‘Intelligent design’ on trial

Harrisburg, Pa.

Eighty years after the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, the theory of evolution was back in court this week. Eleven Pennsylvania parents challenged their school board’s right to introduce the theory of “intelligent design” into ninth-grade biology classes. The Dover Area School District was the first in the nation to order that students be told that Darwin’s theory of natural selection had “gaps,” and that one way to explain them was “intelligent design,” which holds that evolution was guided by a higher power. The ACLU and the parents claim the school board violated the separation of church and state by pushing the Bible’s story of Creation “under a different name.” But a lawyer for the school board said the case “is about free inquiry in education, not a religious agenda.”