Article published January 14, 2006
No intelligence here
FURTHER evidence that Ohio’s Board of Education has become a painful carbuncle on the posterior of state government comes from the close vote by which the board decided to retain a high school lesson plan that includes intelligent design.
Some members of the board wanted to avoid a lawsuit over the teaching of intelligent design, now that the handwriting is on the courtroom wall with a strong ruling by a federal judge in Pennsylvania.
But the right-wing ideologues who apparently have taken over the Ohio panel prevailed in a 9-8 vote to retain the lesson plan, saying, in effect, go ahead and sue us.
How unintelligent. What the state doesn’t need is time-consuming legal action that costs millions of precious tax dollars to defend what is essentially a religious tenet held by a relatively small but vocal number of people.
Moreover, we don’t believe Ohioans really want a national reputation for anti-intellectualism like Kansas and other states that foolishly jumped on the latest ideological bandwagon by incorporating intelligent design into their secular educational curriculum.
If Ohio really has aspirations to become a high-tech state, such a retrogressive step back to sophistry masquerading as science will do more to scare away thoughtful scientists than the snow and cold of winter ever would.
Intelligent design is not, as some would say, a theory in the true meaning of the term.
It is a religious belief that cannot be tested and proved or disproved by accepted scientific methods and therefore belongs in Sunday school rather than public classrooms.
The best step for the Board of Education would be, at its next meeting, to reverse course with regard to intelligent design and bolster whatever reputation Ohio can muster as a progressive state.
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