An intelligent decision
A Times EditorialA Republican judge does the nation a favor by revealing intelligent design as creationism renamed and an attempt to put religion in the science classroom.
Published December 23, 2005
After a six-week trial, U.S. District Judge John Jones III on Tuesday did the town of Dover, Pa., as well as the nation, a great service by exposing "intelligent design" for what it is - religion masked in scientific lingo. He ruled that ID is repackaged creationism and has no place in the classroom. Jones, by the way, is a church-going Republican appointed by President George W. Bush.
In a 139-page opinion, Jones exhaustively documented why the theory of intelligent design, which posits that biological life is too complex to be explained by evolution and implies the hand of an intelligent designer, is "an interesting theological argument, but . . . not science."
The suit arose after the Dover Area School Board of Directors voted in 2004 to require that a statement be read in ninth-grade biology classes on "gaps" in Darwin's theory and the plausibility of intelligent design as an alternative theory. A group of parents sued on the grounds that bringing intelligent design into a science classroom imposed a religious viewpoint on their children.
While supporters of intelligent design argued that their theory was not necessarily grounded in a belief in God and that the intelligent designer could have been extraterrestrials, the evidence presented at trial demonstrated that the ID movement was, at its core, just another version of creationism, the biblical account of life's origin.
It was demonstrated that the intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People, which was commended to Dover's ninth-graders, was altered after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that creationism could not be taught as science. In 150 places where the words creation or creationism had appeared, they were changed to intelligent design. Jones was on to them. He accused School Board officials who testified that their purposes were secular of lying. Their statements, he concluded, were a "sham" and "a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom."
As Jones pointed out, intelligent design violates the "ground rule" of science which bases knowledge "upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify." Instead, it relies on supernatural explanations to describe the origin of species.
The opinion made hash of the ID movement's claim that there is a controversy within science over evolution. The scientific community and scientific institutions as a whole accept evolution as the explanation for the diversity of life on this planet, while intelligent design, said the court, "is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications."
Jones' ruling should help science teachers in other districts resist pressure from religious fundamentalists. While it has no legal reach beyond Dover, the opinion is highly instructional, providing a step by step dissection of intelligent design's claims - even leaving the movement's criticisms of evolution in tatters.
The voters of Dover have already ousted those School Board members who voted for the intelligent design policy, but there undoubtedly will be other places where religious conservatives will try to use a public school's science curriculum to promote their beliefs. Jones demonstrated why such "breathtaking inanity," as he put it, must be resisted. Other school boards, and if necessary, other courts, should follow his lead.