The problem is that when you are talking students, you're talking people who do not yet even know what science is (I suppose that also describes a large portion of US high school graduates).
Teachibng ID in a science class will only create confusion as to what is science and what is philosophy.
Science requires testability. Period. ID is not science for that reason. I cannot test whether something is too awesome to have formed by chance. It's completely subjective.
The less subjective parts have been debunked.

But really what this issue highlights to me is another reason why America is so clueless about education. It's not about specifically "teaching facts". It's about teaching how to learn, using facts as examples.

If ID was taught in science class alongside evolution, the problem is that to be factual and to teach the learning of how science works... the teachers would have to compare them and show the truth that ID-believers don't like: that it fails to be a scientific theory.
The only place ID has in a science class is as an example of pseudo-theory.

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I'd like to revive my question from a few pages back. It was answered, but I took a break from here before I read the response, and now that I've seen it I'm not satisfied. My question is, how is ID significantly different than evolution. Beachbum gave me an answer that was basicly "ID says laws of physics govern things", and I have to think there's more to it than that.

If by Intelligent Design, you merely mean that some intelligence setup the universe in the beginning, triggered the "big bang", defined the phenomena behind our laws of physics, etc... that he did not directly create life, but merely setup the system in which it could evolve... then yes, evolution and ID can coexist. (However, this doesn't say that the ID principles are actually true, just not contradicted by the theory of evolution.)

But if by ID you mean that life itself was designed by an intelligence, then you are providing an alternative explanation for how life came to be as it is now. This in stepping on the turf of the Theory of Evolution, and thus they cannot coexist in this fashion.

If you are proposing that evolution is an example of intelligent design, then you might be over-generalizing the term "intelligence". Intelligence and evolution are both examples of optimization mechanisms, but one is not a sub-type of the other. Evolution achieves optimal survivability through random mutation and culling away of the unfit. Intelligence optimizes any conceivable goal, as long as it is desired, through cognitive modeling, prediction, and manipulation. Personally, I would never call evolution a form of intelligence, but if you insist on defining intelligence such that evolution is an instance of that pattern, then sure: the ID model can coexist with the Theory of Evolution.

On a side note, there's a difference between the process of evolution and the theory of evolution. Evolution is the logically deducible result of a system in which you have genetic variation (produced by mutation) and a metric for "good" genes and "bad" genes (the role played by the environment). Assuming scientists have observed genetic mutation (which is nearly certainly the case), and that there exists a sequence of mutations that can transform one genome into any other (harder to demonstrate, but still doable), then the process of evolution occurs, or we're insane and logic is useless.

The theory on the other hand is not that evolution occurs, but rather that this process can explain the origin of our species and trace it back to the origin of life. Consequentially, it is possible that the theory of evolution is wrong, the ID explanation is correct, and yet the process of evolution still occurs. (Of course, acknowledging possibility is not the same as saying it's likely.)

ID claims the debunked idea of "irreducible complexity"... claiming that some parts of anatomy of some creatures are too complex to be mathematically possible through random chance.
The claim is mostly subjective and more the product of philosophers than life scientists. It seems to be that "This is all too wonderful and well-working to be a product of chaos."

Thus it is supposedly a hole in the concept of natural selection, which claims all the variation in life to come from trial and error of mutations against the environment, leading up to life as we know it over the course of billions of years.

Of course evolution is observed, but only in small changes... because we have not been around long enough to witness any special transformations. IDists seem to think that "macro" and "micro" evolution are seperate phenomena.

Of course science is discovering more and more about the diversity of life. It appears now that differences are not so much based on different genes as different chemical triggers within DNA that turn various genes on and off- thus leading to far greater variability and explaining why there is so little genetic difference between creatures.


Here's what gets me... The problem religionists have with evolution is that it is the result of chaos as opposed to God... So why develop a whole pseudo-theory?
Why not just suggest that the mutations that occur were programmed or are controlled by God rather than the result of chaos... Evolution can't really take a stance on that, as it is not provable. It would allow religionists to accept what science is affirming more and more... while still being able to keep the faith in some worldly order.

__________________
"It's never over... BOY!"
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what your pet really thinks of you...

Okay, so ID is basicly "God invented evolution"? Because when I said that, someone tried to correct me.

You can probably google for an "official" definition of what ID is, but you can expect different people to have different understandings of it. Of course, if someone gives you a definition different from the one you like, assume theirs to be the definition for the sake of discussion...

I've looked up the "official" definition on Wikipedia, but I still don't understand what it is exactly these people want to teach kids. I don't see how it's an alternative to evolution.

I've already explained how it can co-exist with the theory of evolution, if interpretted one way.

The meaning for ID which would be an *alternative* to evolution, however, is that all species were created by God as they are now. If taken literally, this is what the Bible claims to have happened. If this happened, then the species did not come to be as they are now, through evolution. Hence, alternative.