Chicago Tribune

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – In a broad and blistering landmark decision, a federal district court judge Tuesday ruled it unconstitutional to teach intelligent design, a concept critical of modern Darwinian evolutionary theory, in public school science classrooms.

Using scathing language that described the defendants as liars and their actions as “breathtaking inanity,” Judge John Jones III rendered what many consider a watershed decision in the culture wars over the teaching of evolution, also ruling that intelligent design, or ID, is not a scientific theory but a religious belief.

“In fact, one unfortunate theme in this case is the striking ignorance concerning the concept of ID amongst Board members. Conspicuously, Board members who voted for the curriculum change testified at trial that they had utterly no grasp of ID,” wrote Jones in his 139-page decision. It came 46 days after the close of Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District, a six-week bench trial heard in Pennsylvania’s Middle District Court in Harrisburg.

“Kitzmiller is likely to be regarded as the Scopes case of the 21st century – celebrated and lamented alike as the case that commanded not only the separation of church and state but also the alienation of religion and science,” said John Witte, Jr., director of Emory University’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion in Atlanta. He referred to the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial” pitting evolution against creationism in Tennessee classrooms.

Hailed as a major victory by the scientific community and dismissed as a temporary setback by supporters of intelligent design, Jones’ decision is binding only on the Dover Area School District in central Pennsylvania, but it could have an impact on the way biology is taught elsewhere.

That includes Kansas, where the State Board of Education redefined science last month to include the supernatural, “and all the other school boards across the country that may be flirting with the introduction of intelligent design,” said Richard Katskee, legal director for the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

In 2005, more than 24 states and school boards have considered introducing intelligent design into their science curricula, according to the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a nonprofit group based in Oakland, Calif., that is devoted to defending the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Eugenie Scott, executive director of NCSE, said Jones’ decision “will make it more difficult not only to teach intelligent design,” but also to “teach the controversy approach,” which aims at portraying evolution as a flawed theory in crisis.

But some ID proponents were defiant. “Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that funds ID research.

“In the larger debate over intelligent design, this decision will be of minor significance,” said Casey Luskin, Discovery’s program officer for policy and legal affairs. “As we’ve repeatedly stressed, the ultimate validity of intelligent design will be determined not by the courts but by the scientific evidence pointing to design.”

But the evidence presented at trial for ID failed to establish it as a testable scientific theory, wrote Jones.

Although it’s the most prominent advocacy group for intelligent design, the Discovery Institute opposes mandatory introduction of ID, as adopted by the Dover board, preferring that school boards take the “teach the controversy” approach regarding evolution, a controversy that the vast majority of scientists says is concocted.

Drawing media attention from around the world, the Dover trial marked the first legal challenge to ID, which opponents deride as thinly veiled religious creationism. ID posits that some complex aspects of the natural world, yet unexplained by evolution, best are attributed to an unnamed and unseen intelligent designer; most ID proponents believe that designer is God.

Evolutionary theory holds that all life on Earth, including humans, shares common ancestry and developed through the mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection. In science, a theory is not a wild guess but an explanation that ties together known facts and rigorously tested observations of the natural world.

In December 2004, 11 parents of Dover Area School District students sued the district and its board. They contended the district’s requirement that a statement be read to ninth grade biology classes denigrating evolution and introducing intelligent design violated the First Amendment’s ban on state establishment of religion and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1987 ruling banning creationism from public school science classrooms in Edwards v. Aguillard.

First read to students in January 2005, the statement points out “gaps” in Darwin’s theory “for which there is no evidence” and introduces ID as “an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view.” It then refers students to the ID textbook “Of Pandas and People” in the school library to gain “an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.”

The school board members, some of whom had spoken publicly of their creationist and religious beliefs before adopting the statement, testified in court that their motivation in requiring such a statement was purely secular and educational, not religious.

Describing the board’s decision to impose such a requirement as “breathtaking inanity,” Jones said he found the assertion of a secular purpose a “ludicrous” pretext. He pointed out board members didn’t consult any scientific authorities or even their own science faculty before crafting the statement.

He also accused board members of lying, writing: “It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and time again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.”

In his ruling, Jones agreed with the parents, writing “ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious antecedents.”

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Nearly universally opposed by mainstream scientists, ID is considered by many to have arisen as a way to get around the Supreme Court’s ban on public-school teaching of creationism, a concept that adheres to the biblical account of creation in Genesis.

However, Jones also asserted the compatibility of faith and science, writing that the defendants and leading proponents of ID make a “bedrock assumption which is utterly false … that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general.”

Dover’s newly elected school board members, most of who support evolution, have indicated they probably will not appeal Jones’ decision, erasing any chance of taking the case to the Supreme Court.

But, despite the court ruling, neither adherents nor opponents of ID believe it will disappear anytime soon.

“We expect another change in labels, whether it’s sudden emergence” or something else, said Eric Rothschild, of the Philadelphia firm Pepper Hamilton, who was among the attorneys representing the parents. “They’re coming from the same sources. They’re motivated by the same reasons.”

Said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, the Christian firm that handled the defense, in an earlier interview, “There will be other cases coming down the track.”

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(c) 2005, Chicago Tribune.

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AP-NY-12-20-05 2142EST

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