'Breathtaking Inanity' and a victory for reason

'Breathtaking Inanity': How Intelligent Design Flunked Its Test Case

A federal judge minces no words as he comes down against evolution's rival

"Intelligent design is a religious idea and a Pennsylvania school board may not introduce it into the classroom, a federal judge ruled today. Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the Dover Area School Board improperly introduced religion into the classroom when it required science teachers to read a brief statement during the 9th grade biology class telling students that evolution was 'Just a theory' and inviting them to consider alternatives. The only alternative specifically mentioned was intelligent design,' the notion that life is so complex that it could not possibly have been the work of natural selection alone and must have been the work of an unspecified creative intelligence. '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,' Jones wrote.

"The Dover school board became the first in the nation to explicitly embrace intelligent design in October of 2004, when it required teachers to read the brief statement at the start of the evolution unit in the biology class. Teachers later refused and the statement was read instead by administrators. Jones said the Dover case was the result of 'the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.' He derided the school board’s decision as 'breathtaking inanity' and said the resulting 'legal maelstrom' was an 'utter waste of monetary and personal resources.' The judge’s decision clears the way for the plaintiffs in the case to demand repayment of legal expenses. It's not clear, therefore, how much the case may wind up costing the taxpayers of Dover."
TIME

'Intelligent design' teaching ban
Google News: dover inanity
Creationism (rotten.com)
Design Yes, Intelligent No (CSIOP)
What the blogs are saying (Technorati)

Tagged: intelligent+design, darwin, evolution, science, religion, fundamentalism