Reason in Dispute

Federal Middle District of Pennsylvania, ruled against teaching a new form of creationism in the public high school. The case arose from a suit brought by parents against the Dover school board, which, in 2004 had instructed teachers to read a short statement about the inconclusive status of neo-Darwinian evolution theory and suggest that Intelligent Design might be entertained as an alternative explanation. After a long trial that delved into the nature of scientific theory and the questions of what constituted scientific knowledge, the judge ruled Intelligent Design was a ploy to bring religion into the classroom and accused certain board members of duplicity. Judge Jones only confirmed what the voters had already accomplished by throwing the errant board members back to church. The country was riveted on the courtroom drama, some comparing it to Scopes circus of 1925, when Clarence Darrow confronted William Jennings Bryan in the famous Tennessee “monkey trial. ” The 1960 movie “Inherit the Wind, ” so well enacted by Spencer Tracey and Fredric March, captured my own imagination as a youngster, and then, as now, I was fascinated with the arguments about God’s presence or absence in nature. I can well understand how religionists regard nature with awe, and to find coherence, and perhap