US judge rejects intelligent design

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge in Pennsylvania yesterday ruled that intelligent design is ''nothing less than the progeny of creationism" and should not be taught in public schools.

The ruling, handed down by a judge appointed by President Bush, is a major legal setback for proponents of intelligent design, which holds that living organisms are so complex they cannot be explained by evolution and must be the work of a higher power. Christian right leaders have argued that it should be taught in school systems across the country.

The ruling, the first legal test of intelligent design, comes after a six-week trial in which expert witnesses and parents on both sides of the dispute took the stand to argue their positions on a Dover, Pa., school board policy requiring science teachers to inform students of ''gaps" in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and to share competing views, including intelligent design.

Intelligent design proponents, mindful of legal barriers against teaching creationism in public schools, have long argued that their theory passes constitutional muster because it is not based in religion. They use the term ''intelligent designer," rather than God, to describe an omniscient force behind life on Earth, and they draw on a pool of scientists to raise questions they say Darwin's theory fails to answer.

But in a sweeping 139-page opinion that went far beyond the legality of the Dover policy, Judge John E. Jones III concluded that intelligent design is religious and that its inclusion in public school violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

The ruling rebuked prominent intelligent design theorists, saying their assertion that evolution cannot coexist with religious beliefs is ''utterly false." Jones also harshly condemned the Dover school board members who backed it.

Those school officials, Jones charged, ''time and again lie[d] to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose" behind promoting the theory of intelligent design, which he said was to promote religion.

Jones is a lifelong Republican who ran for Congress and narrowly lost more than a decade ago. He has described his mentor as Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who served as homeland security secretary. Bush appointed Jones to the bench in 2002.

It's unlikely the decision will be appealed because a newly elected Dover school board now opposes intelligent design.

Lawyers for the 11 parents who sued the school district say Jones's decision sends a warning to other school districts considering including intelligent design in their curricula.

''Although this is a decision by one district court, it is a carefully reasoned and highly detailed decision that goes through all the issues that will come up in any school district," said plaintiff lawyer Richard B. Katskee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Jay D. Wexler, a Boston University law professor who has written scholarly articles on intelligent design, said that while the ruling is limited to one district, ''the decision is so extremely broad and negative towards intelligent design that I do think it will have some chilling effect" on school districts considering ways to cast doubt on evolution.

But John West, senior fellow of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, a leading promoter of intelligent design, predicted that the ruling will spark renewed interest in the theory. ''Americans don't like to be told what to think about and what to study," he said, adding that ''intelligent design ultimately will rise or fall on scientific evidence."

''This judge obviously thought he had this important place in history, so why not get up on his soap box," West added. ''But he failed as a matter of law."

Citing both scientists appearing at the trial and leading authors on intelligent design, the Pennsylvania judge repeatedly referred to intelligent design's ''religious nature and aspirations."

''Although proponents of [intelligent design] occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed," Jones wrote. ''It is notable that not one defense expert was able to explain how the supernatural action suggested by ID could be anything other than an inherently religious proposition."

This fall's trial inside a Harrisburg, Pa., courtroom drew comparisons to the famed 1925 Scopes trial, in which evolutionary theory was pitted against Christian fundamentalism in the trial of a Tennessee teacher who defied a state law by teaching evolution. Like the Scopes trial, the Dover case spilled over into the political arena.

Senator Rick Santorum, a conservative Pennsylvania Republican and member of the Senate leadership, has said that intelligent design is a ''legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes." Bush fanned the fires in August when he told a group of Texas newspaper reporters that he thought intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

And in November, after Dover voters bounced eight of the nine school board members supporting intelligent design out of office, televangelist Pat Robertson warned residents that ''if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city."

In 1968 the Supreme Court struck down an Arkansas ban on the teaching of evolution. Subsequent attempts to inject creationism back into the classroom -- including ''balanced treatment" statutes that required creationism to be taught alongside evolution -- have also been blocked by courts.

The Discovery Institute, the most prominent proponent of intelligent design, had distanced itself from the Dover school board's action because it supports the voluntary, not mandated, teaching of intelligent design in classrooms.

''We were queasy about" the Dover school board action, said West, because it went too far.

The Discovery Institute and other intelligent-design proponents are hoping for a more favorable outcome for school policies that cast doubt on evolution but don't mandate teaching alternative theories. In particular, the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, is expected to hand down a ruling soon over a requirement that biology books in Cobb County, Ga., carry stickers stating that evolution is ''a theory, not a fact."

The Discovery Institute also supported a Kansas school board policy, adopted last month, that injects language that is critical of evolution into statewide standards.

Nevertheless, the Pennsylvania district court's broad assault on intelligent design was widely viewed as a serious setback for its proponents.

The judge repeatedly cited the ''religious" nature of intelligent design writings, and quoted a Discovery Institute document stating that intelligent design's governing goals are to ''defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies" and to ''replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."

Jones also chastised the Dover school board members who embraced intelligent design ''despite a collective failure to understand" the theory and in the face of ''consistent and unwelcome advice from the District's science teachers who uniformly opposed the change."

The only outside groups consulted were the Discovery Institute and another intelligent design group.