{"id":6134,"date":"2005-12-20T12:46:52","date_gmt":"2005-12-20T17:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6134"},"modified":"2005-12-20T12:46:52","modified_gmt":"2005-12-20T17:46:52","slug":"id-is-doa-in-dover-pa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/id-is-doa-in-dover-pa\/","title":{"rendered":"ID is DOA in Dover, PA"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Scopes trial in 1925, creationists were thrilled to see John Scopes convicted. In what some have labeled “Scopes II,” opponents of modern science won’t be nearly as pleased<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that a public school district in the central part of the state cannot require the inclusion of “intelligent design” in biology classes as an alternative to evolution.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, issuing his decision in a case that was heard in the fall, ruled that the school board in Dover, Pa., violated the Constitution when it ordered high school biology teachers to read to students a short statement that cast doubt on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and offered intelligent design as an alternative theory on the origin and development of life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While encouraging, this outcome was not entirely unexpected. School board members who promoted intelligent-design creationism were careless about their motivations<\/a> when shaping the policy. School board member and ID-advocate Allan Bonsell, who owns an auto repair business and has no background in science, told Bryan Rehm, a former physics teacher at Dover High School and the parent of a ninth-grader there, that modern biology is “against his religious views” and that Bonsell particularly was concerned about the idea of “monkeys to man.” When district attorneys had to argue that the anti-evolution lessons had a secular purpose, it was a tough, if not impossible, sell.<\/p>\n

And before the right starts whining, I’d like to remind them that Judge Jones is a life-long Republican<\/a> who was appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

Several ID advocates have said that the Dover case would be the first significant test for their brand of creationism. It looks like their strategies will need to evolve a little further before they can get into a classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Scopes trial in 1925, creationists were thrilled to see John Scopes convicted. In what some have labeled “Scopes II,” opponents of modern science won’t be nearly as pleased. A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that a public school district in the central part of the state cannot require the inclusion of “intelligent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}