saying that creationism shouldn't be taught, the Archibishop is essentially agreeing with the trial decision – Intelligent Design has been linked both ideologically and historically to creationism. U.S. District Judge John Jones III ruled in the Dover case that Intelligent Design “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents” and later described ID as “an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion.”☼