Good News on the Evolution vs. ID Front

Today a judge in Harrisburg, PA lambasted the school board of Dover over their attempt to inject talks about Intelligent Design into the science class. This is, to put it simply, great news. John E. Jones III made the right ruling, and made a gave a scathing and entirely warranted commentary. Here are some highlights I've pulled:

We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy

We conclude that the religious nature of ID would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child

(The Intelligent Design movement) singles out the theory of evolution for special treatment, misrepresents its status in the scientific community, causes students to doubt its validity without scientific justification, presents students with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory, directs them to consult a creationist text as though it were a science resource and instructs students to forgo scientific inquiry in the public school classroom and instead to seek out religious instruction elsewhere

It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge," Jones wrote. "If so, they will have erred. ... Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. ... The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources

... I gotta tell ya, I really like this judge. Oh, and while I'm at it, Doonesbury had a good one. I'm usually not a fan of Doonesbury, but sometimes Garry Trudeau just nails a topic dead center.