This week a court trial began in a lawsuit over the decision of a Pennsylvania school board to allow the teaching of Intelligent Design in science class.
Intelligent Design (or ID) is the idea that the world is so complex that it had to be created by a designer. Pushed by a group of religious conservatives, ID is the idea of creationism masked in more scientific sounding terms. In 1987, the US Supreme court said that Creationism couldn’t be taught in public schools because it was a religious concept.
Groups like the Discovery Institute have been working for several years on getting a watered down version of creationism into school science classes. They use a scheme called “The Wedge” strategy by getting school boards to enact loopholes in their science classes where ID can squeeze in. They also attempt to smear Evolution by claiming that Evolution is not a fact and is disputed by many scientists then they claim that “our children should be told both sides of the story”. The Dover Area School district is one that fell for the “fairness” argument and now requires a disclaimer be given before Evolution is taught and refers students to an ID textbook.
Proponents of ID are plain wrong about the so-called dispute and are lying about Evolution not being a fact.
As Kenneth Miller, a biologist from Brown University put it at the trial as the first witness:
“What that tells students is that science can’t be relied upon and certainly is not the kind of profession you want to go into,” he said.
“There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory,” he added. On the other hand, he said, “Intelligent design is not a testable theory in any sense and as such it is not accepted by the scientific community.”
Let me repeat. There is NO dispute about Evolution in the scientific community. It is a scientific FACT and the Dover school board is allowing lies to be told in class.
Secularleft.us will post more updates on the trial as it moves along.
