Scopes, 2005: 'Design' Theory Faces Legal Test By SUZANNE SATALINE Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL September 22, 2005; Page B1
Debates about the boundaries of science and religion that marked the famous Scopes trial in 1925 are likely to unfold next week at a Harrisburg, Pa., federal courthouse in the first legal test of an anti-evolution doctrine known as "intelligent design." Aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, 11 parents of Dover, Pa., schoolchildren have filed a federal lawsuit against that town's school board, accusing it of violating the principle of separation of church and state. The school board requires that at the beginning of the 9th grade unit on evolution, teachers are supposed to read a statement to a biology class: "Because Darwin's theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The theory is not a fact...Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view." Science teachers balked and many Dover parents were angered as well. The plaintiffs are asking the court to void the intelligent-design policy in the class. The intelligent-design doctrine asserts that some natural processes are so complex and ingenious that they must have been created by an intelligent or supernatural cause -- perhaps God -- rather than the randomness of natural selection. Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District is expected to draw national media attention as well as expert witnesses from Brown University and other prominent institutions. The trial, slated to last five weeks, will be monitored by scientists, educators and politicians around the country. The trial will not be televised. The outcome is likely to influence state school boards in Kansas and Ohio, which have moved toward allowing teachers to critique Darwin's theory, as well as policies in many individual school districts. "The results of the Dover trial will be extremely significant for American public school education," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the nonprofit National Center for Science Education, based in California, an organization that advocates teaching evolution and advised the plaintiff's team on science matters. "If the judge rules in favor of the plaintiffs, then this will truly throw sand in the gears of efforts to get intelligent design taught at the high school level," said Ms. Scott. "If the judge rules...for the district, I think this will give a green light to school districts that would like to introduce some form of creationism in the classroom." The Seattle-based Discovery Institute, the leading backers of intelligent design, say they are delving into scientific mysteries to explain such biological developments as the workings of cells. "We don't say God designed," said John West, associate director for the institute's Center for Science and Culture. "It's not about trying to reconcile science with some religious text. It's about this longstanding question in biology about the appearance of design." The trial also has potential ramifications for public higher education, where the evolution-creation dispute is heating up. The University of California at Berkeley faces a lawsuit from students at Christian private schools who say they can't go to the prestigious campus because the science courses they took -- based on anti-evolution textbooks -- don't fulfill its admission requirements. At Ohio State University, a review of a doctoral dissertation in science education by an intelligent-design proponent was put on hold this spring after faculty protests. And at Iowa State University, where a faculty member who teaches astronomy wrote a book contending that the Earth must have been created by design, more than 120 faculty signed a petition this year saying that intelligent design is not science. Critics of intelligent design, who include most mainstream biologists, say it is religion masquerading as science -- essentially, the latest evolution of creationism. But Christian educators and intelligent-design backers were heartened last month when President Bush said that both sides of the origins debate should be taught. "It is a legitimate controversy among scientists and credible scientists believe that intelligent design is a better explanation for complex biological systems than we have seen," said Richard Thompson, defense attorney for the Dover school board and chief counsel with the not-for-profit Christian law group, the Thomas More Law Center. The Dover Area School District was the first in the nation to include a mention of intelligent design in the science curriculum. For now, the theory isn't actually taught. "The intent [by Dover officials] is to systematically destroy the theory of evolution because the theory tells the students we came from monkeys," said plaintiff Bryan Rehm, who has a daughter in ninth grade at Dover High. "According to them we didn't come from monkeys. God made us as the way we are today...That's fine, but that's not science. That's the book of Genesis. And the last time I checked, the Bible is still a religious text." The jury at the carnival-esque Scopes trial in 1925 supported a Tennessee law making it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible." But the legal tide since has not been kind to evolution opponents. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the last of the Scopes-type anti-evolution laws in Epperson v. Arkansas in 1968, and lower courts followed suit in scuttling so-called "equal time" laws that required schools to teach creation science. In January, a federal court ordered Cobb County, Ga., to remove evolution warning labels on biology texts, saying they had "an impermissible effect" of promoting religion. That decision is on appeal. Nevertheless, the anti-evolution forces have pressed on. The Kansas Board of Education voted in August to include greater criticism of evolution in its school-science standards -- which lists all aspects of the subject teachers should present. An outside academic agency is reviewing the proposed curriculum and it comes up for a vote in October. In 2002, Ohio adopted science standards requiring students to examine criticisms of biological evolution. Opponents of intelligent design are monitoring several school districts in New Mexico, including Rio Rancho, where the school board agreed recently to allow evolution alternatives to be broached in class. Efforts to change science standards have also sprung up in school districts in Maryland, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Mr. Rehm, the Dover parent, and a former Dover physics teacher, said either way, no one in his community wins. "If the school board gets it in its favor, we've got one more place in the country where kids aren't getting an acceptable science education," Mr. Rehm said. "And if we win, the school board gets stuck footing the bill" for legal expenses. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Find out how CFTicket can increase your company's customer support efficiency by 100% http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=49 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:174684 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
