Religion and science clashed in a drab Pennsylvania courtroom over a test case that could decide how evolution is taught in United States schools.
The civil trial, triggered last year by a classroom battle, marks the beginning of the first major legal assault on evolution science in 18 years. The case also represents the first legal test of ‘intelligent design”, the belief that life on Earth is too complex to be explained by random genetic mutation and therefore a guiding force must be involved.
In the court hearings, supporters argued ‘intelligent design” does not stipulate what that guiding force might be, and is therefore not a religion. Its opponents derided it as a mere repackaging of creationism, the religious dogma that God brought life into being in its present form a few thousand years ago.
It is a test of strength that secularist organisations hope will prove decisive in destroying the scientific credibility of intelligent design once and for all. They are therefore determined to pursue it as far as the Supreme Court if necessary.
Witold Walczak, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) arguing the case, said before the trial: ‘It’s the first vigorous review of intelligent design. They have so far refused to enter the forum where scientists publish their theories.”
The defendant was the school board from the school of Dover, Pennsylvania, which last year became the first district in the country to require its teachers to question the scientific underpinning of evolution.
‘The theory is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence,” Dover teachers had to tell their students. ‘Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view.”
The plaintiffs were 11 parents who claimed the statement was religious and therefore a violation of the constitutional separation between church and state.
Their legal team, backed by the ACLU, launched an assault on intelligent design, describing it as a ‘clever, tactical repacking of creationism”, which the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 could not be taught alongside evolution.
The intelligent-design case was argued by three lawyers from the Thomas More Legal Centre, a Christian foundation founded by Thomas Monaghan, a Roman Catholic multimillionaire and founder of the Domino’s Pizza chain.
In his opening statement, Pat Gillan, the lead attorney for the defence, argued the case was ‘about freedom in education, not about a religious agenda”.
Pointing out that the Dover statement asked schoolchildren to keep ‘an open mind”, Gillan said: ‘The primary effect of the policy would be to advance science education.
‘It is not religion. Intelligent design is really science in its purest form — a refusal to close avenues of exploration in favour of a dominant theory.” —