Dog bites man

[mmcirvin]

You know, I don't even have much to say about President Bush taking the "teach the controversy" position on Intelligent Design creationism, because it's such an unsurprising item. I doubt Bush actually gives a crap about this issue, and if he'd said anything different, his base would be enraged; the fact is that the position he's endorsing has broad support from a completely hoodwinked public. After all, it sounds completely reasonable as long as you believe that there is a genuine scientific controversy here instead of a trumped-up political controversy.

As many others have said, you could probably use "teaching the controversy" in the classroom as a jumping-off point for making lots of interesting points about evolution, as talkorigins.org does so well. Were I a high-school biology teacher, I'd be strongly tempted to do it. But of course that's not what ID proponents actually want, or what they're really asking for, since it would amount to trashing their arguments; if they can't control the debate entirely, they want equal advocacy.

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[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

He's also said stuff basically equivalent to this on multiple previous occasions (and Reagan said far worse), so I'm not sure why it's suddenly a bigger deal now, though I do appreciate seeing people going to bat for teaching evolution.