The long trail of intent to insert religious beliefs into biology class (actually science class, this ruling wasn't confined to biology) falls on both sides of this issue, if religion is properly understood as man's attempts to make sense of his origins and purpose.
Beyond that, intent is probably the most absurd of the new tools of the judicial activist. Like most, it has a rational and solidly grounded basis, and has been corrupted to evil purposes by those who wish to be our "benevolent" kings and masters.
Intent historically was used to assess blame in cases where something bad truly happened. If there was, for example, a car crash, a person's punishment could hinge on whether their actions were deliberate. Making false statements on a witness stand is not perjury unless you "intended" to do so. A useful and necessary judicial tool.
But in those cases, a harm was clearly established. The "harm" was NOT based on what the intent of the perpetrator was, it was determined factually and without regard to circumstance.
But now "crimes" are being defined based on intent. Two identical displays of the 10 commandments -- and ONE is deemed fine, another not, based on the "intent" of those who established the displays. In other words, you can't tell whether a posting of the 10 commandments is a HARM or NOT, unless you first perform a mind-reading on those who were involved in installing the display.
Here the judge is ruling on whether an alleged scientific theory can be taught in a public school, based on a counter-claim that the theory itself is actually a religious teaching. And the judge, rather than determining factually whether ID is a tenet of a specific religion, claims that since the people who voted to INCLUDE ID harbored a religious motive to do so, ID must be religious and must be excluded.
Which would suggest that, if you could bribe a group of atheists into running a school board and dictating ID be taught, it would be just fine. And that is an absurd judicial argument.
The judge chose to ignore facts which were inconvenient, just as so many do in the evolution/creation debate. The fact that some noted areligious evolutionist giants have the opinion that the evolutionary process, allowed to proceed in a random fashion, could not possibly acheive the observed results seems to not matter.
The judge's argument could easily be used to rule unconstitutional prohibitions against murder. Because, while you can make a secular argument that murder is bad for society, it is also clearly and demonstratably true that banning murder is a direct implementation of one of the 10 commandments. And further, that those who originally imposed a ban on murder did so because they were religious people who sought to impose that religious belief on the rest of us.
Laws should be judged on there merits, not on the intent of those passing the laws. Good people can pass bad laws for good reasons, and bad people can pass good laws for bad reasons.
Lest some think my tone regarding the supporters of the judge in this case is too harsh, I will note that the "answer" to my post assumed facts not in evidence in an attempt to dismiss my discussion without having to bother with the facts. Which is exactly what I allege in my complaint.