A U.S. District Court ruled today the Dover School Board defied the Constitution's barrier separating church and state when they required a statement be read in ninth grade biology classes expressing evolutionary theory is "not a fact" and referring students to an textbook, Of Pandas And People, for information about intelligent design. In a 139 page exposition explaining the court's position, U.S. District Judge concluded,

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy... We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom."

Angry parents in the Dover school district brought the issue to court in October 2004, claiming intelligent design amount to a cloaked means of presenting creationist theories in public (and therefore secular) schools. In deciding this case in favor of the plaintiffs, judges expressed contempt for the hypocrisy espoused by school board members, whom they contend repeatedly lied about their religious motivations behind including intelligent design in scientific curriculum.

Judges noted that proponents of intelligent design "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors," and that their decision was not a condemnation of intelligent design but rather of its insertion into secular classwork founded on empirical science.

Source (CNN.com)

The Philoneist Says: Kudos to the common sense exhibited by judges in this case. Without unnecessarily admonishing against the study of intelligent design, they astutely drew a line classifying it as an offshoot of creationist theory, which by its contention that biological life has irreducible complexities and must have been directed in some way by a "higher power" clearly is. Hopefully the decision in this trial will be the catalyst for a pendulum swing in government policy back towards the support of science and away from religious fundamentalism.