Judge: View is religious, not a scientific principle

The ACLU and 11 parents who sued were among those hailing the ruling.
long island Newsday
The concept of "intelligent design" is inherently religious in nature and may not be introduced into high school biology classrooms in a Pennsylvania public school district, a district court judge ruled Tuesday in a sharply worded and potentially far-reaching decision.
"The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID [intelligent design] is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," wrote U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III in a 139-page decision that prompted a flurry of responses on both sides of the bitter intelligent design-evolution divide.
The ruling was hailed by the American Civil Liberties Union as a major vindication for 11 parents who had sued the school board in Dover, Pa., over its policy requiring a statement questioning evolution and promoting intelligent design to be read to the district's ninth-grade biology students.
"An absolutely thrilling decision," said Barrie Callahan, a parent and a former school board member, at a teleconference Tuesday afternoon.
Organizations ranging from the Interfaith Alliance to the American Association for the Advancement of Science also applauded the ruling.
The Seattle-based Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, however, attempted to downplay the implications of the ruling while lashing out at "an activist judge who has delusions of grandeur."
Even so, a spokesman for the intelligent design think tank conceded that school districts across the country will likely take note of the sweeping district court decision.
"In my opinion, the judge simply ignored the way in which intelligent design functions," said Casey Luskin, the center's program officer in public policy and legal affairs.
Intelligent design, according to a written summary by Luskin, is "a scientific theory which states that some aspects of nature are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected cause such as natural selection."
Critics, however, say intelligent design ascribes complexity in nature to an unidentified supernatural deity and represents little more than camouflaged legal strategy to circumvent a June 19, 1987, Supreme Court prohibition against teaching biblical creation science in public schools.
Tuesday, Judge Jones agreed, writing that intelligent design "aspires to change the ground rules of science to make room for religion, specifically, beliefs consonant with a particular form of Christianity."
Far-reaching implications
Lawyers for the 11 plaintiffs said they expected the decision's implications to extend well beyond Pennsylvania.
"This wasn't just a quick-and-dirty lawsuit over what happened in Dover," Witold Walczak, legal director of ACLU of Pennsylvania, said in an interview last week. "This was a six-week trial with no expenses spared by either side that put intelligent design on trial."
Although the ruling has no binding precedent on other school districts, the "decision is really quite striking in its breadth," agreed Jay Wexler, professor at Boston University School of Law, who wasn't part of the trial. "I would imagine that will make other school districts pretty cautious going forward," he said.
Judge Jones, whom President Bush appointed to the court in 2002, may be relatively insulated from charges of overstepping his judicial authority, according to Wexler.
"This is a conservative appointee," he said, "so it's not like this claim of liberal activism is going to be very persuasive."
Judge's words
Judge Jones saved some of his harshest words for the "breathtaking inanity" of the school board's decision and for members themselves.
"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 true purpose behind the ID policy," he wrote.
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based National Center for Science Education, predicted that the anti-evolution movement would still find other ways to promote its views.
"It's like a waterbed," she said in a news teleconference. "You push it down in one place, and it bounces up in another."