Litigating Common Sense

Maybe you haven't been keeping abreast of this, but in Dover, Pennsylvania there is a court case between the parents of students and the local school board that wants to teach students Intelligent Design.

What is Intelligent Design? It's the latest re-hashing of Creationist Science. Intelligent Design, or ID, says that life on Earth is far too complex to be attributed to evolution. It had to be designed by some sort of intelligence. ID's origins can be traced back to the 1890s. William Paley in his book Natural Theology makes his famous watchmaker analogy:

If we find a watch in a field, it is too complex to have appeared there by natural process so we assume that there must be a watchmaker responsible for its creation. Similarly, the argument goes, life is too complex not to have a creator, God.

In current ID doctrine they never actually say *whispers* God, because their strategy is to use scientific method against itself. Though, in the same breath they elude to the fact that aliens might be responsible for all life on Earth.

Why is this trial important?
It will set a Precedent, that's with a capital P. It's the school board who is attempting to introduce ID into the school curriculum, that's insane! These parents are taking a stand against this assault on common sense. Some parents have begun pulling their children out of schools who are fighting to teach ID as an alternative to Evolution.

You can keep track of the proceedings in PA on The Panda's Thumb weblog. The ACLU has a special section of their website that is also devoted to this case. If you want to get an impartial foreign view on what asses we are making of ourselves here in the U.S. over this, check out this article from the Guardian UK.

This is something that cannot be ignored. When religion is dressed up and taught as an alternative to science in freaking science classes, we have indeed reached the tipping point. The place where we are all going to finally tumble is still up to us. All I know is that if this goes the way of the ID Priors, zombie Carl Sagan will rise from his grave and eat your stupid brain.