Christian activists tried to debunk Charles Darwin's theory
A US court has
ruled it was unconstitutional to teach schoolchildren the intelligent design
theory of life as an alternative to evolution, dealing a blow to religious
conservatives.
The case, in
Pennsylvania, has been closely watched as the key legal battle in an
ideological war waged by Christian activists to debunk Charles Darwin's
theory and to challenge the principles of secular education.
Advocates had hoped to introduce intelligent design into schools across the
United States - despite claims by critics that it violates the separation of
church and state.
The concept holds that nature and biological structures are so complex that
they must have been designed by an unidentified intelligent being rather
than evolving by chance."Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional
to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science
classroom," US District Court Judge John Jones ruled.
The school board in the northeastern state's Dover area had ruled that
biology classes must include teaching of the intelligent design concept.But
Jones concluded in his 139-page ruling that intelligent design violated the
"establishment clause" of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which
bars a state-mandated religion.
"In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of
whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not," he wrote.
Breathtaking
inanity
Jones reasoned
after hearing six weeks of testimony that "ID cannot uncouple itself from
its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents".The judge also lashed out
at activist members of the Dover school board, eight of whom were voted out
of office in November, for thrusting an "untestable alternative hypothesis"
to evolution into the classroom."The citizens of the Dover area were poorly
served by the members of the board who voted for the ID policy," he said,
accusing the board of "breathtaking inanity"."It is ironic that several of
these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious
convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and
disguise the real purpose behind the ID policy."
Opponents of intelligent design described the ruling as "wonderful"."This is
a very important decision, judge Jones has reaffirmed that in this country,
public servants shall not use their public office to impose their religious
views on others," said Stephen Harvey of law firm Pepper Hamilton, which
fought the case.
About religion
Plantiff Tammy Kitzmiller, a parent who brought the case, said "intelligent
design is not science. Intelligent design is about religion".But supporters
of the theory said they had simply lost a single battle."Anyone who thinks a
court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living
in another world," said John West, of the Discovery Institute think tank,
which advocates intelligent design. The ruling was the latest in a flurry of
court judgments on the role of religion in US society, which has also seen
Supreme Court justices rule on the proper use of the Ten Commandments on
state property.
The intelligent design trial has drawn comparisons to the Scopes trial of
1925, in which a biology teacher was convicted of violating Tennessee law by
teaching evolution - in a precedent-setting case on the role of the Bible in
US public life.
Of Pandas and People
In an October 2004 vote, the Dover School Board required teachers to read
pupils a statement stating that Darwin's "theory of evolution" was not a
"fact" and contained "gaps". Students were also to be informed about an
intelligent design textbook called Of Pandas and People.Jones said the
statement misrepresented Darwin's theory without offering scientific
justification and offered students an alternative based on religion and not
science.And he accurately predicted the reaction of intelligent design
advocates, in this politically sensitive case."Those who disagree with our
holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they
will have erred."
Discovery's West hit back: "This is an activist judge who has delusions of
grandeur."
Judge Rules Against
'Intelligent Design'
Dover, Pa., District Can't Teach Evolution Alternative
By Michael Powell- Washington Post -
December 21/12/05
A federal judge barred a Pennsylvania school district yesterday from
mentioning "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolutionary theory in
a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying
under oath and for their "breathtaking inanity" in trying to inject religion
into science classes.
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, a
Republican appointed by President Bush, did not confine his
opinion to the missteps of a local school board. Instead he explicitly
sought to vanquish intelligent design, the argument that aspects of life are
so complex as to require the hand, subtle or not, of a supernatural creator.
This theory, he said, relies on the unprovable
existence of a Christian God and therefore is not science.
"The overwhelming evidence is that Intelligent Design is a religious
view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a
scientific theory," Jones wrote in a 139-page decision. "It is an
extension of the Fundamentalists' view that one must either accept the
literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of
evolution."
In November, voters in Dover threw out eight of nine school board
members; the ninth was not up for reelection. The new school board, which
favors teaching evolution, will not appeal the ruling.
Jones's decision puts an exclamation mark on a courtroom battle widely
hailed as the successor to the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, when
proponents of modern scientific methods first battled creationists in court
over the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution. State and local school
boards from Kansas to Georgia and Florida have begun challenges to
evolution, and these officials watched Dover closely in hopes of divining
how much leeway they might get in federal court.
