Thursday, June 09, 2005
Fear and Loathing in Dover
William Dembski has a post up on his Uncommon Descent blog about the stakes in the Dover case. He's just been to Dover to help depose Barbara Forrest, and he's worried about the potential for a setback there that might derail the ID movement's carefully laid plans.
Here's what Dembski says,
"I expect I’ll be reporting more on this case at some point. Though seemingly insignificant (a tiny community’s school board enacts a seemingly trivial concession to ID), this case could well blow up with huge implications for ID in high school biology curricula."
The Discovery Institute's longterm legal and political strategy, best exemplfied by the hearings held in Kansas this Spring, is to wait for more right-wing judicial appointments -- including a possible Supreme Court appointment that might come as early as this summer -- to make the courts more ID and creationist friendly. Until then, their public stance is that they only want to "teach the controversy." It is in that sense that the Discovery Institute fears that the Dover school board has gone too far, too fast by writing ID into the public school curriculum before the necessary rightward shift in the political composition of the courts has come to fruition.
Dover, RSR readers will remember, is the first school district in the nation to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design,” which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by an unspecified higher power.
The district mandated that the following statement be read to all students in ninth grade biology classes:
The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.
Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.
Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.
With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.
On December 14, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and attorneys with Pepper Hamilton LLP filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of 11 parents who say that presenting "intelligent design" in public school science classrooms violates their religious liberty by promoting particular religious beliefs to their children under the guise of science education.
The school board is being represented in the suit by the Thomas More Law Center, which describes itself as dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, the sanctity of human life, and the sword and shield for people of faith,
