Intelligent design under trial
A Pennsylvania federal court Monday was set to consider whether school districts may teach a concept known as “intelligent design” prior to teaching biology lessons on evolution. Eight families in Dover, Pennsylvania, claim that teaching the theory in schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. The “intelligent design” concept, developed by scholars over the last 15 years, sets forth the belief that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution cannot completely explain the origin of life, contending that an unidentified intelligent force played a role. The eight families suing the school district claim that the theory is not appropriate for the classroom (pdf) (here are ACLU case materials) because it is just a “masked” version of the Bible’s story of creation. The Dover Area School District is the first known district in the nation to require teaching of the concept to ninth-graders. In a related decision in 1987, the US Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that states may not mandate public schools to teach creationism in order to balance evolution lessons. AP has more.
51 Responses to “Intelligent design under trial”
Ed, it’s hardly an appeal to authority when I was agreeing with you, fer crying out loud. And if there was any haughtiness about it, it was only in response to what I perceived as your haughtiness and pedagoguery in waxing eloquent about the nature of science, presumably for my benefit.
Now, it’s possible you wrote those paragraphs for the benefit of other readers following the conversation, in which case it would have been nice of you to throw in a qualifier such as “as you know…”