Rechter in VS schrapt intelligent design


Gelovigen willen evolutieleer vervangen door een scheppingsverhaal in een wetenschappelijk kleedje.


Volgens een Amerikaanse rechter hoort Intelligent Design niet in biologielessen op openbare scholen thuis. Het zou slechts een nieuwe vermomming zijn voor het bijbelse scheppingsverhaal.

Volgens een federale rechter loog het bestuur van de openbare scholen in de stad Dover, Pennsylvannia, toen het zei het biologieonderwijs te willen verbeteren door de leerlingen te wijzen op gaten in de evolutietheorie van Darwin. Die leert dat het leven zich via natuurlijke selectie ontwikkelt.

Het bestuur beval daarnaast Intelligent Design aan, een nieuwe 'theorie' die leert dat het ontstaan van het leven zo complex is dat er wel een slim ontwerp en dus ook een slimme ontwerper achter moeten zitten. In werkelijkheid wou het bestuur ,,godsdienst promoten in klassen van openbare scholen'', stelde rechter John Jones gisteren.

Het Hooggerechtshof vonniste eerder dat evolutionisme niet thuishoort in de biologieles. Om het scheppingsverhaal via een achterdeur toch het klaslokaal in te krijgen, overgieten rechtse christenen in Amerika het met een wetenschappelijk sausje en vermijden de naam 'God' in hun materialen, stellen tegenstanders. De rechter was het met hen eens.

Het proces was aangespannen door elf ouders uit Dovers. Waarschijnlijk gaat het bestuur niet in beroep tegen de uitspraak. De oorspronkelijke bestuurders werden namelijk in de verkiezingen van november allemaal weggestemd. De kiezers hebben geen zin in dure processen.

Met deze uitspraak is de strijd over ID en het evolutionisme nog niet voorbij. In de staat Georgia loopt een zaak in hoger beroep. Ook de nieuwe richtlijnen voor biologielessen in Kansas waarin de evolutietheorie in twijfel werd getrokken, werden aangevochten.


DS, 21-12-2005

__________________
"Never argue with an idiot, they'll just bring you
down to their level and beat you with experience." (c)TB

Intelligent design is re-labelled creationism


A Pennsylvania judge's ruling against intelligent design legally applies only to a single school district. But the detailed critique of the arguments in favour of intelligent design could have a far-reaching legal and political impact.


Judge John Jones of the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled on Tuesday that requiring intelligent design in public school science lessons amounts to promotion of religion, and is therefore unconstitutional. In doing so, he sided with mainstream science organisations and rebutted almost every argument made in favour of intelligent design, calling it the "progeny of creationism".

"Intelligent design is about religion, and this ruling makes it very clear," said Tammy Kitzmiller, one of the 11 parents who filed the suit against the Dover District School Board in December 2004.

But the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank which promotes the idea of intelligent design, dismissed Jones as an "activist judge" trying to censor legitimate scientific debate.

"The empirical evidence for design, the facts of biology and nature, can't be changed by legal decree," said John West, associate director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, in a written statement.

Voted off
The decision is only legally binding within the Pennsylvania Middle District. But Richard Katskee, a lawyer who helped bring the suit, says other judges are likely to be influenced by the decision if they face similar cases. And Witold Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said the decision might convince other school boards to avoid requiring intelligent design in the first place.

An appeal seems unlikely, since the board members who advocated the policy were voted off in November, in favour of candidates who opposed teaching intelligent design as science.

The Dover lawsuit was the first to challenge the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design. But in November, the Kansas Board of Education changed science standards to incorporate elements of intelligent design. And in August President George W Bush said he thought that intelligent design should be taught along with evolution in schools.

Pandas and people
Intelligent design says that some features of the universe and living things can not be accounted for by natural causes, but instead show signs of being designed by an intelligent agent.

The suit was filed after the Dover school board told teachers to read a statement to high school biology students that said, among other things, that the evolution was a theory, not a fact, and that intelligent design was a competing explanation.

The statement encouraged students to keep "an open mind" and referred them an intelligent design book called "Of Pandas and People". After science teachers refused to read the statement, administrators read it to students instead.

“Breathtaking inanity”
Judge Jones found that the school board had acted from religious motives, and castigated them for the "breathtaking inanity" of their decision. And he concluded that intelligent design is not science, but merely creation science in disguise. The US Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that creation science was a religious concept, not a scientific idea, and could not be mandated in public schools.

In reaching the decision, Judge Jones relied heavily on the history of the writing of "Of Pandas and People". The book was first published in 1989, just two years after the Supreme Court ruled against creation science. He found that early drafts of the book referred heavily to creationism and creation science.

But sometime after the 1987 decision, references to creation and creationism were replaced throughout the book by references to intelligent design – about 150 times in all.

"The overwhelming evidence at trial established that intelligent design is a religious view, a mere re-labelling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," he wrote.

Supernatural force
Judge Jones found that intelligent design fails to qualify as science for a number of reasons. For one thing, it violates a fundamental rule that science seeks explanations in the natural world, with no need to invoke a supernatural force. Since intelligent design requires a designer working outside of natural processes, it is by definition not science.

He was also critical of the intelligent design argument of "irreducible complexity" – the idea that some features of living things could not have arisen from simpler constituents, but must have been created whole.

He says that the examples offered by intelligent designers, such as the immune system and the blood clotting process, do in fact have natural explanations. But even if they did not, that would merely be an argument against evolution, not necessarily for intelligent design.

He also dismissed the idea that science classes should teach the controversy over intelligent design as a way to promote critical thought. "The goal of the intelligent design movement is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with intelligent design," he wrote.


NewScientist.com, 21-12-2005

__________________
"Never argue with an idiot, they'll just bring you
down to their level and beat you with experience." (c)TB