"Intelligent design" trial over

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Attorneys clashed in a federal courtroom Friday as a landmark trial over the teaching of "intelligent design" and evolution came to an end.

In final arguments, both sides said they had waged the six-week legal battle to defend children's right to learn and think critically about science in public schools.

The case grew out of a decision last year by school-board members in Dover, Pa., to tell biology students about intelligent design, the idea that living organisms are so biologically complex that they were created by a "designer." Many backers of the concept say they believe that designer is God.

Eleven parents sued the Dover Area School District and School Board, hoping to overturn the decision. They argued that intelligent design has religious overtones and is a thinly disguised attack on Charles Darwin's widely accepted theory of evolution.

"Intelligent design does not belong in a high-school biology class. ... It is an inherently religious doctrine that is a modern form of creationism, and this shell game has to end," said Eric Rothschild, representing the plaintiffs.

Several school boards throughout the country are considering teaching intelligent design.

Emerging around 1987 and championed by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank, intelligent design makes no mention of the Bible or the divine. It presents itself as a scientific theory, positing that some aspects of life, unexplained by evolution, are best attributed to an unnamed intelligent designer.

U.S. Judge John E. Jones essentially will rule on whether intelligent design is a scientific theory or a religious belief.

His decision is binding only on the parties concerned but may have a effect elsewhere in the country, according to lawyers. Attorneys for the defense have said they may take the case to the Supreme Court.

Patrick Gillen, representing the school board, called intelligent design "the next big paradigm shift in scientific thinking," and said the Dover School Board merely wanted "to teach children how to think, not what to think. This was all about learning."

A ruling by Jones in the nonjury trial is expected next month.

At issue is a four-paragraph statement that the board said should be read to biology students. The statement says that there are "gaps" in Darwin's theory of evolution and that intelligent design offers a different explanation.

The plaintiffs, who were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argued that Dover School Board officials acted for religious reasons. They also contended that intelligent design is no different from creationism, a Bible-based view of the origins of life that the U.S. Supreme Court banned from public schools in a 1987 ruling.

Defendants were represented by the Thomas More Law Center, a legal group that promotes and defends the religious freedom of Christians. They argued that school-board members, the first in the United States to make intelligent design part of the curriculum, had expressed valid personal doubts about evolution.

William Buckingham, a former member who backed the intelligent-design plan, said in one meeting that the theory should be taught because "nearly 2,000 years ago someone died on a cross for us. Shouldn't we have the courage to stand up for him?"

During the trial, Buckingham denied having made the comments, which were reported in two local newspapers. But plaintiffs then played the tape of a local TV news broadcast in which Buckingham said he did not want to approve a biology textbook for Dover students because "the book is laced with Darwinism. It's OK to teach Darwin, but you have to balance it with something else, like creationism."

Attorneys also disagreed over the merits of intelligent design. Gillen said the academics who embrace it "are in the minority, like all discoverers." He added that "intelligent design is science, it is not religion. Evolution is just a theory, not a fact."

Rothschild, however, noted that most scientists reject intelligent design because it is a subjective idea that has not been tested or proved in a scientific setting.

In a lighter moment, Gillen noted that it was the 40th day and night of the trial, a reference to Noah's biblical flood of 40 days and 40 nights. "I'd like to know if your honor did that on purpose," he asked Jones.

"Mr. Gillen, I'd have to say that it is an interesting coincidence. But it was not by design," said Jones, as the courtroom erupted in laughter and applause.

Material from the Chicago Tribune is included in this report.