If yesterday's decision is any guide, opponents of evolution now face a
very tough task, advocates on both sides agreed.
"The court has held that it's not a scientific theory," said Witold
Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union and one of the trial lawyers for parents who sued the school
board. "At a time when this country is lagging behind other countries, we
can ill afford to shackle our children's minds with 15th-century science."
John West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for
Science & Culture, a leading intelligent design think tank in Seattle, took
a dim view of the judge, saying that he evinced a "grandiosity" and
"egregious" judicial activism. But he agreed that the decision comes as a
heavy blow.
"There's no doubt that people will trumpet this and that now they can say
a federal judge agrees and that doesn't help," West said. "His angry tone
was not helpful."
This latest skirmish in a centuries-long cultural war began when the
school board in Dover, a small central Pennsylvania farm town slowly
becoming a suburb of Harrisburg, voted last year to require ninth-grade
biology teachers to read a four-paragraph statement casting doubt on
Darwin's theory of evolution.
The mandatory statement notes that intelligent design offers an
alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life.The board members
made little secret of their own views, which hewed not so much to
intelligent design as to Young Earth Creationism, the fundamentalist
Christian belief that the world is but 6,000 years old and that Noah's flood
shaped the earth.One board member told a public meeting -- in a remark he
later tried to deny -- that the nation "was founded on Christianity, and our
students should be taught as such."Eleven parents filed a lawsuit in federal
court, seeking to block the new policy on the grounds that intelligent
design was but biblical creationism in the cloth of science. The Supreme
Court had ruled in 1987 that nothing like creationism could be taught in
public school science courses."The board was selfish," said Eric Rothschild,
who represented the parents along with the ACLU and Americans United for
Separation of Church and State. "This was all about imposing their religious
viewpoint on a diverse community."
Steve Fuller, a philosopher of science at the University of Warwick in
England who testified at the trial for the defense, acknowledged that the
school board members undercut the case for a new theory."Intelligent design
has to be de-theologized," Fuller said. "But it will be a shame if a result
of this decision is that we can't question Darwinism, which is not just a
theory but an entire secular world view that flattens the distinction
between humans and other life."When the trial ended in early November, Jones
faced two choices. He could have construed the case narrowly and ruled on
whether the school board had a religious motive. That, in Jones's view, was
an easy call. He found that school board members had committed "outright
lies under oath" and displayed a "striking ignorance" of intelligent design.
Essayist Richard Rodriguez argues that some American politicians and
religious leaders have successfully shortened the separation between
the political assembly and the pulpit and allowed America to see
itself as the Judeo-Christian nation against which Osama bin Laden
said he is fighting a religious war.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ:
Even before the attacks of Sept. 11, Osama bin Laden had taunted
America, branding us a nation of
"crusaders and Jews." Bin Laden's
hectoring was rhetorical, intended to incite Muslims to jihad, but
he also intended to mock the great experiment of American
civilization: How people of different religions, or no religion, can
live together within a secular discretion.
( Praying in Arabic)
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ:
I will tell you frankly: I am a religious man and as much as anyone,
I am moved by, approving of, even envious at the sight of Muslims at
prayer, the crowd praying as one in the great public square. That
which is communal in religion yearns for public expression.
PRIEST: We ask this
through Christ, our lord.
PEOPLE: Amen.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ:
I have known the pleasure of a community of faith. In California, in
Sacramento, a sacred name on the state capitol, I attended Catholic
schools until I left home for college. The people I knew best were
Catholic. It was a small world that nevertheless instilled a sense
of the universal. But I have lived my entire life within a democracy
and according to the principle of
the absolute separation of church from state. I've grown to cherish and to depend upon the secular
institutions of America and the protections they offer, the
libraries, the courts, the civic assemblies. What Osama bin Laden
did was to frame America religiously. Imagine our incredulity.
America had always presented itself among other nations as secular.
Now, perhaps, it is useful, perhaps even necessary that we try
to see ourselves through our
adversaries' eyes: A Christian nation supporting a Jewish state
occupying a Muslim country. As a
nation, we have never fought a religious war. We have fought kings
and dictators and political ideologies, and we fought over land.
