Random Access

Does it seem possible that 80 years after the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, we are still reading newspaper accounts of court decisions from the United States about the teaching of evolution in schools?
The latest, described in a wire story as a “major blow to the Christian right,” is a decision following a six-month (!) trial in a Pennsylvania town where the local school board ordered a statement to be introduced in the Grade 9 science curriculum to the effect that Charles Darwin might have it all wrong. His theory of evolution was to be described as non-factual and it was to be pointed out that, surprise, surprise, it doesn't explain everything about everything.
Well, imagine anyone trying to reconstruct the development of a species over billions of years and being slightly off on a few details. Or, as the school board wanted it stated, there are “gaps” in the theory of evolution.
That would explain George W. Bush, I guess.
The school board wanted to introduce the concept of so-called “intelligent design,” the suggestion that only a greater being could have created a system of such incredible complexity that it could not be understood by the current President of the United States.
Mr. Bush did not comment directly on the decision but a spokesman said that he, “believes students ought to be exposed to different theories and ideas so that they can fully understand what the debate is all about.”
While we may cringe at the efforts in the highest places south of the border to rejoin church and state, this story has a couple of very positive sidebars.
The first is that U.S. District Court Judge John Jones, who cited the “breathtaking inanity” of the school board decision, which he termed an “utter waste of monetary and personal resources,” is a conservative who was appointed by Bush.
The second is that after the school board mandated intelligent design in the classroom, the good people of Dover, PA. turfed all but one of the eight incumbents out of office.
The citizens clearly recognized, even if many of their political leaders do not, that religious indoctrination in any of its many guises has no place in the public school classroom.