education

If you are CNN commentator Bill Schneider you think that intelligent design is just another name for creationism and that creationism is what schools are considering teaching. Now, ID is not creationism and, in any case, schools — with few exceptions — are only considering whether students will be exposed to the scientific evidence for and against Darwin’s theory, not whether to teach ID. But mere reality didn’t stop Schneider from warping the issue with polls that pit evolution against creationism during his Inside Politics news report on President Bush today.

A Darwinist blog is trumpeting a quote by George Gilder in yesterday’s Boston Globe which they have taken out of context in an attempt to make him look bad.

“Intelligent design itself does not have any content.”

First, it would be helpful to see the quote in context of what was being discussed, namely Discovery Institute’s position on education policy.

“I’m not pushing to have [ID] taught as an ‘alternative’ to Darwin, and neither are they,” he says in response to one question about Discovery’s agenda. “What’s being pushed is to have Darwinism critiqued, to teach there’s a controversy. Intelligent design itself does not have any content.”

Many news stories and editorials from hyper-Darwinists and/or opponents of the theory of intelligent design (ID) have claimed that 12, 15 or even 20 states are considering legislation to MANDATE the teaching of ID in schools. This is completely false. Most of the stories and op-eds making these claims have lumped together local school board, state school board and state legislative activity relating IN SOME WAY to the teaching of evolution, misrepresenting the situation by lumping them all together as “states considering the mandating of ID.”

AP education reporter Ben Feller has a wire story about the debate over how to teach evolution. I was pleased to see that Feller actually got our position correct, and let us describe our policy in our own words. This is what he got from a recent interview with Discovery president Bruce Chapman: “The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents many scholars who support intelligent design, is not seeking to require schools to teach the theory. Nor is it out to diminish the teaching of evolution, said Bruce Chapman, the institute’s president.“We want the scientific evidence for and against Darwin’s theory taught. That’s it,” Chapman said. And he has a better definition of intelligent design than we usually Read More ›