December 22, 2005
Schools Nationwide Study Impact of Evolution Ruling
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, NY TIMES

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When the school board in Muscatine, Iowa, sits down next year for its twice-a-decade evaluation of the district's science curriculum, the matter of whether to teach intelligent design as a challenge to evolution is expected to come up for discussion.

Board members disagree about whether they will be swayed by a sweeping court decision on intelligent design released on Tuesday in Pennsylvania. A federal judge there ruled intelligent design "a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory" that must not be taught in a public school science class.

"I don't think that a judge in one state is going to be able to tell everybody in all other states what to do," said Paul Brooks, a school board member and retired principal in Muscatine who favors teaching intelligent design. "So I don't get too excited about what he said."

The board's vice president, Ann Hart, demurred. "This determination in Pennsylvania will help the cause," Ms. Hart said, "for those of us who think intelligent design should not be taught in public school science classes because of separation of church and state."

Educators and legislators in Muscatine and other communities that are considering intelligent design said they were learning about the results of the trial involving the school board in Dover, Pa., and had not read the decision.

The Dover board voted in October 2004 to have students listen to a statement at the start of biology class that said that evolution was a flawed theory and that intelligent design was an alternative they could study further. It was a limited step, but opened the door to a lawsuit from local parents that became the nation's first test case of the legal merits of teaching intelligent design.

The federal district judge in the Pennsylvania case, John E. Jones III, ruled after a six-week trial that intelligent design was "an interesting theological argument, but it is not science." He concluded that it was "unconstitutional to teach I.D. as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."

Intelligent design is the proposition that biological life is so complex that it could not have randomly evolved, but must have been designed by an intelligent force.

Lawyers for the parents who sued the Dover board hailed the decision as a cautionary one for any state or school board flirting with intelligent design because Judge Jones ruled broadly on the very legitimacy of intelligent design as science.

The judge's 139-page decision dealt not only with the specific missteps of the Dover school board, but also traced the growth of the intelligent design movement from the remnants of creationism and creation science - which the Supreme Court declared in 1987 to be unconstitutional to teach in public school science class.

Intelligent design proponents gained support in Dover and across the country with the rallying cry to "teach the controversy" over evolution and open students' minds to competing theories. The National Center for Science Education in Oakland, Calif., has tracked efforts in at least two dozen states to introduce challenges to evolution in the curriculum. Some efforts hew more closely to the approach in Kansas, where the State Board of Education changed its standards to teach about flaws in evolutionary theory.

In South Carolina, State Senator Mike Fair has introduced a bill to encourage teaching criticism of evolution. Mr. Fair is also on a state education committee that is evaluating biology standards. He said although he had not read the Pennsylvania ruling, it offended him because it impugned board members' motives because they were Christians.

"This case hasn't settled anything," Mr. Fair said.

Kristi L. Bowman, a law professor at Drake University in Des Moines, said that technically the judge's ruling was legally binding only in part of Pennsylvania and that no other courts in the country must follow it.

"That aside," Professor Bowman said, "this is such a thorough, well-researched opinion that covers all possible bases in terms of the legal arguments that intelligent design advocates present, that I think any school board or state board of education thinking about adopting an intelligent design policy should think twice."

Professor Bowman attended part of the Dover trial and expects her article on intelligent design to be in The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.

The legal fees incurred may be "an even stronger cautionary signal to school districts around the country than the actual decision," Professor Bowman said.

The Dover school district is now liable for the legal fees incurred by the plaintiffs - which plaintiffs lawyers say could exceed $1 million. The plaintiffs were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, as wells as lawyers with Pepper Hamilton, a private firm.

Eric J. Rothschild, a Pepper Hamilton lawyer, said in a news conference after the ruling that holding the Dover board to a financial penalty would convey to other school districts that "board members can't act like they did with impunity." But Mr. Rothschild said the fees were still being totaled, and he left open the possibility that the lawyers might go after individual board members who voted for the intelligent design policy to pay the legal costs.

In Muscatine, the superintendent, Tom Williams, said he expected that the possibility of a legal battle would deter his board from adopting intelligent design.

"We do expose ourselves to some kind of risk if we go out on a limb," Mr. Williams said.

He added that he was not in favor of it because he saw intelligent design as creationism with "just a little different twist of terminology."

"We need to stick with what our teachers are trained to do, and they're not trained to teach religious philosophies," Mr. Williams said.

