Intelligent Design

What in the world is a court of law hearing a case on Intelligent Design (ID)? Why are the courts determining what is education and what is science?

If you are not familiar with the court case I am referencing, let me explain. A school board in Pennsylvania adopted a policy in October, 2004, stating that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said that Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they set this policy. Judge Jones also noted that several of the Board members professed religious beliefs.

According to CNN, “the Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement said Charles Darwin's theory is ‘not a fact’ and has inexplicable ‘gaps.’ It refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, ‘Of Pandas and People,’ for more information.”

Judge Jones wrote that he wasn't saying the intelligent design concept shouldn't be studied and discussed, but, "our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom."

We have several important pieces of the Constitution that should have been at work here. According to Article III, Section 2, this case should not have been heard in court as it is out of the court's jurisdiction.

The First Amendment states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Tenth Amendment states:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Here is how things should have panned out, according to the Constitution. The Dover School Board of Education required ID must be taught as an alternative to evolution. The people of the community, exercising their First and Tenth Amendment rights (petitioning the government for a redress of grievances, and enjoying the powers as delegated in the Constitution), don’t like this decision and vote eight of the incumbents into retirement, replacing them with anti-Intelligent Design board members who, according to the will of the people, will remove ID from the science curriculum. End of story, or at least, it should have been.

The court system is not the place to develop science education.


Tags Intelligent Design , Justice