The Dover Case Decision | WBUR and NPR - On Point with Tom Ashbrook

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Wednesday, December 21, 2005 at 10:00 AM EST

The Dover Case Decision

By host Tom Ashbrook:

There was big noise out of a little courtroom in Dover, Pennsylvania yesterday. After weeks of remarkable testimony on science and Darwin and evolution and intelligent design, federal judge John Jones III – Republican and George W. Bush appointee to the bench – ruled that intelligent design is not science.

Judge Jones said that intelligent design has no place in a public school’s biology classroom. That it is a thinly-veiled religious teaching of creationism and Christianity. It’s a fine belief, he said, but it’s not science. Period.

There is jubilation today in the halls of science but lamentation in the intelligent design camp. And the people of Dover? Well, they had already voted out the school board that voted in intelligent design.

Hear about God, science, and a courtroom in Pennsylvania.

Guests:

Laurie Goodstein, religion reporter for the New York Times;
Jay Wexler, Law professor, Boston University. He has written extensively on intelligent design.

Theodore Ruger, Professor, University of Pennsylvania Law School. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the Supreme Court.

Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education, a membership organization of scientists and teachers that are working to improve the teaching of evolution. She advised the plaintiff lawyers in their suit against the Dover board.

William Murray, Chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition

Tammy Kitzmiller, lead plaintiff in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case

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