Beside the point, rl - what ultimately will be demonstrated, decided, and legislated is that Creation/ID is not legitimate science and has no place in any such curriculum. Social Studies, mebbe. Creative Writing night be a better fit. But whatever, the concept is not Circe of any description, its proponents are either dupes or frauds and charlatans, and that is what will be demonstrated and decided - largely on the basis of the patently absurd defense of the proposition offered by those dupes, frauds and charlatans.
Oh, BTW, to take just one of your purported "Obstacles" - "Irreducible Complexity" is a joke, the concept as applied in the Creationist/ID proposition is dismissed by the vast preponderance of the legitimate scientific and academic communities. Your revered Behe himself, who brought the term to the Creationist/ID camp, acknowledges that simply because scientists cannot currently see how an "irreducibly complex" organism could evolve, it does not prove that there is no possible way for it to have occurred. "Irreducibkle Complexity" proceeds from an illicit premise; it is an Argumentum ad Ignorantem fallacy, augmented with a Bifurcation, or False Dilema, Fallacy. It has no substance, it is invalid from its outset.
Aside from being forensically unsound, the Behe argument easily may be demolished through scientific means.
Here, for example, is a peer-reviewed, accepted, and published paper which does just that, and with specific reference to Behe. The paper's abstract:
Quote:Redundant Complexity:A Critical Analysis of Intelligent Design in Biochemistry.
Niall Shanks
Department of Philosophy
Department of Biological Sciences
East Tennessee State University
Johnson City, TN 37614 USA
Karl H. Joplin
Department of Biological Sciences
East Tennessee State University
Johnson City, TN 37614 USA
Published in PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, 66 (June 1999): 268-298).
Abstract.
Biological systems exhibit complexity at all levels of organization. It has recently been argued by Michael Behe that at the biochemical level a type of complexity exists -- irreducible complexity -- that cannot possibly have arisen as the result of natural, evolutionary processes, and must instead be the product of (supernatural) intelligent design. Recent work on self-organizing chemical reactions calls into question Behe's analysis of the origins of biochemical complexity. His central interpretative metaphor for biochemical complexity, that of the well-designed mousetrap that ceases to function if critical parts are absent, is undermined by the observation that typical biochemical systems exhibit considerable redundancy and overlap of function. Real biochemical systems, we argue, manifest redundant complexity - a characteristic result of evolutionary processes. (We would like to thank George Gale for helpful comments, as well as the anonymous referees for Philosophy of Science.)
Where Creationists/IDers sense a hole - an unanswered question - in science, they seek to plug that hole by stuffing it full with the amorphous, undefined, one-size-more-or-less-fits-all sponge which is the The Creator/Designer concept. Where science senses a hole, it undertakes to look for the materials which comprise the puzzle pieces that may be assembled only in precisely the manner required to fit the hole, no gap, nothing left outside. And even then, science always is open to and looking for a piece which might fit even better. It takes time and effort to find and assemble the pieces, but then, that's what science is about - right answers, not easy, emotionally satisfying answers.
