New Trends in Intelligent Design

Keyboard problems kept me out of the blogging game last night and earlier today, so I'll try to do a little catching up. I still want to talk about Tuesday's election. In today's fast-moving environment, that seems like several news cycles ago, but not even 48 hours have passed since Wednesday morning apparently ushered in a whole new era for Democrats (at least if you read the lefty blogs).

It's unfortunate that the Kansas State Board of Education held their vote to allow the teaching of Intelligent Design in Kansas classrooms on Tuesday. Surrounded by all the election coverage, I initially misunderstood what had happened and assumed that the voters had spoken through a referendum of some sort. In fact, it may be just as well that I had my keyboard issues, because I was preparing a post wondering why Don at Article 19 and Amy Sullivan argued that the Dover, Pennsylvania, schoolboard election in which voters booted out eight members of the local board who'd actually introduced Intelligent Design into the community's ninth-grade science curriculum trumped the Kansas decision. The eight new Dover schoolboard members ran on an explicit anti-Intelligent Design platform, so although there were other issues involved in the election, it's hard not to read it as a strong pro-science, anti-superstition decision.

Perhaps the Kansas Board of Education has reason to be concerned, although they're certainly not acting like it. They even changed the definition of science as it relates to Kansas schools--instead of limiting itself to natural observation, science can now take the supernatural into account. In 1999, the Kansas board took evolution out of the science standards and was repudiated (although not as conclusively as that of the Dover board) at the polls, but that hasn't seemed to slow them down from regrouping to make another grab at the brass ring. Will Kansas voters be embarrassed enough to follow their own lead from six years ago and throw the bums out again? If anybody sees the answer in their crystal ball, let me know.