Once you have a handle on what these things are and what they say, it's not much of an exercise to figure out in what settings it's appropriate to teach each of them.

Creationism should be taught in Philosophy, Comparative Religion, History, Theology, Anthropology, etc.

"Intelligent Design," as such, could be taught in History, Law & Religion, Civics, Political Science, Marketing, etc.

Evolution should be taught in Biology, Immunology, Medicine, History, etc.

Not too hard.

The only issue with that is that Intelligent Design isn't based on adding anything to the syllabus but subtracting something that its supporters claim we have no right to teach.

You cannot have a philosophical or scientific movement that is entirely based up censoring another.

Rick Reuben wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:
If Bob really spoke the truth, he would speak with precision and clarity. .

Is the Federal Reserve an unconstitutional private bank that profits from the debt of the American people? Please provide a precise answer with great clarity.

Hey, I'm not the preacher around here.

big_dave wrote:In my opinion intelligent design [is] not a line of serious philosophical thought.

it belongs in the church, where it started.

Yoko Ono sues the makers of Expelled.

John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and his sons are suing the filmmakers of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" for using the song "Imagine" in the documentary without permission...

Oh no! A second lawsuit. I hope she bankrupts them.

enframed wrote:

big_dave wrote:In my opinion intelligent design [is] not a line of serious philosophical thought.

it belongs in the church, where it started.

Intelligent design has no recourse to biblical text. This might be splitting hairs to an absurd degree (considering that most Christian pundits don't seem familiar with biblical history or the bible itself as a book) but the theological gap between what is supposed by "Intelligent Design" and "Irreducible Complexity" and what is actually written in the bible is a gaping chasm. Catholics and progressive Muslims have a much easier time making the leap from their sophistry to evolution than American protestants will have adapting "Intelligent Design" to biblical ideas.

It has no place in the Church either, as the Church is there for lessons from the Bible. The Bible does not have anything that you can really point at and say "that is intelligent design" past the notion that God created man. Stating that God created man in the Bible means hundred things to a different believers across the board, and none of those things are irreducible complexity.

I think part of the reason that the Christian right wants those ideas in schools is because they are so cumbersome. Similiar ideas (such as "in His own image" meaning human morality and not biological form, or the days of creation being metaphorical) are readily adapted and taken to heart by believers are they can co-exist naturally with religious life and religiou text, but Intelligent Design is such a cooked-up, alien idea that people need to be instructed to believe. It is close to the the definition of illogic: something that nobody could derive from the facts themselves, that they'd have to be instructed to believe by authority, force and dogma. I'm quite happy calling Intelligent Design an artificial social event, engineered by petty pundits in the hope that they can force people into believing it.