Law Suit in California to Attack 'Intelligent Design' Filed

This is the second major lawsuit in the country filed against "Intelligent Design", which perverts science so that it conforms with the bible.

Henry Weinstein of the L. A. Times Writes:

A group of parents in the small Tehachapi mountain community of Lebec on Tuesday filed the first lawsuit challenging the teaching of "intelligent design" in a California public school.

The suit targets what appears to be the latest wrinkle in the continuing national fight between supporters and opponents of teaching evolution in public schools — a course that says it examines the debate as an issue of "philosophy."

Supporters of intelligent design lost a court fight in Pennsylvania last month that both sides had seen as a test case. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III rejected the Dover, Pa., school board's decision to teach intelligent design as part of a science course, ruling that design was "an interesting theological argument, but … not science."

In this case, the parents say in their suit that school officials in Lebec — a town of about 1,300 just west of Interstate 5 in Kern County and about 63 miles north of Los Angeles — designed their course as a way of getting around that decision.

At a special meeting of the El Tejon Unified School District on Jan. 1, at which the board approved the new course, "Philosophy of Design," school Supt. John W. Wight said that he had consulted the school district's attorneys and that they "had told him that as long as the course was called 'philosophy,' " it could pass legal muster, according to the lawsuit.

The board approved the course 3 to 2.

A woman who identified herself as a secretary at the school district said Tuesday that Wight was out of town and unavailable for comment and that no one else was authorized to comment on the suit.

In a Jan. 6 letter to lawyers who challenged the class, Wight wrote that "our legal advisors have pointed out they are unaware of any court or California statute which has forbidden public schools to explore cultural phenomena, including history, religion or creation myths."

He added that he would "promptly intervene if anyone should stray into teaching or advocating the tenets of any religion or creed, including intelligent design."

But the plaintiffs argue that the school district has no intention of setting up an open debate on comparative religion or competing philosophies.

The creationalists that set up this class, made a big mistake. They put exactly what they intend to indoctrinate the students with in the course description.

An initial course description, which was distributed to students and their families last month, said "the class will take a close look at evolution as a theory and will discuss the scientific, biological and biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin's philosophy is not rock solid. The class will discuss intelligent design as an alternative response to evolution. Physical and chemical evidence will be presented suggesting the earth is thousands of years old, not billions."

The course, which began Jan. 3 and is scheduled to run for one month, is being taught by Sharon Lemburg, a special education teacher with a bachelor of arts in physical education and social science, according to the lawsuit.

The suit adds that Lemburg "has no training or certification in the teaching of science, religion or philosophy," and is "the wife of the minister for the local Assembly of God Church, a Christian fundamentalist church, and a proponent of a creationist world view."

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is representing the plaintiffs, said the course is "the wave of the future throughout the United States," for backers of intelligent design.

"It is my understanding that this school district has been approached by other school districts to clone this course and use it elsewhere. That is why this is of national significance. We would like to build a retaining wall against that wave in this case," he said.

The course description shows that the class "is not philosophy or comparative religion," Lynn said, but, instead, "is a teacher trying to trump science with religion."

We are not living in a Theocracy. I have no problem if churches want to tell their attendees about I.D., but this is NOT SCIENCE, NOR IS THIS PHILOSOPHY. This is a thinly veiled attempt to tell people that the bible should be interpreted as truth.

Either that or take the rest of my ribs.

The rest of the article is here:
1st Suit in State to Attack 'Intelligent Design' Filed - Los Angeles Times