The Grey Lady informs us that the voters from Kansas have thrown out the members of the State School Board who imparted “intelligent design” to the state’s science curriculum.
It appears that the primary voters of Kansas (at least a majority of them) have reconsidered, and perhaps realized that condemning their public school children in this ever more competitive world to a science curriculum at odds with the best rational scientific evidence available was not, as a curriculum matter, “intelligent design”. The new board wiill be primed to reverse Kansas’s current foray into the arguably unconstitutionally theocratic.
It would probably be unconstitutional in a public school classroom to start the day reading from the hymnal of any Protestant denomination (or Catholic… or Jewish… or Islamic… or that of any other religion or sect). Regardless of the feelings of many people (and in some states, such people may well number a majority), this doesn’t mean that in public schools, religious doctrine and dogma get to be taught as part of the regular curriculum. It appears that while “intelligent design” may have “validity” in a religious sense, it has little or none in a scientific sense.
This specific issue was already decided in the Dover case by a federal court in Pennsylvania (albeit a trial-level court): there is no practical difference between “intelligent design” and outright creationism for purposes of this constitutional determination. Both violate the First Amendment. Either represents an intrusion of religion into the public realm in violation of the doctrine of the separation of church and state. I’m not aware that Kansas’s “intelligent design” curriculum was tested in court… but the result should have been the same if it was…
And we’re at least one– maybe two– Supreme Court justices away from saying otherwise.
tdog
Joe Lieberman is the new Mark Green.