Just a day after ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee won in Iowa in the first stage of choosing a Republican candidate for president, scientists warned Americans in a report against electing a leader who doubt evolution.

Former Arkansas governor Huckabee affirmed last year in May that he did not believe in evolution and thinks creationism should be taught in the schools.

"Our public schools should present both evolution and creationism," Huckabee told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "I would not support public schools teaching only creationism. Evolution is a theory based on a lot of science, so it must be part of the curriculum."

"The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming. I would worry that a president who didn't believe in the evolution arguments wouldn't believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin," said Francisco Ayala, professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at University of California, Irvine, who chaired the panel that wrote the book.

As a response to these accusations, Huckabee toned down his anti-evolution stance, saying in a phone interview that the question of whether to teach creationism in schools was “not an issue for our president.”

The National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most eminent scientific organization produced books which support the theory of evolution and argue against the introduction of creationism or other religious alternatives in public school science classes.

The academy and the Institute of Medicine issued the report at a time when the theory of evolution, first offered in the 19th century, faces renewed attack by some religious conservatives.

"Biological evolution is one of the most important ideas of modern science. Evolution is supported by abundant evidence from many different fields of scientific investigation. It underlies the modern biological sciences, including the biomedical sciences, and has applications in many other scientific and engineering disciplines," the report stated.

According to this report, creationism and the related idea of “intelligent design” are not science. Therefore, they should not be taught in public school science classrooms.

US President George W. Bush is one of the sustainer of teaching “intelligent design” creationism to American students. “Intelligent design” is a theory advocated by conservative Christian groups and some scientists in the U.S., which says that complex biological organisms cannot be explained by evolutionary chance alone and must be the work of an intelligent designer – namely God.