Chalk one up for the good guys… Today a U.S. district judge ruled against (more like annihilated) the Dover, Pennsylvania school board who tried to force “intelligent design” into their Grade 9 biology classes.
The judge’s 139-page decision is here, and if it’s not quite of the sheer literary quality of the City of Toronto’s Bellamy report, it’s a remarkably straightforward (not too much legalese) and lucid retelling of facts: starting with a backgrounder featuring the history of creationism vs. evolution in the US courts; all the way through the machinations and outright lying of the born-again board members to push their agenda through. I was just shaking my head at details such as:
…there arose the astonishing story of an evolution mural that was taken from a classroom and destroyed in 2002 by Larry Reeser, the head of buildings and grounds for the [board]. At the June 2004 meeting, [teacher] Spahr asked [board member and creationist] Buckingham where he had received a picture of the evolution mural that had been torn down and incinerated…. Buckingham responded: “I gleefully watched it burn.” Buckingham disliked the mural because he thought it advocated the theory of evolution, particularly common ancestry. Burning the evolutionary mural apparently was insufficient for Buckingham, however. Instead, he demanded that the teachers agree that there would never again be a mural depicting evolution in any of the classrooms and in exchange, Buckingham would agree to support the purchase of the biology textbook in need by the students.
But we probably shouldn’t get too cocky about winning this one; in the judge’s conclusion:
…this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board…to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.
That is, these people were stupid. This won’t always be the case (though one hopes it will be).
No comment yet
aiabx says:
December 21, 2005 at 10:37 am (UTC 0)
We’ll call it a partial victory for common sense.. they won’t be teaching about the FSM either.
-aiabx
David "See My Footnote" Barker says:
December 21, 2005 at 11:04 am (UTC 0)
Watching CNN’s report on this* yesterday, I fully expected the judge to rule “As for science vs. religion I’m issuing a restraining order. Science should stay 500 yards from religion at all times.”
The lawyer for the bad guys, interviewed on CNN, was unbelievably ignorant, for a supposedly educated man.
*My watch may have been intelligently designed but I sure as hell wasn’t! I mean, shoot, they call *this* (cracks his back) ‘intelligent design’?
Jeff K says:
December 21, 2005 at 3:06 pm (UTC 0)
I liked the “Darwin’s theory of evolution has its problems, to be sure”, part of what the judge said to the media.
Jeff K says:
December 22, 2005 at 12:11 pm (UTC 0)
By the by, the search string for references for my last quotation is http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=ca&ie=UTF-8&q=evolution+AND+%22to+be+sure%22&btnG=Search+News
It seems I paraphrased a bit. Real quote: “To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect”
Peter says:
December 24, 2005 at 6:18 pm (UTC 0)
Or just see bottom of page 136 on the link in the post. The conclusion is about three pages, and starts on 136.
For the full context the paragraph is:
Which is about as much as you can hope for from a conservative Bush-appointee, who was on Tom Ridge’s transition team. As he says, he’s hardly what you’d call an activist judge for evolution.
For those just tuning in, let’s leave it to the brilliant Tom Toles to sum the whole thing up.
Peter says:
December 24, 2005 at 6:42 pm (UTC 0)
And, since Andy rightly brought up the very important aspect of Flying Sphaghetti Monsterism into this, here’s a late-breaking interview with the FSM high priest in Wired. In short, there’s gonna be a book.