Maybe I'm misreading this, but it appears to me that the general consensus of those who are defending the status quo of the evolution monopoly is that those who believe in intelligent design are either deluded fools or disingenuous charlatans. Isn't it possible to simply say, "We respectfully disagree with those who are persuaded by the arguments for intelligent design"?
As far as intelligent design fitting the scientific method of testing, doesn't the very definition of intelligent design render that impossible because the scientists are not able to replicate or control the external intelligence? To use an analogy, suppose you put a man-made birdhouse in a tree in the forest while on vacation and then go home. To the birds (assuming a measure of intellect for them, for the sake of argument), wondering how the birdhouse got there, there's going to be nothing they can do by way of observation or testing to determine how it happened unless they were there to watch you put it in the tree. If you say to them, "An external agent placed it there," they would be forced (using the model I see in evolution debates) to say that's simply an untestable myth. The fact that they are unable to test it, though, wouldn't make it any less true. It's this kind of exclusion of the possibility that something might be beyond the ability of science to test and observe that cripples science's ability to fairly evaluate the possibility of intelligent design.
When this becomes a matter of law where curriculum is concerned, you have students going to taxpayer-financed schools run by the state being told that, if their parents believe God created the world, then they are fools. If I had children, I would understandably be unhappy to have the state actively undermining my attempts to teach my children, supposedly in the name of the Establishment Clause. If you want to teach evolution, teach the criticisms of it as well. Then teach them why some people are persuaded by the arguments for intelligent design as well as the criticisms of THAT as well. Giving an honest statement of the reasons why people accept or do not accept both arguments (without slams like "Because they don't believe in real science" or similar insults).
But maybe I'm naive to think that the hostility to any possibility of the supernatural in some realms of the scientific community can be overcome.
Brad Pardee
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