...my ISP often runs polls on it's homepage which members can vote on. Here's the latest and the results so far...

Should the theory of intelligent design be taught in public schools?

Yes - 59% 18636 votes
No - 40% 12480 votes

o rly?

Well I'm moving to Cobb County where they know what real education is....

intelligent design make squirrgle aaaangry.

well hallelujah!

Intelligent designs sounds a little to Sci-Fi, when did they stop using the term creationism?

uh, B. didnt you get the talking points memo?

Yeah, creationism is too explicit in revealing what they are about.

The thing is I don't have a problem with anyone's beliefs, but even if I was the most fervent believer in a higher power, I know I'd be saying this don't need to be taught in school.

Steve

I believe that a dozen pink unicorns created the sun 20,000 years ago. It took them over 30 days!

If only we could find a way to teach this to the children in science class...

Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I think they should teach it. Put it in the lesson with the Catholic Church's war against Galileo and heliocentrism.

I also like Hitchens' idea of requiring any religious institution that receives government funding to also "teach the controversy" by showcasing posters and tracts on the merits of evolution.

Intelligent Design - RIYL?

As one of the few non-infidels on this board, I think this is the only way to go about it.

Take it from a Kansas resident, and a teacher in its classrooms, there are quite a few of us who are not in favor of the push for christian creationism in our classrooms thinly disguised as a science.

Most of us Kansas Educators have no real problem acknowledging that evolution is a theory, nor do we even have a problem admitting that there are cases for mentioning concepts like intellegent design in our classrooms, but make no mistake about it - intellegent design is not designed for rational discourse - it is designed to bring a Christian god back into classrooms. Doubt me? try reading this...

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/sep/2 ... _not_both/

and then tell me Kansans have much of a choice in what their students will be allowed to discuss if the State Board of Education chaiman has his way.

Then again, read this next site and realize that plenty of Kansans - including four other dissenter Board of Education officials do not agree with the Intellegent Design farce being perpetrated in our schools by a christian movement with a strong mission and a semi-hidden agenda --- read through the entire site - it is a laugh-riot!!! Long Live The Flying Spagetti Monster!!!

http://www.venganza.org/index.htm

and if, after all of this you wonder what can I mean by a semi-secret agenda, may I suggest taking a look at this book review below, and maybe perhaps tucking yourself into the fetal position as you await the shock troops as the gather to escort you and I both away for daring to counter their vision of a Godly America. See you in Guantanimo friends, Jews, Muslims & fellow obonerites!

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/09/14/mooney/

I think Intelligent Design would be useful for those interested in art or graphics design.

Get over a billion people to agree with you and you might have a shot.

you laugh, but that's how it starts. It'd get going quicker if the unicorn made some problem go away, too, like 'what happens when we die' or something.

I was touched by His Noodly Appendage.

Fairy tales, fire and brimstone, peoples killin they brothers, and bunny rabbits that leave chocolate eggs around the back yard.

I thought 'intelligent design' was something to do with ergonomics.

i studied Intelligent design in college.
guys like George Lois, Helmut Krone and Saul Bass considered the concept as or more important than the aesthetic execution.

I haven't cared enough about this issue to really look at it, but doesn't Intelligent design accept evolution as process guided by God?

ID covers everything from "God was the spark that started the whole evolution thing billions of years ago" to "We were brought into existance exactly 6025 years ago"

To me this is reason enough to keep ID out of science classes.

I understand. But in some sense, this is a far cry from fairy tales that this board is making it out to be. I don't want it taught as fact either, but I don't see what's so inherently awful about it. It seems that too many have a knee jerk reaction to christianity. Isn't education about exploring ideas and topics? That's my problem with the anti-religion crowd. Let's bring it up. Let's talk about it in our classrooms, and let's look at the facts and debate them. I think we need to talk about stuff more not less. This hush hush crap we've been living in is our real problem.

The actual central idea in ID is that there are certain biological structures exhibiting "irreducible complexity" that could not have been formed through an evolutionary process because each component relies on all of the others for the whole to work, and none of the pieces have any independent function. To me, it seems like this would apply to any biological structure, and maybe moreso to complex ones, but I'm not an evolutionary biologist.

But oldbulee, you're right that it would be refreshing if everyone who claims to have the facts on their side would actually bring those to bear instead of just mocking IDers.

For the record, I believe in biological evolution.

BUT, I'd be interested to know how many of those here viciously deriding the ID crowd could actually state a convincing case for biological evolution, or a convincing rebuttal to ID. Faith in human progress is often as blind as religious faith (do not confuse this statement with the common creationist mantra that "it takes as much faith to believe in evolution as creation" - I don't believe that, but I think there are precious few whose understanding of evolution really justifies the extent of their belief in it. It's an incredibly complicated field, and even essential pieces like how speciation occurs are poorly understood even by experts).