Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Intelligent Design on Trial
Ever since the year 1925, there has been a very controversial battle over the teachings of Intelligent Design in public school systems because many people feel that it has a religious motive. In Dover, Pennsylvania a major court case began when the school board decided that alternate theories, including Intelligent Design, of human existence would be mentioned other than the traditional evolution theory. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was the most common belief among many people not only in the Dover area, but all over the world. In the year 1925, a high school biology teacher was convicted for teaching an alternate theory to evolution for human existence, and it turned into a major federal court case. The reason that many people do not believe in the theory of Intelligent Design is because they feel that it has a religious motivation. This was the major statement for the plaintiffs in the Dover court case, while the defendants argued the exact opposite.
Intelligent Design is best described as a purposeful design by an

intelligent being rather than from an accident or undirected natural processes. Advocates of this theory claim that it is a scientific theory, and hope to redefine science to accept supernatural explanations. This theory was a problem for the parents of the students in the Dover school district. On October 18, 2004 the school board voted 6-3 to add the statement “Students will be made aware of the gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design” to their biology program. The teachers would introduce both ID and evolution and did not say that the students had to believe in the alternate theories, but left the decision of what was accepted to them. The trial between the plaintiffs, or the parents of the students, and the defendants, which was the school board, began on September 26, 2005 and was the first...