Intelligent Design to be scrutinised by court

Tomorrow a civil trial begins in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that will determine how evolution is taught in US schools. I will be there reporting. This story in New Scientist explains how the suit is brought by parents of children in a school who were encouraged to consider Intelligent Design--"the controversial assertion that an intelligent agent rather than an undirected process such as evolution is responsible for certain features of the universe and living things"--and to doubt Darwin's theory of evolution. It will be the first time that ID will be scrutinised by a court. "It will hinge on whether ID is a respectable scientific theory, or a religious belief that masquerades as science to sidestep a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed the teaching of creationism in schools." Here is a 1925 Tennessee law that bans the teaching of evolution in schools. It was not revoked until 1968.