Amidst all the hoo ha over the slam dunk decision of federal District Court Judge John E. Jones against presenting intelligent design as science in the Dover, Pennsylvania public schools, it is easy to miss the point. The Dover decision was not only one battle in the struggle over the teaching of creationism and its variants in the schools, but one battle in the much larger and historic war of the worldviews. Even after most of the rest of society moves on, the religious right will never be over Dover.

This essay seeks to explain why.

Scientists have identified at least one reason bird flu isn't spreading easily from person to person. The virus concentrates itself too deep in the lungs to be spewed out by coughing and sneezing.  The findings have concrete implications for vaccine development.  The vaccines, in turn, may offer a way for us to rid the world of the twin scourges known as Intelligent Design and Creationism....

Avian flu is very contagious among birds.  It is not so contagious among humans...yet.  It is well known that almost every documented case of bird flu has been in people who had intimate and extended contact with infected birds.   Some rare cases have been reported where human to human transmission are suspected.  However, most of these were also in people who were in contact with birds as well.   The relatively high mortality rate of those infected is a cause for concern.  If human to human transmission of the infection became widespread, we would have a pandemic to rival or surpass the flu pandemic of 1918.  Millions would die. Now for the good news.

Intelligent Design as a scientific theory is an impossibility. Science requires any theory to be subject to one rule: it must be falsifiable, in other words to be science a theory may be wrong.  Intelligent Design, with its reliance on magic, miracles and supernatural intervention cannot be proven false. Reliance on God to fill the gaps in material knowledge is NOT science, it is metaphysical philosophy. If this subject must be taught in our public schools, teach it as philosophy, or teach it in the humanities along with other mythologies that ascribe creation to the divine.

On November 30th Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel published an op-ed in USA Today, under the headline, `Intelligent design': What do scientists fear? Let's have a public debate on the merits.  

Patricia Princehouse, a biology professor at Case Western University in Ohio says, bring it on. But not in the elementary schools: how about between scientists at a major university?

A divided community either celebrates or mourns the loss of Intelligent Design in the public schools after a federal judge ruled that it was "a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory," and thus cannot be a part of public school biology class.

Sensible judge stymies activist school board

re: Intelligent design, evolution.

Referencing a recent newspaper front page article about the demand that "intelligent design" be taught to students attending public schools,

Alas for Kansas, the near-center of the stewing mass  that is Middle America, the place where intelligence and logic are set aside in favor of an almost horrifyingly sturdy dedication to theology. From the depths of this "Land of the Free, Home of the Passionately Obtuse" has emerged the latest effort to destroy science in the name of sophisticated mythology.

Soon--ever so soon, gentle readers--the education officials in Kansas will be deciding whether they should keep science as it is or if they should "spice it up a bit" and encourage questions about proven facets of science, as well as removing certain inconvenient aspects of what defines science. This bold step towards idiocy could open the floodgates for other states to follow in Kansas' footsteps, as the state drifts back to a time when turning lead into gold was a worthy endeavor and anesthesia was administered through solid whacks to the head with blunt instruments.

And while the once mighty state (the motto of which, ironically enough, is "To the stars through difficulties") takes a flying leap off the cusp of scholastic skill and spirals into the wastelands of failure, I shed a tear for what might have been.

The Religious Right rose to power while most of the nation remained somnambulant. Books and articles were written; film documentaries broadcast; and activist and scholarly seminars and conferences held -- but most of our leading institutions have had little to no response. Fortunately, this is changing.  Leaders of major religious and secular institutions are beginning to speak out -- and to lead their institutions into the central struggles of our time.

Last week Rev. John Thomas, president of the United Church of Christ, spoke out against the attacks on the mainline churches -- including his own. This week, Dr. Hunter Rawlings, interim president of Cornell University called on the Cornell community to address the "invasion of science by intelligent design."