Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Intelligent Debate cont.

Since a lively debate is humming across the blogosphere about Intelligent Design and evolution, I thought it might help to actually hear from the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute, the nation's leading think tank supporting research on the theory of intelligent design:

"Discovery Institute opposes mandating the teaching of intelligent design, but it supports requiring students to know about scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory, which is the approach adopted by the science standards in Ohio, Minnesota, New Mexico, and currently under discussion in Kansas. Discovery Institute also supports the right of teachers to voluntarily discuss the scientific debate over intelligent design free from persecution or intimidation."

Ok, do we have that? No one, not even the Discovery Institute is demanding that ID be required to be taught. Just that an open discussion be allowed VOLUNTARILY to discuss ID and Darwin's theory.

As stated in the post before, ID does not discount the evolutionary process, only to consider that some things cannot be explained as directed by natural selection (true enough) and that some believe that it is possible that Intelligent Design (God, higher being.. whatever) could be the cause.

To be clear, this is what President Bush said:

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

Why anyone would have a problem with "different ideas" is beyond me. If I remember correctly that is how we learned about evolution. It was a "different" idea at the time.

Think about it.