Pennsylvania residents earlier voted out all of the school board members who supported the decision that public schools be forced to present “intelligent design” as an alternative to evolution. Yesterday the new Dover Area School Board, bolstered by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III’s decision that intelligent design is a religious — and not a scientific — concept, threw out the policy to introduce intelligent design in science classrooms.

Intelligent design, in its simplest terms, is a theory that questions the legitimacy of evolution and suggests the universe has been formulated, in all its complexity, by a higher power.  U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the previous school board desired “to promote religion in the public school classroom,” in clear violation of the principle of the separation of church and state.

Mimi Hanaoka