A federal judge’s ruling in Pennsylvania that “intelligent design” is religious fundamentalism dressed in the raiment of science has wounded a politically influential movement.

“It was a real disappointment,” biochemist Michael J. Behe, who testified in the trial, said from his office at Lehigh University. “It’s hard to say this chills the atmosphere, because if you’re publicly known as an ID supporter you can already kiss your tenure chances goodbye. It doesn’t help.”

But Behe and other proponents of intelligent design emphasized that the court decision would not cast them into the political and cultural wilderness. They have pushed their theory, which holds that life is too complicated to have arisen without the hand of a supernatural creator, to the center of legislative debates in more than a dozen states.

Some politically influential backers of intelligent design warned that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, who was appointed by President Bush, so overreached that his ruling will outrage and inflame millions of conservative and religiously observant Americans.

“This decision is a poster child for a half-century secularist reign of terror that’s coming to a rapid end with Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Justice Alito,” said Richard Land, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is a political ally of White House adviser Karl Rove. “This was an extremely injudicious judge who went way, way beyond his boundaries … .”

Jones’ decision incorporated the scientific critique of intelligent design as pseudoscience in almost every detail. Legally, that decision is not binding in other states, such as Kansas, where the state school board wants to add a critique of Darwinian evolution to its state standards.

Kansas officials said they would not mandate specific mention of intelligent design.

“The heart of science should be looking at the gaps in theory and trying to figure out what that’s about,” said Steve Abrams, chairman of the Kansas school board. “This decision will perhaps have an effect on other states, but we don’t talk about intelligent design.”