It is very irritating to me to see so many knee-jerk responses to teaching Intelligent Design in schools along with Evolution. Many people who strike me as sensible and fair-minded assume that the purpose is to advance Biblical Creationism and *gasp* religion!
I have recently come across two blogs, MuD & PHuD and A Physicist's Perspective who are debating the issue. From what I have read so far, Perspective is the commentary which most closely represents what I believe. MuD & PHuD has many good points, but I still find the reasoning dissatisfactory.
For more reading, Perspective has posts here, here, and here (in reverse order), and MuD & PHuD has a handy round-up of links on the right margin of their blog.
To return to the initial paragraph of my post, although I would love to have Biblical Creationism taught in schools, I see no practical way of doing so without causing the next world war. Also, although I am Christian, it does seem to me that it would be shoving my religion down someone's throat, and that is not the way Christ calls us to represent Him. Frankly, I am blessed with the ability to avoid the public school system when choosing where my child goes to school.
If evolution were taught fully, with the problems and difficulties of the theory taught openly, I would not be as concerned with this issue. However, schoolchildren are not taught the deficiencies of evolution. They are often given faulty, disproven, or discredited examples and sources as proof of the theory. From what I have read, Intelligent Design gives excellent challenges to evolution, and often has persuasive alternative explanations.
I feel that it would be more productive to teach children how to carefully evaluate the pros and cons of differing theories and decide on the evidence which theory fits reality better. Evolution-as-fact has been spoon fed like pablum to children since I was in school, and it is past time to allow more debate on the issue.
