Eighty years after the Scopes "monkey trial" in Tennessee pitted religious prejudices against scientific knowledge, Pennsylvania has its own parody of this famous trial under way. This time it isn't "creationism" that some put their faith in, but its linear descendant "intelligent design." The shame for educated minds should be the same.

It isn't just that the Dover Area School District has been trying to undermine the separation of church and state by sneaking a clearly religious element into high school science classes. That controversy has been going on for a while, and U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is now hearing the lawsuit that eight parents brought against the district.

What really is shocking is the chutzpah, the gall and, yes, the intellectual dishonesty that the school district and its allies have summoned to defend themselves.

Consider: On the opening day, an attorney from the Thomas More Law Center, which is defending Dover Area, suggested that the "modest" change to the curriculum had nothing to do with a religious agenda. Instead, it was about the "freedom of academic inquiry."

Really? And no doubt that is why his law firm from Ann Arbor, Mich., has come all this way to be involved. Yet in describing itself on the center's Web site, it says plainly: "Our purpose is to be the sword and shield for people of faith, providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square."

That would explain the photograph -- carried by the Post-Gazette -- of the woman reading the Bible outside the courtroom. For her, obviously, it would be news that this case isn't about God and His creation. Already, the judge has heard testimony from plaintiffs concerning a couple of school board members who thought likewise.

The trial is expected to last five weeks, but already the basic absurdity is clear. It is a reworked version of the Monty Python sketch about the dead parrot -- "This parrot is dead," says the owner. "No, it isn't," says the pet store owner. But no parrot is used here to deny what everyone can see, in this case the religious motivation for introducing intelligent design. What we have is an elephant in the room that will not be acknowledged by the defendants. Justice is blind but surely not so blind as to fail to recognize the obvious.