'Design' ruling is setback

A federal judge's ruling that intelligent design is faith masquerading as science is being viewed by all sides involved with the issue as a setback, though not a fatal blow, for the movement promoting the concept as an alternative to evolution.

Intelligent design advocates say U.S. District Judge John E. Jones' lengthy, pointed rebuke of the concept Tuesday in a case out of Pennsylvania may energize supporters, many of whom view his opinion as part of a broader pattern of hostility by courts and the government to religion in public schools.

Jones criticized the "breathtaking inanity" of the 2004 decision by the Dover Area School Board to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum. He called the concept "a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism" and said the board's policy violated the constitutional separation of church and state. Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex that they must have been created by some kind of higher being.

"This galvanizes the Christian community," said William Dembski, a leading proponent of the theory and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think-tank that promotes intelligent design research. "People I'm talking to say we're going to be raising a whole lot more funds now."

From a legal perspective, the decision's immediate consequences are very limited. The school system is not expected to appeal because several board members who backed intelligent design were voted out of office in November and replaced by candidates who reject the policy.

Yet opponents contend intelligent design advocates have emerged from the case substantially weakened. The ruling will likely influence judges in other districts and discourage other school officials from pursuing similar policies, said K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee, a Washington group that promotes separation of church and state.

Battles over evolution are already being waged in Georgia and Kansas.

"Because it was a six-week trial, with a lot of testimony from proponents of intelligent design as well as critics from the scientific community, it's going to have a big impact," Hollman said. "It had a pretty full hearing."

The court defeat also comes at a time when movement leaders are failing to win support even among scientists sympathetic to their religious world view.