Today, we are challenged by antagonists who pit us in theological
opposition to themselves. After Sept. 11, President Bush visited
with Muslim clerics. Immediately, the secular impulse, the inclusive
impulse, the refutation of bin Laden's taunt: Americans are Muslims,
as well. But after Sept. 11, the
president began to couch the war against terrorism in theological
terms as a battle between "the forces of good" and "the forces of
evil." And he spoke of American policy as proximate to the will of
"the Almighty."
PRESIDENT GEORGE W.
BUSH: Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this
world. And as the greatest power on the face of the earth, we have
an obligation to help the spread of freedom.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ:
When John Kennedy ran for president, it was necessary for him to
reassure an audience of protestant ministers-- and, thus, the
nation-- that he would not be controlled by the Vatican.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I
believe in an America where the separation of church and state is
absolute. For no Catholic prelate would tell the president, should
he be Catholic, how to act. And no Protestant minister would tell
his parishioners for whom to vote.
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ:
Four decades later, the most dynamic
political force in America is the Protestant right, which seeks to
lessen the gap between the political assembly and the pulpit. As much as any Muslim cleric, the Reverend Jerry
Falwell and the Reverend Pat Robertson are political leaders and
religious leaders. And now, one of
the most important political alliances in America unites right-wing
Protestants and orthodox Jews. For theological reasons, both support the state of Israel. Roman Catholic bishops clearly are
galvanized by the efficacy of the protestant right. Some American
bishops are prepared to use the sacraments as political tools
against Catholic politicians who take public positions that are at
variance with church teaching.
America is not the country Osama bin Laden imagines, which makes it
all the more shocking that some Americans are challenging the
premise of a secular state. In the
aftermath of Sept. 11, they are describing America in religious
terms, ironically, as bin Laden did, rather than the America Thomas Jefferson imagined:
The secular nation my grammar school civics teacher, a Catholic nun,
taught me to honor and love. I'm Richard Rodriguez.
Religious
education faces new threat
Aljazeera +
Agencies-Monday 21 June
2004,
Prominent
Muslim and Christian religious leaders have dismissed the idea of omitting
religion as a subject in the Arab countries as part of intended "reforms".
"Cancelling
the subject of religion from school curricula will have catastrophic
consequence on society. Everybody should learn their own religion," Pope
Shenouda III, Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, said at a forum
organised by the Sporting Club in Alexandria, Egypt.
He also urged
educational authorities in Arab countries to increase the number of subjects
that teach children "how to be decent human beings".
Shaikh
Muhammad Tantawi, head of one of the highest Muslim authorities al-Azhar
University, in Cairo, backed the pope in his argument that religious
authorities would have to shoulder the responsibility of religious
instruction if such courses were omitted from school curricula.
The proposed
cancellation and/or modification of religious teaching in the Arab world has
triggered controversy and dispute among religious leaders.
Arabs who
back the US reforms say religious teaching should be left to clerics, while
those who oppose the project say it is an unacceptable bid to manipulate the
Arab Muslim cultural system.
Al-Azhar
criticised
Al-Azhar has
been criticised recently for its alleged role in confiscating literature,
which failed to get the approval of the Egyptian censorship authorities.
"We are a
consultative body in this regard. We are not policemen," said a
spokesperson.
"Al-Azhar
informs the government censorship body of its opinion, and there are
executive governmental bodies that tackle the job of confiscating books from
the shelves of bookshops."
Archbishop speaks out against teaching
creationism
AFP- 21/03/ 2006 –
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan
Williams ... the spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans does not believe
creationism should be taught in schools.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual
leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, says he does not believe
creationism -- the Bible-based account of the origins of the world -- should
be taught in schools."I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake,
as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... if creationism is
presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think
there has just been a jarring of categories," Dr Rowan Williams told The
Guardian newspaper."My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine
of creation rather than enhancing it," the most senior clergyman in the
Church of England added. A debate over creationism or a related subject
known as intelligent design (ID) has triggered divisions in Britain and
fierce divides in the United States, The Guardian explained.Intelligent
design is the argument that creation is so complex an intelligent, religious
force must have directed it.The religious right in the United States has
pressured some states to consider giving ID equal prominence to Darwinism,
the widely accepted scientific account of the evolution of life, the
newspaper said.
The
Guardian noted that most scientists believe intelligent design is merely an
attempt to sneak fundamentalist Christianity into science teaching.
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