Unfortunately, PH, this is the very sort of thing that happens when something -- anything -- is "politicized." Sadly, science has been politicized. And this is an all-too-typical result.
I don't know whether you saw the fine editorial in the current issue of National Review (August 29 edition), "For Devolution." I think it is a fair, balanced, and wise critique of President Bush's recent remarks about the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools, which apparently Senator Frist has endorsed.
To quote from the article, "We see no reason to dispute the vast majority of scientists who believe in the common ancestry of life on earth -- which many of the IDers ... accept -- and also believe in natural selection as the mechanism by which it attained its present variety. At the same time, we see no reason to accept the notion, made current by some popularizers of Darwinism, that natural selection can explain absolutely everything about human beings. This is not just a matter of science's having some mysteries still to solve: We doubt that a material explanation can in principle be found for the non-material phenomenon of consciousness. (Which is why those who are committed to the proposition that such an explanation can be found are so keen to redefine consciousness as a material phenomenon" [e.g., Lewontin, Pinker, Dawkins, Monod, et al.])
I happen to agree with these statements. And, like NR's editorialist(s), I do not wish to see ID taught in biology class, preferring to see its problems covered in a course (yet to be designed) devoted to issues in science that would take the form of a general survey course, "Problems in Science" or other like name, that would touch on physics, biology, information science, scientific cosmology, geology, astronomy. To me, this would be a reasonable compromise that would (hopefully) de-politicize the issue, and at the same time (hopefully) inspire young people to pursue careers in science as a result of their exposure to what science's currently unsolved problems actually are.
However, I imagine in some neo-Darwinist circles even this would be unacceptable. For some of the "popularizers" (as NR calls them) are committed to the idea that the processes of mutation and natural selection are absolutely random, blind, and/or unguided. This is what they're "selling," which is at the root of the present political problem, IMHO.
NR puts it this way: "Let us grant that God did not intervene to suspend the laws of nature so that mankind could come into being. Let us further grant that the laws of nature are blind, knowing nothing of what they are generating. [Yet] Who [or what] made a universe with just the laws that could produce mankind? For a man to walk on water would be a miracle; but for water to exist at all is another kind of miracle. Forces of nature may be blind, but that does not mean they were set in motion blindly. So proof that blind forces of nature created man hardly undermines the plausibility of the argument from design."
The article concludes, "We are in favor of basic scientific education that reports the consensus of scientists on questions of scientific fact while carefully avoiding disputed theological or philosophical claims.... There are no national standards that require evolution, or any other subject, to be taught in a certain way in the public schools.... Whatever the outcome of the debate over evolution, it should be conducted at the local level. A federal judiciary that sees fit to police the boundaries between science and religion has already lost sight of its own boundaries."
As a possible compromise between the two sides of this appallingly noxious "debate," this seems eminently reasonable to me. What do you think, Patrick?
The course is already designed and taught in high schools that have IB programs. It's called Theory of Knowledge.
If ID isn't presented in science class (where it doesn't belong) as if it were science (which it is not) then perhaps they can find some other place to put it. But it's almost certain to have an aura of religion about it, so I don't know if it can be "sanitized" sufficiently to pass the Constitutional test. And I don't know what such a course would actually teach, as there's not much to it other than philosophical objections to evolution. The ID folks admit they don't yet have a curriculum. But something along those lines might be workable.
I'm not in the mood to discuss this in detail. Bill Frist is an idiot.
It saddens me, too, that this whole debate has become political. And I do like your idea of a scientific cosmology course to field a number of issues including intelligent design.
It appears we will have to wait to resume our discussion of such things - and the core issues - with the usual correspondents until the political winds blow over. That also makes me sad.