Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

If science is taught in a way that presupposes the multiverse option and excludes a creator then I'm sure you will agree it is going beyond its appointed limits. Same goes for the alternative. My point was that many here implicitly accept one excess, while excluding the other. This is illogical and unscientifisc behavior.

Evolution Is Only Theory of Life's Origins Included in Draft of Science NAEP
(Sean Cavanagh, Education Week, August 10, 2005)
While debates over so-called alternatives to evolution play out across the country, those controversial concepts have not found a place so far in the science portion of the influential test known as "the nation's report card."
The board that sets policy for that test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, was presented Aug. 5 with a draft of the framework that will act as a basis for a revised version of the science exam.
That draft document offers a thorough treatment of Charles Darwin's widely accepted scientific theory of evolution, and references its core principles, such as natural selection, common descent, and mutation, as a basis for testing students at the 12th grade level. It makes no mention of alternatives meant to challenge that theory, such as creationism, or "intelligent design," the controversial concept that the natural world, including the origins of human life, may have been guided by an unnamed, possibly supernatural creator. That concept is being pushed by school officials in several states, mostly notably in Dover, Pa.
"Evolution is the consequence of natural selection and differential reproduction," the draft NAEP science framework says. "Natural selection and common descent provide the scientific explanation for the history of life on Earth as depicted in the fossil record, as indicated by chemical similarities, and as evidence within the diversity of living organisms."

Increases student understanding about biological evolution by informing them of the following:
a. The theory "postulates an unguided natural process that has no discernable direction or goal."
b. "The view that living things in all the major kingdoms are modified descendants of a common ancestor (described in the pattern of a branching tree) has been challenged in recent years by (i) discrepancies in the molecular evidence, (ii) a fossil record that is not consistent with gradual increases in complexity, and (iii) studies that show that animals follow different rather than identical early stages of embryological development.
c. "New heritable traits may result from new combinations of genes and from random mutations or changes in the reproductive cells. Except in very rare cases, mutations that may be inherited are neutral, deleterious or fatal."
d. "Whether microevolution (change within a species) can be extrapolated to explain macroevolutionary changes (such as new complex organs or body plans and new biochemical systems which appear irreducibly complex) is controversial."

Evangelical Scientists Now Refute Gravity With New `Intelligent Falling' Theory

What do you think of the "teach the controversy" approach that has been proposed in Kansas?

wandeljw wrote:

What do you think of the "teach the controversy" approach that has been proposed in Kansas?

You didn't ask me, but I think as a matter of principle, it's a steaming pile of bull manure, since there is no scientific controversy to teach. As a matter of practice though, pupils cannot be taught early enough to mistrust everything their teacher says, and to check things out for themselves. The best thing I can say about this virus is that it may serve as an intellectual vaccine for Kansas high school students. If it only just didn't stink so bad.

"I am afraid students will get a distorted view of science if they are taught a controversy that doesn't exist among professional scientists"