American Paradox

Just today (or was it yesterday?) a District Judge in Pennsylvania ruled against the Intelligent Design Movement in Dover, Penn. In the opinion, the judge evaluates the IDM arguments and concludes that they are basically the same ones "creationists" and "creation scientists" made in the middle of the 20th Century, and that they are religiously-based. Since compelling education in "intelligent design" necessarily means education in a religious perspective on the development of species in the biological world, it constitutes an unconstitutional "endorsement" forbidden by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The IDM groups are apoplectic at the notion that they might be "religious" in nature. The judge dispensed with their arguments in his opinion as follows:

Although proponents of the IDM occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members of the IDM, including Defendants' expert witnesses. (20:102-03 (Behe)). In fact, an explicit concession that the intelligent designer works outside the laws of nature and science and a direct reference to religion is Pandas' rhetorical statement, “what kind of intelligent agent was it [the designer]” and answer: “On its own science cannot answer this question. It must leave it to religion and philosophy.” (P-11 at 7; 9:13-14 (Haught)).

Nicely put, because of course these people don't require schoolchildren to learn of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The website just linked proves an important point beyond being funny: If IDM arguments were actually valid, they would prove too much. We could not teach biological science in the schools because we would have to teach every single "challenging" view to every single scientific theory, as long as they met the extremely low hurdle of IDM. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, sadly, does meet that standard.