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On the lam
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Court rules against Intelligent Design in Dover, PA
I'll give the BBC link, since it's concise:
Quote:
A court in the US has ruled against the teaching of "intelligent design" alongside Darwin's theory of evolution.
A group of parents in the Pennsylvania town of Dover had taken the school board to court for demanding biology classes not teach evolution as fact.
The authorities wanted to introduce the idea that Earth's life was too complicated to have evolved on its own.
Judge John Jones ruled the school board had violated the constitutional ban on teaching religion in public schools.
The 11 parents who brought the case argued that teaching intelligent design (ID) was effectively teaching creationism, which is banned.
We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion
Judge John Jones
They complained that ID - which argues life must have been helped to develop by an unseen power - is tantamount to religious education.
The separation of church and state is enshrined in the US constitution.
The school board argued they had sought to improve science education by exposing pupils to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
But Judge Jones said he had determined that ID was not science and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents".
In a 139-page written ruling, the judge said: "Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."
He accused school board members of disguising their true motives for introducing the ID policy.
"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he said.
He banned any future implementation of the policy in Dover schools.
The case, the first of its kind, sets an important precedent in a country where several states have adopted the teaching of ID, reports the BBC's James Coomerasamy in Washington.
Ironically, he adds, it is a somewhat academic ruling in the Dover area since parents there voted last month to replace the school board members who brought in the policy.
That move provoked US TV evangelist Pat Robertson to warn the town was invoking the wrath of God.
A lawyer for the parents said the ruling was a "real vindication" for those families who challenged the school board.
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I started going through the actual opinion ...it's pretty interesting reading. Particularly this part where the judge skewers the board members who voted 'yes' for the ID statement for not knowing anything about ID before voting:
Quote:
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. To illustrate, consider that Geesey testified she did not understand the substance of the curriculum change, yet she voted for it. Moreover, as she indicated on multiple occasions, in voting for the curriculum change, Geesy deferred completely
to Bonsell and Buckingham.
Second, Buckingham, Chair of the Curriculum Committee at the time, admitted that he had no basis to know whether ID amounted to good science as of the time of his first deposition, which was two and a half months after the ID Policy was approved, yet he voted for the curriculum change.
Third, Cleaver voted for the curriculum change despite the teachers’ objections, based upon assurances from Bonsell. Cleaver admittedly knew nothing about ID, including the words comprising the phrase, as she consistently referred to ID as “intelligence design” throughout her testimony. In addition, Cleaver was bereft of any understanding of Pandas except that Spahr had said it was not a good science book which should not be used in high school. In addition, Superintendent Nilsen’s entire understanding of ID was that “evolution has a design.”
Despite this collective failure to understand the concept of ID, which six Board members nonetheless felt was appropriate to add to ninth grade biology class to improve science education, the Board never heard from any person or organization with scientific expertise about the curriculum change, save for consistent but unwelcome advices from the District’s science teachers who uniformly opposed the change. In disregarding the teachers’ views, the Board ignored undeviating opposition to the curriculum change by the one resource with scientific expertise immediately at its disposal.
The only outside organizations which the Board consulted prior to the vote were the Discovery Institute and TMLC, and it is clear that the purpose of these contacts was to obtain legal advice, as opposed to science education information. The Board received no materials, other than Pandas, to assist them in making their vote. Nor did anyone
on the Board or in the administration ever contact the NAS, the AAAS, the National Science Teachers’ Association, the National Association of Biology
Teachers, or any other organization for information about ID or science education before or after voting for the curriculum change. While there is no requirement that a school board contact any of
the afore-referenced organizations prior to enacting a curriculum change, in this case a simple glance at any one of their websites for additional information about ID and any potential it may have to improve science education would have provided helpful information to Board members who admittedly had no comprehension whatsoever of ID. As Dr. Alters’ expert testimony demonstrated,
all of these organizations have information about teaching evolution readily available on the internet and they include statements opposing the teaching of ID.
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Kudos to the judge! I hope he's not going to be branded as an activist.
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oh baby oh baby, i like gravy.
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