A judge doesn’t think mentioning “intelligent design” in Pennsylvania classrooms is a smart thing to do — and he has banned it in a major legal ruling:
“Intelligent design” cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.
Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said. Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs, he said.
The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation.
“The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy,” Jones wrote.
The board’s attorneys 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 LA Times reports:
The school board asserted that it was merely attempting to present an alternative to Charles Darwin’s widely accepted theory of evolution.
But Judge Jones, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled that the board was trying to mask religious teaching in the guise of science. He used unusually strong language for a federal judge, going so far as to excoriate some members of the school board for lying.
“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause,” Jones wrote.
“Repeatedly in this trial, plaintiff’s scientific experts testified that theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator,” the judge added.
Excerpts from the ruling can be found here.
What does it mean? For one thing, it’s likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court but it may not do much better there. As law professor Ann Althouse succinctly puts it: “Predictable. Correct.” Make sure you read her copy of the ruling with the boldfaced emphasis she has put in IN FULL. Part of what she notes about the decision: “I’d like to retitle this post: School Board in the Hands of an Angry Judge. He is really angry, isn’t he?”
The problem with the whole intelligent design movement is that even an alien with 18 antennas and 12 noses who just arrived on Earth from Jupiter could see that it was an attempt to change the prevailing teachings in schools through the back door because other attempts to order schools to teach something other than evolution haven’t fared well.
There’s a famous story about W.C. Fields who, it is said, was spotted looking at a Bible while on his deathbed. When he was asked what he was doing, Fields reportedly said: “Looking for loopholes.”
Intelligent design, to many, has been just that: a search for legal loopholes. It failed with this judge…but it’s likely to be put before other judges. Will the “new” Supreme Court feel as this judge did? We think it will. Those who want it may use this ruling to argue that the courts need to be changed to get courts that’ll accept it. That may be easier said than done.
Some other reactions to the ruling can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here here and here. And more will be coming in as you read this….