Lawyer defends intelligent design - York Daily Record

By JOSEPH MALDONADO
For the Daily Record/Sunday News
Sunday, May 22, 2005

'The social implications of Darwinism have been disastrous,' said Richard Thompson, the president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. 'Nazi Germany used Darwin to justify a master race based on the idea that it's survival of the strongest.'

Thompson’s perception that teaching evolution is socially destructive is just one of the reasons why he volunteered to defend the Dover Area School District’s school board and administration against a lawsuit brought against them last December, he said.

Eleven parents sued the district, saying a statement issued by the district to ninth-grade biology students that intended to teach students that there were gaps and problems with Darwinian evolution, was unconstitutional.

The problem, they said, was that the statement also included the mention of “intelligent design theory.”

Intelligent design suggests that life is too complex to have evolved on its own through the process of natural selection, which Darwin conceived. Intelligent design suggests that all living organisms were designed by a supernatural being or entity.

Critics say the “designer” in intelligent design is God in disguise. And while many of the plaintiffs have said they have nothing against God, they do have a problem with religion being taught in a secular classroom funded with taxpayer money that comes from people of all faiths or no faith at all.

A decision made by Dover’s board Oct. 18 authorized a curriculum change that makes specific mention of intelligent design.

Repeatedly since October, board members such as Alan Bonsell, William Buckingham and Sheila Harkins have said intelligent design is legitimate science and has nothing at all to do with God. But if that is true, opponents of the curriculum change ask, then why has Thompson volunteered to defend the board?

Thomas More’s Web site states the group is “dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values and the sanctity of human life.”

The reason Thompson said he took on the case is because Christians, including himself, support intelligent design.

“And because Christians support it, the ACLU wants it out of the classroom,” Thompson said. “(Thomas More) is like the anti-ACLU.”

Evolution, which is the current state standard for biological science in Pennsylvania, has positive implications for atheists in America, Thompson said. “But anything that has a positive implication for Christians is not OK,” he added. “That’s discrimination.”

When the case comes to trial in mid- to late September, Thompson said, intelligent design’s links to creationism won’t matter because his experts will prove that intelligent design is good science.

“We have credible scientists on both sides of the issue who will say that the one-minute statement does a good service for students,” Thompson said. “The statement has already been read once and the roof didn’t cave in.”

But Vic Walczak, ACLU attorney for the plaintiffs, said Thompson’s got nothing.

“Nothing gets my fires burning faster than the way the ACLU is associated with liberal causes,” he said. “We are defenders of constitutional freedoms for people of all religions, including Christians.”

He cited cases last year in which the ACLU supported an Amish fight for horse and buggy rights in Cambria County, a black church near Pittsburgh that had zoning problems with a local government, and a woman in Beaver County who needed counseling but insisted that it be Christian counseling.

“Thompson said we interfere with the rights of people to worship,” Walczak said. “But the truth is Thomas More, and others like them, are trying to impose their religious views, symbols and prayers on everyone.”

Thompson said that while schools are not allowed to teach origins of life, biblical or otherwise, intelligent design will lead students to wonder where life comes from.

Members of Dover’s school board have said the “designer” could be anything, including an alien.

“But for many, the answer will be God,” Thompson said. “And it’s that connection that certain people have problems with.”

People such as Walczak.

“Once you strip away all the rhetoric you are not left with science,” he said. “You are left with something that closely resembles creationism. And that does not belong in any science classroom.”

Lawyer defends intelligent design - York Daily Record