Amidst all the hoo ha over the slam dunk decision of federal District Court Judge John E. Jones against presenting intelligent design as science in the Dover, Pennsylvania public schools, it is easy to miss the point. The Dover decision was not only one battle in the struggle over the teaching of creationism and its variants in the schools, but one battle in the much larger and historic war of the worldviews. Even after most of the rest of society moves on, the religious right will never be over Dover.

This essay seeks to explain why.

Sometimes people try to stomp on knowledge directly -- like the Kansas school board's blantant appeal to ignorance.  At least those people have the guts to stand up in front of the cameras.  They're wrong on every point, but they're not cowards.

More insidous are those who simply scrub away at learning without a vote or any pretense at a public forum.  In Arkansas, it now appears that evolution has quietly disappeared.

Teachers at his facility are forbidden to use the "e-word" (evolution)with the kids. They are permitted to use the word "adaptation" but only to refer to a current characteristic of an organism, not as a product of evolutionary change via natural selection. They cannot even use the term "natural selection."

 Think that's bad?  It gets worse.

The bill was first proposed in the Utah state Senate by Republican Chris Buttars, who said it was "time to rein in teachers who were teaching that man had descended from apes, and rattling the faith of students."  The Republican dominated Senate passed the proposal on a 16-12.

As the bill headed into the equally lopsided Republican state House, it looked as if Utah was on the way to joining the Kansas Club -- those states that have mandated "alternative theories," or forced the placement of stickers on text books, or otherwise given science a punch in the gut.

Then a funny thing happened in the governor's desk.  

More specifically, liberal Catholics. For those of you who were worried that Ratzinger's rise to the papacy would shove the Church to the right, this is a good sign.

THE Vatican has issued a stout defence of Charles Darwin, voicing strong criticism of Christian fundamentalists who reject his theory of evolution and interpret the biblical account of creation literally.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly.
His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.

This is nothing new - Catholics have been teaching a separation of faith and science for years - but it's nice to hear it out loud. And for the record, American Catholics are actually really progressive.