A California public high school agreed this week not to teach
intelligent design, the latest in several California legal cases
addressing the place of intelligent design in public schools.
Intelligent design, which holds that living beings are so
complex they must have been created by a highly intelligent being,
has raised questions about the role religion, secularism and
academic freedom play in the public school curriculum.
On Tuesday, a California high school agreed to halt the teaching
of a philosophy course titled “Philosophy of Design” in
response to a lawsuit brought against the school board by 11
parents represented by Americans United for the Separation of
Church and State.
Parents were concerned that the class at Frazier Mountain High
School in Kern County was being taught in order to promote certain
religious beliefs, specifically the belief that a higher being
created life, in contrast to the widely accepted theory of
evolution.
“It was a flawed course to begin with,” said Jeremy
Leaming, spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of
Church and State.
“Religion is typically taught separately from philosophy
classes. The only thing being taught was one religious
belief,” he said of the course.
Sharon Lemburg, the teacher of the controversial class, said in
an e-mail that it was “a discussion (and) critical analysis
about the different theories and beliefs that our society holds
concerning the origin of life,” and not in any way a means of
preaching religion.
This lawsuit came shortly after a Pennsylvania federal judge
ruled that the introduction of intelligent design to a ninth-grade
biology class in Pennsylvania was unconstitutional.
Rob Boston, another spokesman for the group that brought the
lawsuit, said the judge’s ruling in the Pennsylvania case was
a “slam dunk” for those who oppose the instruction of
intelligent design in public schools.
“It sends a strong signal to other schools that might be
tempted to introduce intelligent design into the curriculum,”
he said.
The University of California was brought into the controversy
twice last year.
In August, the Association of Christian Schools International
sued the UC for allegedly discriminating against students who
attend high schools that teach Christian viewpoints such as
creationism in their science classes.
Last November, the operators of a UC Berkeley evolution Web
site, created as a resource for elementary school teachers, were
sued by a California couple.
The couple believed separation of church and state was violated
by the site’s reference to religion and links to Web sites
that showed how religion can fit in with Darwin’s theory of
evolution.
Roddy Bullock, Ohio manager for Intelligent Design Network Inc.,
a group that works to educate people on intelligent design,
believes the controversy is in part over a question of academic
freedom.
“Teachers should be free as a matter of academic freedom
to teach their students about intelligent design as an alternative
to evolution. … That doesn’t mean that teachers have to be
right or students have to believe it,” he said.
Those who are against the teaching of intelligent design in
public classrooms allege it is simply a different term for
creationism, which is based on the Bible and includes the belief
that life was created by God.
Nick Matzke, a spokesman for the Center for Science Education,
said intelligent design was created in the 1980s in an attempt on
the part of creationists “to look more scientific.”
“Intelligent design is a legal strategy to get religion in
public schools … basically because creationism failed in public
schools,” he said.
Bullock, however, said both intelligent design and evolution
have religious implications.
“Evolution says there is no designer, which implies there
is no God,” he said.
“Intelligent design, on the other hand … implies that
there is a designer and the designer is very probably some kind of
god,” he said.
Because of the religious implications of both intelligent design
and evolution, not allowing intelligent design to be considered in
public classrooms is not constitutionally neutral, Bullock
said.