The Revolution Against Evolution

So, after reading about this ongoing trial, both Fenton and I scratched our heads and said, WHA?? It's like we've stepped into a Medieval time warp in which a scientist like Galileo can face torture and execution for declaring that the Earth revolves around the Sun!
E pur si muove...

Science teachers at the high school in Dover [Pennsylvania] repeatedly resisted the school board's efforts to force them to teach creationism on equal footing with evolution in biology class, according to a former teacher who is among those challenging the board in a landmark trial.

The conflict in Dover grew so heated that in public meetings board members called opponents "atheists," threatened to fire the science teachers and invoked Jesus' crucifixion as a reason to change the curriculum, two witnesses testified on Tuesday.

"We would repeatedly tell them, 'We're not going to balance evolution with creationism. It's an inappropriate request,' " said Bryan Rehm, who once taught physics in Dover and is one of 11 plaintiffs in the suit. The trial here is the first in the nation to test whether public schools can teach intelligent design - the notion that living organisms are so complex they must have been designed by a higher intelligence - or whether the theory is simply a fig leaf for creationism...

We are not teaching intelligent design," Mr. Bonsell said. "I've said that a million times and the news media just doesn't get it. I challenge everybody to read the statement and show me what was religious in the statement."

But Aralene Callahan, a former board member, testified that Mr. Bonsell, the chairman of the curriculum committee, said at a school board retreat in 2003 that he did not believe in evolution and wanted "50-50" treatment in biology class forcreationism and evolution...

At a board meeting in June 2004, the plaintiffs say that Mr. Buckingham declared from the podium: "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?"...

The plaintiffs believe the reference to the crucifixion is so crucial to establishing the board's religious motivation that they have subpoenaed the two York newspaper reporters, who have refused to testify.

[Other articles below - comments by Fenton]
Here are 2 earlier articles from Laurie Goodstein who is apparently covering this trial for the NY Times:
- Background on the trial:

With the new political empowerment of religious conservatives, challenges to evolution are popping up with greater frequency in schools, courts and legislatures. But the Dover case, which begins Monday in Federal District Court in Harrisburg, is the first direct challenge to a school district that has tried to mandate the teaching of intelligent design.

What happens here could influence communities across the country that are considering whether to teach intelligent design in the public schools, and the case, regardless of the verdict, could end up before the Supreme Court.
...
"You can dress up intelligent design and make it look like science, but it just doesn't pass muster," said Mr. Stough, a Republican whose idea of a fun family vacation is visiting fossil beds and natural history museums. "In science class, you don't say to the students, 'Is there gravity, or do you think we have rubber bands on our feet?'"

- Start of the trial:

Intelligent design is not science, has no support from any major American scientific organization and does not belong in a public school science classroom, a prominent biologist testified on the opening day of the nation's first legal battle over whether it is permissible to teach the fledgling "design" theory as an alternative to evolution.

"To my knowledge, every single scientific society that has taken a position on this issue has taken a position against intelligent design and in favor of evolution," said the biologist, Kenneth R. Miller, a professor at Brown University and the co-author of the widely used high school textbook "Biology."

I think that last quote encapsulates the way I feel about this whole thing very nicely. If people want to introduce intelligent design into school curricula, fine. Yeah, I said "fine." But don't put it in a Science class cause it simply isn't science. Put it in religion class. And if they do that, they sure as shit better include some other beginning of the universe theories in there and not something that's purely Anglo-Christian centric. If a school board approves that type of class, I'm all for it. That's just giving the people what they want right? But to put it in a Science class is ridiculous.