Unbelievable!
Judge throws out intelligent design case
December 21, 2005 - 2:22PM
A judge ruled today that "intelligent design" - the belief that a higher power, rather than evolution, created life - cannot be taught in US school biology classes.
He said Dover Area School Board members in Pennsylvania had violated the American Constitution's separation of church and state when they ordered that its biology curriculum include the notion that life was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause.
US District Judge John E Jones III also said that several board members had repeatedly lied to cover their motives. Most of the board have since been voted out.
The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the United States.
"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote, calling the decision "breathtaking inanity".
The board's lawyers had said members were seeking to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory that evolution develops through natural selection.
Intelligent-design proponents argue that the theory cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.
The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of biblical creationism, which the US courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools.
The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution.
The statement said Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps".
It refers students to an intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People, for more information.
The controversy divided the borough of Dover and surrounding Dover Township, a rural area of nearly 20,000 residents about 32km south of Harrisburg.
It galvanised voters to oust several school board members who supported the policy in the November 8 school board election.
The board members were replaced by a slate of eight opponents who pledged to remove intelligent design from the science curriculum.
Eric Rothschild, lead lawyer for the families who challenged the policy, called the ruling "a real vindication for the parents who had the courage to stand up and say there was something wrong in their school district".
The lawyer who had represented the former school board, Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Centre in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said he would like to appeal the decision, but it was up to the school board.
"What this really looks like is an ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God," Thompson said of Jones' ruling.
It was the latest chapter in a debate over the teaching of evolution in US schools dating back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T Scopes was fined $US100 ($A136) for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution.
The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on a technicality, and the law was repealed in 1967.
- AP
December 21, 2005 - 2:22PM
A judge ruled today that "intelligent design" - the belief that a higher power, rather than evolution, created life - cannot be taught in US school biology classes.
He said Dover Area School Board members in Pennsylvania had violated the American Constitution's separation of church and state when they ordered that its biology curriculum include the notion that life was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause.
US District Judge John E Jones III also said that several board members had repeatedly lied to cover their motives. Most of the board have since been voted out.
The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the United States.
"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote, calling the decision "breathtaking inanity".
The board's lawyers had said members were seeking to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory that evolution develops through natural selection.
Intelligent-design proponents argue that the theory cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.
The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of biblical creationism, which the US courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools.
The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution.
The statement said Darwin's theory is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps".
It refers students to an intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People, for more information.
The controversy divided the borough of Dover and surrounding Dover Township, a rural area of nearly 20,000 residents about 32km south of Harrisburg.
It galvanised voters to oust several school board members who supported the policy in the November 8 school board election.
The board members were replaced by a slate of eight opponents who pledged to remove intelligent design from the science curriculum.
Eric Rothschild, lead lawyer for the families who challenged the policy, called the ruling "a real vindication for the parents who had the courage to stand up and say there was something wrong in their school district".
The lawyer who had represented the former school board, Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Centre in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said he would like to appeal the decision, but it was up to the school board.
"What this really looks like is an ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God," Thompson said of Jones' ruling.
It was the latest chapter in a debate over the teaching of evolution in US schools dating back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T Scopes was fined $US100 ($A136) for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution.
The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on a technicality, and the law was repealed in 1967.
- AP