Topeka ? The debate over how to teach Kansas students about the origins of life returned Tuesday to the State Board of Education with accusations of rule breaking and attacks on a committee appointed to revise science education standards.

The board, which took no action, received the first draft of the standards.

But some members of the board attacked the committee, saying it hadn’t properly considered views about creationism.

Board member John Bacon, of Olathe, said those who favored teaching creationism as another theory alongside evolution were ignored.

Kansas University professor Steve Case, co-chairman of the 26-member committee, said that all viewpoints were being considered but that deadlines for producing a first draft dictated it include only evolution, which the state board previously approved as a part of the science curriculum. Creationism and a related idea, “intelligent design,” are not a part of what Kansas students are taught.

Shifting majority

Current standards treat evolution as central to the science curriculum — among a few key subjects students must grasp. State law requires regular updating of academic standards, and the board decided to review science standards starting this year.

The draft received Tuesday is to be discussed at statewide public hearings in January. A second draft is due to the board by mid-February.

Those who favor teaching creationism, which follows the biblical story of how the world was formed, hold five of the 10 seats on the state education board. But in January they will gain a seat to become a majority on the board.

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That board will receive the second draft of the standards in February and a final draft by summer.

Also Tuesday, the president of Kansas Citizens for Science suggested a member had been improperly appointed to the committee and that a subgroup of the committee was improperly meeting to discuss the standards.

Dissenting opinions

The debate started Friday when a group of eight dissenting members of the committee sent an e-mail to the board expressing disagreement with the draft. The e-mail said the dissenters believed in teaching evolutionary theory but the draft standards discouraged critical analysis of it.

“At a time when students are well aware that a controversy over the teaching of evolution is raging in the country, we feel that they should know about the areas of scientific disagreement,” the dissenters said. The e-mail included a 23-page proposed revision to the document.

A comment in the e-mail by committee member William Harris, who signed the letter on behalf of the other dissenters, sparked much of Tuesday’s debate.

“We have appointed John Calvert, Esq., as counsel and as a spokesman for the group,” Harris wrote. “We would appreciate that your communications regarding these proposals be directed to me with copies to him.”

But Calvert isn’t a member of the science standards writing committee. He is a managing director of Intelligent Design Network Inc., a Johnson County-based nonprofit organization that says it seeks objectivity in origins science.

Open meetings concern

Harris is a managing director of the network and a professor of medicine at University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“This subgroup has no authority to appoint an additional member to the committee,” said Harry McDonald, president of the nonprofit Kansas Citizens for Science. “I protest.”

McDonald told the board Calvert could not participate in the committee because he was not a member of the committee.

“I believe that the deliberations of this group constitute a violation of the Kansas Open Meetings Act,” McDonald said. “The actions … of retaining counsel constitute official action on their part.

“No legal notice of this meeting was ever made, and my rights as a citizen to attend this meeting were thus denied.”

Calvert said the protests over his role with the committee were a ploy to steer discussion away from the proposed revisions.

Outside the meeting, he said he was not the only spokesman for the eight dissenters. And he denied the group had violated the Open Meetings Act.

All eight people have never met together at once, with or without Calvert, Harris said.

The board did not discuss Calvert’s role.

Theory or fact?

Harris said the draft science document denigrates religious beliefs by excluding other schools of thought. He argued the two could be taught in the classroom to give students a well-rounded view of science.

“Public education can be kept free of religion by teaching origins of science objectively,” Harris said.

Intelligent design is a secular form of creationism that argues the Earth was created by a series of intelligent happenings, not random chance. Evolution, on the other hand, says species change in response to environmental and genetic factors over the course of many generations.

Greg Lassey, another of the eight dissenting members, said others on the committee were narrow-minded because they would not question evolution.

“If you don’t allow any other dissenting views, then what you’re teaching is a dogma,” he said in an interview after the meeting.

McDonald said evolution was not dogma or a philosophy.

“Once you have a paramount theory in science, that’s how you view things until you have a better theory to explain them,” he told reporters. “Evolution is not a religion. Science has no need of God — that’s far different from saying, ‘There is no God.'”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.