ContraCostaTimes.com | 01/29/2006 | Intelligent design has local roots — I was wondering how the Pennsylvania Intelligent design controversy disappeared so quickly and now the whole movement backtracked and is regrouping. This fascinating story in the small California paper explains it completely. Apparently the constant assertions that Intelligent Design is about science and has nothing whatsoever to do with Creationism turned out to be a pack of lies! I guess being truthful wasn’t in the arsenal of these phonies.

The center’s work on a case in Dover, Pa., that drew national attention helped lead a judge to conclude that intelligent design was essentially creationism in disguise.

The case stemmed from a school district’s requirement that teachers read a statement in biology class about gaps in evolutionary theory and point students to the pro-intelligent design text, “Of Pandas and People.”

So lawyers subpoenaed early drafts of the book. The first version was called “Creation Biology,” and drafts up until 1987 were full of references to creationism. But the wording changed after the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 struck down a Louisiana law banning the teaching of evolution. References to creationism in the Pandas drafts after 1987 had been almost entirely replaced by intelligent design.

“Once we figured that out, it was really a slam dunk,” Matzke said. “How much clearer could the evidence be?”