Court rules against 'intelligent design'
Dallas News, Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Associated Press

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HARRISBURG, Pa. - "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 of natural selection. Intelligent-design proponents argue that it cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.

The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of creationism, which the courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools.

The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement said Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact," has inexplicable "gaps," and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People," for more information.

Jones said advocates of intelligent design "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors" and that he didn't believe the concept shouldn't be studied and discussed.

But, he wrote, "our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."

The controversy also divided the community and galvanized voters to oust eight incumbent school board members who supported the policy in the Nov. 8 school board election.

Intelligent Design Flunks in Pennsylvania
By Stan Cox, AlterNet
Posted on December 21, 2005, Printed on December 21, 2005

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Federal Judge John E. Jones III's ruling yesterday against a Pennsylvania school district's "intelligent design" policy could be a turning point in the current flareup of the evolution-vs-creationism debate.

Jones did not attempt to hide his disgust with the Dover, Pennsylvania school board and its so-called "ID policy." The policy required that reading material on intelligent design, including a book entitled Of Pandas and People, be recommended to high school biology students at the start of the section on evolution.

In his opinion he wrote,

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

The ruling was a rare bolt of logic in a year when much of the nation seemed to be coming under the thrall of intelligent design -- the idea that the diversity of biological species we see today could not have come about without supernatural intervention.

Last month, the Kansas State Board of Education handed down new science standards that attempt to poke holes in evolutionary theory -- holes into which discussion of intelligent design can be inserted. Ohio teachers continue to labor under similar standards. This month, a judge in Cobb County, Georgia upheld public schools' use of textbook stickers that repeat the old "evolution is only a theory" canard. Earlier in the year, President Bush himself recommended that intelligent design be taught in public schools.

Jack Krebs is president of Kansas Citizens for Science, a group that fought in vain to head off the state school board's creationist science standards. He told me that the Dover decision gives evolution's defenders in Kansas and across the nation a boost because Judge Jones declared that, "Intelligent design has no positive content, that it's just warmed-over creationist arguments against evolution and not accepted by mainstream science."

The ID policy's religious intent was made very clear, says Krebs: "The judge said the Dover school board's policy invoked supernatural causes outside the realm of science."

Because it so obviously violated the separation of church and state required by the U.S. Constitution, the Dover policy was an easy mark for Judge Jones. In contrast, intelligent design's most effective advocates so far have been academics who avoid any overt mention of religion.

But Jones made it clear that he regarded the entire field of intelligent design as faith-based -- that he wasn't fooled by the long days of scientific-sounding testimony he'd heard from university-based ID gurus.

At the Discovery Institute in Seattle, a high-profile research organization dedicated to giving intelligent design some intelligent substance, there was fury at Jones's identification of their mission with that of Dover's religious fundamentalists. John West, associate director of the institute's Center for Science and Culture said the ruling "makes it clear that [Jones] wants his place in history as the judge who issued a definitive decision about intelligent design. This is an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur."

Jack Krebs maintains that many earlier writings of Discovery Institute scholars do reveal a religious agenda. He says that as time has passed, "they've learned to hide that fairly well. They can manage that because they're a very, very close-knit group."

But, says Krebs, that group loses control of the message when it spreads beyond Seattle: "When the grassroots people get involved, they just can't hide their religious motives."

Dover's ID policy illustrates one method by which the creationist movement attempts to push religion through the back door of biology. The policy states in part, "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."

Tying evolution to speculation about the origin of life is a favorite tactic of creationists, whether they wear Sunday robes or white lab coats. The object is to create a conflict in people's minds between the science of evolution and the existence of God.

But Darwin's book was entitled On the Origin of Species, not "On the Origin of Life." Even today, research on how life first arose on the planet billions of years ago is in a state of flux and therefore rarely covered in high school biology. In contrast, evolution of new species through natural selection is a unifying concept in biology, backed by a century and a half of research and meriting a prominent place in textbooks.

When it comes to evolution, the science is solid, but the politics are very tricky. With poll after poll showing widespread support among parents for the teaching of intelligent design, its proponents claim to be fighting for nothing more than the right to open inquiry in public schools. Meanwhile, scientists are depicted as a self-appointed priesthood banning all but their own view of life. The Discovery Institute's West went so far as to call the Dover decision "government-imposed censorship."

In a highly technical age when we all can't be experts on everything, people are right to worry about who decides what their kids are taught and what they aren't taught. If religion is to be discussed in religion, philosophy and history classes where it belongs, and not in science classes, scientists and teachers will need to do a better job of informing everyone -- not just high schoolers -- what evolution is and is not.

Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kansas.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Commentary: Intelligent Design Advocates Face Uphill Fight
Hank Grezlak
The Legal Intelligencer
12-22-2005

Like many evolutionary mistakes, intelligent design may be on the road to extinction, put there Tuesday by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III.

When Jones ruled that the Dover Area School District's intelligent design policy violates the First Amendment and barred the district from mentioning intelligent design in biology classes or "from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution," he wasn't just applying a pinprick to the trial balloon intelligent design supporters had chosen to float in this case.

He aimed a cannon at it. And fired. Several times. Odds are, other courts will find it hard to argue that he missed his target.

In one of the most closely watched cases in recent memory -- not just in Pennsylvania but across the nation -- Jones took the opportunity in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District to frame the case in the much larger context many, including supporters of intelligent design, had seen it in.

The impact of his ruling can't be overstated. Not only did Jones find the policy unconstitutional but he also ruled that intelligent design is not science.

"[M]oreover ... ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," he said in the 139-page opinion.

Jones didn't pull any punches in making his ruling, criticizing the school board for its policy, as well as those who saw the case as an opportunity to make law that would pave the way for greater acceptance of intelligent design.

"Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge," he said. "If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.

"The breathtaking inanity of the board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

Not surprisingly, several groups that endorse the teaching of intelligent design, or "ID" as Jones referred to it throughout his opinion, lashed out and accused him, as he anticipated, of being an "activist federal judge."

Who knew that Republican judges appointed by Republican presidents could be such hacks for the left?

Well, if activism is changing the norm and imposing one's will from behind the safe confines of the bench onto the helpless masses, then Jones' decision in Kitzmiller hardly fits the bill, since the opinion follows closely the reasoning of other federal courts on the issue, including the U.S. Supreme Court. If anything, Jones was critical of the changes the Dover Area School Board made for an entire community and potentially a whole generation of school children.

But organizations like the Discovery Institute, the Thomas More Law Center and the Cato Institute Center for Educational Freedom should be angry with Jones. Because what he did in his opinion, systematically and ruthlessly, was expose intelligent design as creationism, minus the biblical fig leaf, and advanced by those with a clear, unscientific agenda: to get God (more specifically, a Christian one) back into the sciences.

Jones goes into an exhaustive examination on the intelligent design movement, and what he found will make it difficult for future pro-ID litigants to argue that the whole thing isn't religion masked in neo-scientific terms.

According to Jones, the Discovery Institute's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture developed a "Wedge Document" in which it said the goal of the intelligent design movement is to "replace science as currently practiced with 'theistic and Christian science.'"

He said that one of the professors, an ID proponent, who testified for the school board "remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God."

Jones also points out that the ID textbook the Dover policy encouraged students to check out, "Of Pandas and People," is not only published by an organization identified in IRS filings as a "religious, Christian organization," but that the book was meticulously changed following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in 1987 that the U.S. Constitution forbids the teaching of creationism as science.

By comparing the early drafts to the later ones, he said, it was clear that the definition for creation science was identical to the definition of intelligent design and that the word creation and its variants were replaced with the phrase ID and that it all happened shortly after the Supreme Court decision.

As Jones points out throughout his opinion, ID's supporters couldn't shake two problematic facts -- its close association with creationism and its inability to divorce itself from the supernatural.

"ID is reliant upon forces acting outside of the natural world, forces that we cannot see, replicate, control or test, which have produced changes in the world," he said. "While we take no position on whether such forces exist, they are simply not testable by scientific means and therefore cannot qualify as part of the scientific process or as a scientific theory."

All of which lead Jones to conclude that "ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."

There's plenty of other things worth noting in Jones' opinion, including how school board members talked at meetings about creationism and complained of "liberals in black robes" taking away "the rights of Christians," or how the Discovery Institute was in contact with board members prior to the policy change, and a number of other machinations that might leave one feeling less than secure about the separation of church and state in Pennsylvania, but those are facts specific to this case.

The real impact of the opinion is what Jones lays out with regard to intelligent design's roots, its proponents, its agenda and the tactics (and there's really no other way to describe them) being used to advance it. It reads like a cautionary tale, one that we should all be reading.

And while it's unlikely that the country has seen the last of this issue, one can hope that Jones' decision might save future judges a little bit of time, if not discourage groups with a religious ax to grind from using residents of small communities as pawns in the name of a dishonest, fruitless agenda.

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