Intelligent design is a religious theory that cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district because teaching it would violate the U.S. Constitution, a federal judge in Harrisburg ruled yesterday.
In one of the most seminal court clashes between faith and evolution in the nation's history, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the Dover Area School Board in York County violated the First Amendment clause enforcing separation between church and state when it ordered teachers in October 2004 to teach intelligent design along with evolution.
"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," Jones wrote in a blistering, 139-page opinion capping one of the most heated legal battles on evolution since the 1925 Scopes monkey trial.
Proponents of intelligent design maintain that biological life is so complex it must have been created by an unidentified higher power. The Dover school board's attorneys said members wanted to expose students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
After hearing six weeks of testimony this fall, Jones wrote in his first-of-its-kind decision that intelligent design is not science and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents." Consequently, he ruled, it would be unconstitutional to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.
