Recent Rulings Leave Evolution Opponents, ID Advocates Dissatisfied

More views on the Intelligent Design vs. evolution debate and the recent decisions of the courts.

(AgapePress) - Pro-family voices are criticizing two recent court decisions involving the controversy over how two hotly debated origins theories -- namely, Darwinian evolution and "intelligent design," or "ID" -- are to be presented in U.S. classrooms.
Christian attorney Brian Fahling of the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy (AFA Law Center) is decrying a recent court decision that forced a suburban Atlanta school district to remove disclaimer stickers describing evolution as a theory -- not a fact -- from high school biology textbooks. Georgia's Cobb County School System is asking the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule the judge who found the stickers to be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
Challenge to Evolution Prompts "Histrionic Response" The stickers made no reference to God or religion, but opponents claim they are a "backdoor" attempt to introduce biblical creationism into schools. The court heard arguments in the case last Thursday.
Brian Fahling
Fahling, the AFA Law Center's senior trial attorney, backs the evolution disclaimers, which he says merely encourage students to approach material on evolution "with an open mind." The pro-family attorney asserts, "It is beyond the capacity, I think, of any reasonable mind to comprehend how the lower court judge in this case could have sniffed out a religious purpose in that. It really is a histrionic response to a questioning of evolution."
And it's an honest questioning, the pro-family lawyer contends. "Nothing in that sticker is false. Everything is accurate." If there is any "reason or common sense left in our courts, the Eleventh Circuit will toss out the lower court ruling," he adds. "I'm very hopeful that the Eleventh Circuit will strike it."
The difficulty, Fahling notes, "is that the Supreme Court has developed a body of jurisprudence on the Establishment Clause that allows a religious purpose to be sniffed out merely when a single person may be a Christian and may have suggested a particular idea that in and of itself is secular."
Judge Bans Mention of ID in Pennsylvania Schools Meanwhile, intelligent design supporters across the U.S. are denouncing a court decision handed down yesterday in Pennsylvania by Judge John Jones III. In that case, the federal judge ruled that the Dover Area School Board unconstitutionally tried to promote religion by ordering teachers to mention intelligent design before classes on evolution. Jones struck down the rule that made intelligent design a part of the district's biology classes.
An Associated Press report notes that the executive director of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State applauded the Pennsylvania judge's ruling, calling the decision good for both science and religious freedom. The Dover Area School Board's new president told AP the school officials have "no intent to appeal" the judge's ban. She noted that intelligent design, which maintains that life is too complex to have evolved by accident, will likely be shifted into some elective social studies class.But Christian radio commentator and author Brannon Howse, president and founder of Worldview Weekend, feels the ruling adds more proof to the already mounting evidence that the "Secular Left" is not secular at all. "I'm tired of the Secular Left saying evolution is scientific, and creation or intelligent design is not," he says. "No, they are, by the very definition of science, both religious issues. But today we're discriminating against the religion of one for the other."
Secular humanism is a religion, Howse contends, and those who practice it hold to evolution as their worldview for biology. However, he maintains, "The reality is, science is observation and repeatable experiment. That's the definition of science. None of us observed the creation of the world; we can't repeat it. Therefore, guess what? Evolution is not scientific; creationism is not a scientific discussion. Both of them are religious discussions.
Howse says, as a Christian, he is angered by the ruling and feels Americans should be prompted by it to protest their country's runaway judiciary. "The federal courts have no authority in the area of education," he explains. "The Constitution makes it clear according to the Tenth Amendment that, unless it is mentioned as being a right of the federal government, it belongs to the state."
The Worldview Weekend founder insists that if Pennsylvania wants to teach creation or ID, it can, according to a strict construction of the Constitution of the United States. In fact, he emphasizes, if Pennsylvania decides it wants to have Bible reading, school prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Constitution's wording gives the state the right to do it.
Yesterday's ruling on the Dover Area Schools' evolution controversy is "more federal judicial tyranny," Howse says, "and I hope this incites more people to be angry and to begin to throw out these thugs in black robes."