Intelligent Design course in California school

[kluge]

<p>From Associated Press:

FRESNO — A rural California high school jumped into the national debate over teaching an alternative to evolution this week, offering the religion-based theory of “intelligent design” in a philosophy course. </p>

<p>The class taught by a minister’s wife shocked some school board members when they learned that three experts on intelligent design were scheduled to speak while two evolution experts listed as guest speakers were not coming. </p>

<p>One of the evolution experts disagreed with the class. The other, Nobel laureate Francis Crick, who co-discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, died in 2004.

Can’t get much more of a “fair and balanced” presentation that that, can you? ;)</p>

[mini]

<p>Funny - I thought it was going to be a reference to Caltech. ;)</p>

[coureur]

<p>I have no quarrel with teaching Intelligent Design or other religious theories in a philosophy course. That’s just the place for such discussions. It’s when they try to pass it off as science that I object.</p>

[jmmom]

<p>^^^ Exactly.</p>

[mini]

<p>Does anyone truly believe it is “a religious theory” or a “philosophy” that would even exist except as a stalking horse for something else? Creationism (in its several types) is a religious philosophy or explanation; intelligent design (like the Spaghetti Monster) is simply a set of false pretenses.</p>

[coureur]

<p>Well sure. Intelligent Design is clearly a thinly-disguised version of Creationism. Everybody knows that. Anyone who asserts otherwise is lying to themselves. Both topics belong in religion and philosophy classes, although it would be redundant to discuss more than one of them.</p>

<p>A quote I read somewhere: “Intelligent Design is merely Creationism dressed up in a cheap tuxedo.”</p>

[kluge]

<p>Well, here’s more of the story:

Board members recommended changes to the original course plan, which included 24 videos — 19 of them supporting intelligent design. They also voiced concern over scientific issues in the class, such as the laws of thermodynamics and how fossil dating works. </p>

<p>In a New Year’s Day session, they approved a class that would only use videos, in spite of opposition from at least one parent and both science teachers at the school of about 500 students from surrounding towns. </p>

<p>Fifteen students attended the first class Tuesday — the minimum required to hold a winter session class. </p>

<p>So far, some parents have written the school in opposition, but no group has tried to stop the class from being taught. </p>

<p>“I don’t agree with teaching kids religion,” said parent Tammy Rossiter, who has a son and daughter at the school. “It’s something that should be done at home.”

I suppose what disappoints me is that metaphysics is a perfectly wonderful subject for a class full of bright, inquisitive kids. But I’m forced to suspect that this class is just another chapter in the religious right’s war on secular education: Sunday wine in Monday bottles.</p>

[mini]

<p>So perhaps ID should best be studied in a marketing or advertising class, rather than a religion or philosophy one, since it is neither of the latter two.</p>