Scopes for the New Millenium Rolls Along

The trial over whether a public school can shoehorn the concept of "Intelligent Design" into its biology class is chugging along in Philadelphia. Tuesday's proceedings (sorry I'm late), as reported in the New York Times, included some testimony that will certainly make the school board work hard to neutralize. Things like:

At a board meeting in June 2004, the plaintiffs say that Mr. Buckingham declared from the podium: 'Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?'

Two newspapers in York reported the remark. But the defendants say Mr. Buckingham was misquoted.

As I expected, things are getting interesting over at the Speaking Freely blog, which the ACLU setup to discuss the case. One of the anonymous (c'mon, folks, get some balls!) commenters raised an interesting comparison:

But why do they want to provide a viewpoint that is widely rejected as scientifically vacuous? There is a fine line between academic freedom and academic responsibility. It would be offensive to force teachers to recite a preamble before all classes about World War II saying that some people believe the Holocaust never happened . . ..

Good point. Nobody would seriously argue that Holocaust denials should be a part of any history curriculum. The major difference in the two areas is that ID would be a proper (and interesting) topic for a philosophy, particularly a philosophy of science, class, while I can't imagine Holocaust denial having a similar place in the curriculum (except for the study of it itself, as I did in college).

For what it's worth, the Holocaust deniers have their own Scopes trial. In 1994 book Denying the Holocaust, historian Deborah Lipstadt took on many of the deniers. About one, British historian David Irving, she was particularly vicious. Irving took offense and, in one of the things that makes you glad to have a First Amendment, sued Lipstadt and her publisher for libel in Britain. As a result, Lipstadt's counsel in essence had to prove the assertion that Irving was a Holocaust denier/minimizer. They did, in spades. For a rich collection of articles about the case, see this site maintained by UK's The Guardian.