Teaching intelligent design to get court test in Pennsylvania

Published: 2005-09-23

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A case before a federal district court in Pennsylvania could decide whether intelligent design is a religious belief or a scientific theory suitable to be taught in public school classrooms as an alternative to evolution. In at least 19 other states, teaching intelligent design is an issue before public school boards. The Pennsylvania civil suit challenges the decision of the Dover, Pa., public school board that intelligent design be presented to students as an alternative scientific position. The suit claims that intelligent design is a disguised form of introducing belief in God into the classroom, thus violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution prohibiting a state-established religion. Intelligent design holds that science can prove that there is a design and purpose inherent in life forms that springs from a unnamed intelligence. It opposes the evolutionary position of chance and randomness as the process for the development of life.

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