Scientist’s Critiques Kick Off

Intelligent-Design Trial

Harrisburg, Pa.

A legal showdown over “intelligent design” began here Sept. 26 under an intense media spotlight, but the occasion was marked by calmly delivered testimony about the controversial concept’s alleged scientific weaknesses rather than by impassioned debates over life’s origins.

Eleven parents are suing Pennsylvania’s Dover school district in federal court over a policy that requires high school students be introduced to the concept of intelligent design alongside evolution. Intelligent design is the belief that the development of humans and other forms of life is simply too complex to have occurred without the direction of an unnamed designer or architect.

The case, Kitzmiller v. The Dover Area School District , is being heard by a federal court in Harrisburg, less than an hour’s drive north of Dover. The lawsuit is believed to be the first to challenge intelligent design—as opposed to the biblically based belief in creationism—as an unconstitutional insertion of religion into the public school classroom. Legal observers say it could have broad influence on school...