At issue is whether this innocuous-sounding measure is actually a back door that would allow teachers to introduce creationism and intelligent design into science classrooms.
Our United States Congress of lawyers, doctors, diplomats, retired military officers and career politicians -- along with their staffs of intelligent young political science majors and MBAs -- now finds itself poring over "business plans" submitted this week by Ford, GM and Chrysler.
At the same time, we can also see how creation science or intelligent-design theories attempt to make God another secondary cause, another explanation for empirical events, without attending to the deeper level of causation that God provides.
After boycotting a series of hearings in Topeka last May, in which supporters of intelligent design criticized evolution, science groups are now mobilizing to defend what biologists say is a bedrock scientific theory.
So if they can make that link, then they get a slam dunk and intelligent design will not be taught in science class.
Science fiction is rife with intelligent, self-aware computers, from the benevolent "Mike" of Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress to the murderous HAL 9000 in Arthur C.
This week the Kansas Board of Education approved a draft of new science standards proposed by supporters of intelligent design.
While the new Kansas science standards don't include intelligent design, they go further than any state guidelines so far in raising questions about evolution.
The proposed science standards in Kansas won't require teachers to talk about creationism or intelligent design.
"The planet may be habitable, but I wouldn't expect to see any intelligent life forms, " says Martin Griffiths, senior lecturer at the Centre for Astronomy and Science Education at the University of Glamorgan.
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