Evolution and the Theory of Intelligent Design in school Curriculum
The first hurdle with teaching intelligent design is that there is not even a coherent centralized story for intelligent design. Every person who believes in intelligent design has there own view on it. The second hurdle is that is massively intertwined with religion. It would be very difficult to teach a general version of intelligent design without having to pick which religion you get your version of it from. And, the lady hurdle is of course that there is no evidence. We can't teach about it because we can't point to anything in real life that helps show it is true. Evolution on the other hand has a centralized theory that is documented and has major agreement among scientists. Also, there is DNA, fossil records, and other studies that provide evidence. All evidence for evolution has to be interpreted and can, in most cases, be used to support intelligent design theories as well That's not true at all. If your idea of intelligent design is evolution with God that just means you are a religious person who believes in science, not that intelligent design has evidence. There are also many disagreements between evolutionary scientist pretaining to their theories Science is about disagreeing. Scientists disagree with the current understanding and then go do experiments. It's fine that there are disagreements. But there are actual agreements for evolution where there is none for intelligent design. I will address your question as it pertains to publicly funded schools. There is zero chance of teaching ID without touching religious beliefs. No religion, by law, can be respected by government. In the case of privately funded schools, this restriction does not apply. If a private school decides to teach ID, then the market will demonstrate it's preference. 1
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I do think a problem with teaching ID while refusing to teach evolution in a private school is that it doesn't really give children, who may not have a choice of attending, an alternative if they wish to seek one. Even then, the market should show preference over time I suppose. |