By Gavin Clarke for The Register
This article has been reproduced with permission.
A US court has delivered a setback to religious conservatives
hoping to get the theory of intelligent design onto the school
curriculum.
A district judge has banned the teaching of intelligent design
at schools overseen by the Dover Area School Board in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, ruling it advances "a particular version of
Christianity" and is unconstitutional because it violates the
notion of the separation of church and state.
Judge John Jones ruled intelligent design was "nothing less than
the progeny of creationism," the belief that the world was created
by God as outlined in the Book of Genesis.
In a 139-page ruling, Jones also lambasted the Dover school
board for its "breathtaking inanity" in using intelligent design as
a pretext for its real purpose, which was to promote religion in
the public school classroom.
Intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe
and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather
than an undirected process such as natural selection.
Intelligent design is popular among the US religious right and
endorsed by President George W Bush who last summer said US
children should be taught both intelligent design and evolution "so
people can understand what the debate is about."
As such, schools are on the front line. In Kansas, state
education officials last month adopted new classroom science
standards that cast doubt on evolution and redefine science to
allow for non-natural explanations, such as a creator.
A federal appeals court in Georgia, meanwhile, has heard
arguments over whether an Atlanta school district had the right to
put stickers on biology textbooks that describe evolution as a
theory, not fact. A federal judge in January had ordered the
stickers to be removed.
Dover had added language about intelligent design to its biology
curriculum. In a four-paragraph statement, it claimed evolution was
not a fact and there were gaps in the theory that could not be
explained. Students were referred to a book called Of Pandas
and People - universally
panned by Amazon.com reviewers to "gain and
understanding of what intelligent design actually involves."
The board's decision was challenged by a group of 11 parents,
who subsequently brought a suit against the board.
The ruling is unlikely to be appealed as recent elections
changed the composition of the Dover school board, which is now
opposed to intelligent design.
