Intelligent design is curtailed by judge
Ruling condemns mixing of religion and science
By MICHAEL POWELL
Washington Post
12/21/2005
Associated Press
Barrie Callahan, left, a plaintiff from Dover, Pa., and attorney Witold Walczak hold a news conference hailing the ruling against School Board policy on teaching the theory of intelligent design.
A federal judge Tuesday barred a Pennsylvania school district from mentioning "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary theory in a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying under oath and for their "breathtaking inanity" in trying to inject religion into science classes.
U.S. District Court Judge John Jones III, a Republican appointed by President Bush, did not confine his opinion to the missteps of the local school board. Instead, he explicitly sought to vanquish intelligent design, the argument that aspects of life are so complex as to require the hand, subtle or not, of a supernatural creator. This theory, he said, relies on the unprovable existence of a Christian God and therefore is not science.
"The overwhelming evidence is that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory," Jones wrote in a 139-page decision. "It is an extension of the Fundamentalists' view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution."
In November, voters in Dover threw out eight of nine School Board members; the ninth was not up for re-election. The new School Board, which favors teaching evolution, will not appeal the ruling.
Jones' decision puts an exclamation mark on a courtroom battle widely hailed as the successor to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, when proponents of modern scientific methods first battled creationists in court over the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution. State and local school boards have mounted challenges to evolution, and these officials had watched Dover closely in hopes of divining how much leeway they might get in federal court.
If Tuesday's decision is any guide, opponents of evolution now face a very tough task, advocates on both sides agreed.
"The court has held that it's not a scientific theory," said Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and one of the trial lawyers for parents who sued the School Board. "At a time when this country is lagging behind other countries, we can ill afford to shackle our children's minds with 15th century science."
John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, a leading intelligent design think tank in Seattle, took a dim view of the judge, arguing that he evinced a "grandiosity" and "egregious" judicial activism. But he agreed that the decision comes as a heavy blow. "There's no doubt that people will trumpet this and that now they can say a federal judge agrees, and that doesn't help," West said. "His angry tone was not helpful."
This latest skirmish in a centuries-long cultural war began when the School Board in Dover, a small central Pennsylvania farm town slowly evolving into a suburb of Harrisburg, voted last year to require ninth-grade biology teachers to read a four-paragraph statement casting doubt on Darwin's theory of evolution.
The mandatory statement notes that intelligent design offers an alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life.
The board members made little secret of their own views, which hewed not so much to intelligent design as to Young Earth Creationism, the fundamentalist Christian belief that the world is but 6,000 years old and that Noah's flood shaped the earth.
Eleven parents filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking to block the new policy on the grounds that intelligent design was but biblical creationism in the cloth of science. The Supreme Court had ruled in 1987 that nothing like creationism could be taught in public school science courses.
"The board was selfish," said Eric Rothschild who represented the parents along with the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "This was all about imposing their religious viewpoint on a diverse community."
"Intelligent Design is not science," Jones wrote. "Proponents . . . occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, [but] no serious alternative to God as designer has been proposed."
The sheer breadth of Jones' decision set the legal barriers much higher for intelligent design. But even those who applauded the court's ruling doubted he had closed the door. Most polls show that 40 to 55 percent of Americans favor a strict biblical creationist view of evolution.
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Ruling condemns mixing of religion and science
By MICHAEL POWELL
Washington Post
12/21/2005
Associated Press
Barrie Callahan, left, a plaintiff from Dover, Pa., and attorney Witold Walczak hold a news conference hailing the ruling against School Board policy on teaching the theory of intelligent design.
A federal judge Tuesday barred a Pennsylvania school district from mentioning "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary theory in a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying under oath and for their "breathtaking inanity" in trying to inject religion into science classes.
U.S. District Court Judge John Jones III, a Republican appointed by President Bush, did not confine his opinion to the missteps of the local school board. Instead, he explicitly sought to vanquish intelligent design, the argument that aspects of life are so complex as to require the hand, subtle or not, of a supernatural creator. This theory, he said, relies on the unprovable existence of a Christian God and therefore is not science.
"The overwhelming evidence is that Intelligent Design is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory," Jones wrote in a 139-page decision. "It is an extension of the Fundamentalists' view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution."
In November, voters in Dover threw out eight of nine School Board members; the ninth was not up for re-election. The new School Board, which favors teaching evolution, will not appeal the ruling.
Jones' decision puts an exclamation mark on a courtroom battle widely hailed as the successor to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, when proponents of modern scientific methods first battled creationists in court over the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution. State and local school boards have mounted challenges to evolution, and these officials had watched Dover closely in hopes of divining how much leeway they might get in federal court.
If Tuesday's decision is any guide, opponents of evolution now face a very tough task, advocates on both sides agreed.
"The court has held that it's not a scientific theory," said Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and one of the trial lawyers for parents who sued the School Board. "At a time when this country is lagging behind other countries, we can ill afford to shackle our children's minds with 15th century science."
John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture, a leading intelligent design think tank in Seattle, took a dim view of the judge, arguing that he evinced a "grandiosity" and "egregious" judicial activism. But he agreed that the decision comes as a heavy blow. "There's no doubt that people will trumpet this and that now they can say a federal judge agrees, and that doesn't help," West said. "His angry tone was not helpful."
This latest skirmish in a centuries-long cultural war began when the School Board in Dover, a small central Pennsylvania farm town slowly evolving into a suburb of Harrisburg, voted last year to require ninth-grade biology teachers to read a four-paragraph statement casting doubt on Darwin's theory of evolution.
The mandatory statement notes that intelligent design offers an alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life.
The board members made little secret of their own views, which hewed not so much to intelligent design as to Young Earth Creationism, the fundamentalist Christian belief that the world is but 6,000 years old and that Noah's flood shaped the earth.
Eleven parents filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking to block the new policy on the grounds that intelligent design was but biblical creationism in the cloth of science. The Supreme Court had ruled in 1987 that nothing like creationism could be taught in public school science courses.
"The board was selfish," said Eric Rothschild who represented the parents along with the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "This was all about imposing their religious viewpoint on a diverse community."
"Intelligent Design is not science," Jones wrote. "Proponents . . . occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, [but] no serious alternative to God as designer has been proposed."
The sheer breadth of Jones' decision set the legal barriers much higher for intelligent design. But even those who applauded the court's ruling doubted he had closed the door. Most polls show that 40 to 55 percent of Americans favor a strict biblical creationist view of evolution.
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