Yesterday, I posted this link to more evidence to confirm evolution, but as is often the case, scientific evidence has little impact on policy choices. As such, the version 2.0 of the Scopes Monkey Trials continue in earnest in Dover:
A school district is undermining science education by raising false doubts about evolution and offering “intelligent design” as an alternative explanation for life’s origins, a biologist testified at the start of a landmark trial.
“It’s the first movement to try to drive a wedge between students and the scientific process,” said Brown University’s Kenneth Miller, the first witness called Monday by lawyers for eight families suing the Dover Area School District.
Dover is believed to be the nation’s first school system to require that students be exposed to the intelligent design concept.
District policy requires school administrators to read a statement before classes on evolution that says Charles Darwin’s theory is “not a fact” and has inexplicable “gaps.” It refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.
Ahh, the old ‘evolution is just a theory’ canard. That one NEVER gets old. This is nothing new:
The history of evolution litigation dates to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution.
The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine exceeding $50, and the law was repealed in 1967.
In 1968, the Supreme Court overturned an Arkansas state law banning the teaching of evolution. And in 1987, it ruled that states may not require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism. President Bush has also weighed in, saying schools should present both concepts when teaching about the origins of life.
And kudos to the MSM for getting this one right. Even though this is a trial about ‘intelligent design,’ they continue to hammer home that ID is nothing more than warmed over creationism:
“Intelligent design isn’t science. It’s old theology,” said Eric Rothschild, lawyer for 11 parents who sued the Dover school district of central Pennsylvania over including intelligent design in its ninth-grade biology curriculum.
“It’s a clever tactical repackaging of creationism,” he said, telling a packed courtroom that the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed teaching creationism in public schools in 1987.
Pity the poor fools who keep advocating Intelligent Design and denying evolution, for even their arguments are evolving.