BrownDuck wrote:
gbaji wrote:
I have no issue with one being taught in science class and one being taught in a religious section of a social studies class, but let's not pretend that both are "science".
I don't think Moe was implying that, but the whole push to teach intelligent design as part of a science curriculum, and indeed prominent supporters of the idea such as http://www.intelligentdesign.org/index.php clearly do imply that.
Sure. But we get into a bit of a terminology pickle here. Moe's use of the phrase "intelligent design" was in response to someone talking about creation stories being debunked, so I assumed that context when I wrote about it. If you're teaching the creation stories as science, you're doing it wrong.
If you're just teaching the more or less legitimate process of testing for the potential of intelligent design in nature (as that particular website discusses), then what you're doing can be considered science. But the actual science involved is honestly far more complex and specific than is really appropriate for even a high school level course. The best you could do is simply present the idea that it's possible to test for intelligent design in nature, and that if you found such design evidence it would call into question the evolutionary process in that case, but you'd have a hard time actually engaging students in doing any actual testing. For the most part, I tend to agree with critics that attempts to teach intelligent design as science in the K-12 curriculum are typically just ways to teach creation stories or to poke holes in evolution.
Of course to be fair, it's also reasonable to argue that the inclusion of evolutionary theory in K-12 courses might be specifically to support the idea that science "disproves" religious creation myths. Students aren't really going to be able to test or verify evolutionary changes over time any more than they're going to be able to test for indications of intelligent design. Evolution at that level is pretty much taught as a "here's how it happened, just accept that it's true" kind of thing.
The flip side of that is the assumption that most students will have been exposed to some sort of religious explanation for how we and the plants and animals got here, so evolution is presented in science class pretty much just to let them know that science does have an explanation too. The degree to which you might view this as an "attack" on religion kinda depends on how valuable you think that is in the first place.