Debate over Intelligent Design Goes On After Court Ruling
Although the ruling in the case over the legality of intelligent design in public schools will be enforceable only in the local school district in Dover, Pa., the debate will continue.
Tuesday’s ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case over the legality of intelligent design in public schools was analyzed by its main proponents and detractors. Although the ruling will be enforceable only in the local school district in Dover, Pa., the debate will continue.
The case involved parents who sued their local school district when it instituted a new policy that said evolutionary theory was not a fact, and that there were competing theories, including intelligent design (ID). While the ID theory was not taught in the classrooms, students were pointed to a book on the subject and encouraged to have an open mind.
Judge John E. Jones III of the U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pa. focused his ruling on the motivation behind some of the school board members in the district.
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"The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," wrote Judge Jones.
"Any asserted secular purposes by the board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective," he added.
In his decision, Judge Jones said that while intelligent design should not be discussed in the science class, that should not stifle talk and discussion of the topic.
The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Eric Rothschild from the Pepper Hamilton law firm along with attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Pennsylvania emphasized that the Judge noted in his opinion that early drafts of the pro-intelligent design book that was suggested as reading material for students had references to creationism and creation science. He said the case had been a “complete victory.”
“…what we presented to the judge – and I think he found particularly compelling – is that intelligent design really makes the same arguments as creationism or creation science,” said Rothschild in the NewsHour television program.
In the case, Rothschild’s legal team presented the book “Of Pandas and People” as evidence that intelligent design was religiously motivated and that this case was essentially “nothing new except that creationists have put a new name on the same proposition.”
Defense Attorney Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Michigan-based Thomas More law Center, said that he would like to appeal, but that decision rests on the Dover school board. That doesn’t seem likely, however, since eight of the board members who defended their policy were voted out in November and replaced with people mostly opposed to intelligent design.
Thompson criticized the way in which the Establishment clause of the First amendment is being applied today, saying that it is “in hopeless disarray and in need of substantial revision.”
"The Founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change ‘established religion’ in violation of the Constitution that they drafted,” he said.
The attorney added that unless the views of the Supreme Court changed, similar results would be take place in the future.
“The district court’s decision today continues along this path of applying a fundamentally flawed jurisprudence,” Thompson said on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, until the Supreme Court adopts a more coherent and historically sound jurisprudence, school districts like Dover will be at risk of costly lawsuits by the ACLU for adopting such modest curriculum changes such as the one at issue.”
The Discovery Institute, one of the most prominent pro-intelligent design groups said that it viewed the Judge's decision as having “minor significance” in the larger debate over the issue.
“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,” said Casey Luskin, an attorney for the Discovery Institute.
The group opposes teaching intelligent design in schools because it says many teachers are not sufficiently trained or qualified to do so. The Institute does, however, encourage them to discuss it voluntarily.
Its definition of intelligent design proposes that “some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.”
The starting point of the theory, advocates say, is not the intelligent designer, but rather the evidence from nature which points to the designer.
Proponents of ID have noted that the theory is does not contradict Christianity or other religions which have a God. However it also doesn’t necessarily exclude that other forms possible forms of intelligence, including extra-terrestrial beings.
The theory stops short of identifying what the intelligent cause is and does not reference any Biblical account of creation.
