There's no question that "those who push ID are probably Creationists acting in bad faith." The Discovery Institute's "wedge" document, which was leaked several years ago, makes it quite clear that ID proponents are trying to get Creationism into public schools and, on a broader level, to eliminate materialism as the predominant theory of metaphysics taught in public schools and throughout the United States.

There are two problems at work, here: one is that "evolution" in the broad sense -- the notion that organisms that exist today developed from simpler organisms that existed millions of years ago -- is not in question within the scientific community. The other problem is that intelligent design proponents invented a controversy of evolution. The "teach the controversy" method favored by the Discovery Institute and others is designed to get public school students to doubt evolution's veracity. Such comments as "it's only a theory" and the suggestion that scientists don't want the light of truth (which would be provided by ID proponents) being shed on evolution are made in bad faith, and that is their purpose.

Evolutionists don't want any controversy taught in the classroom because there is no empirical controversy within the scientific community about the existence of evolution. This "debate" was invented out of whole cloth by ID proponents, and in the opinion of evolutionists, to teach theories that call evolution into question is in itself bad faith because there is no scientific theory that calls evolution into question; however, there are non-scientific theories that call evolution into question. I think an evolutionist would have no problem teaching a competing theory of biology -- as long as it were scientific ("scientific" meaning "based upon empirical data and adhering to the scientific method, the latter involving the testing of testable hypotheses based upon observation"). Intelligent design immediately eliminates itself from being taught in a science classroom because its hypothesis is inherently untestable.

A science journal -- Science, I think -- looked into the problem of a lack of non-evolutionary biological theories in scientific papers. It concluded that non-evolutionary papers weren't censored or suppressed; they were never submitted at all! There is no debate about evolution in the scientific community (at least in so far as there is a debate over whether or not evolution exists; it's akin to suggesting to physicists that there is a debate over whether or not gravity exists), and suggesting that students should examine competing theories might lead them to the false conclusion that ID is a valid argument against evolution.

This isn't about scientific integrity (in a perfect world, students would be permitted to make their own conclusions, even if such conclusions were wrong). In such a politically charged atmosphere, every student who views intelligent design as the more correct evolutionary theory scores a point for ID advocates, a subset of the Religious Right. Is it right to eliminate students' freedom to come to incorrect conclusions? Ideally, no. Pragmatically, yes -- unless we want to find ourselves living in the world of The Handmaid's Tale in the near future.

There is another problem with the argument presented here. The "flat earth" model never actually existed in the first place. The idea that everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus had a brilliant revelation to the contrary is false on its face. The ancient Greeks knew the world was round (although they were wrong about its size), as did anyone who lived near a coat line or the side of a mountain range. Their senses told them it had to be round. So no, teaching how round-earth theory replaced flat-earth theory would also be in bad faith, because it never happened that way.

If you want a good example, the helio-centric solar system of Galileo et al is a good example to use. In fact, it's an excellent example of how far people, even scientists, will go to prop up their beliefs (epicycles), and how far religious institutions will go to defend their world view even in the face of empirical evidence.

Yes, I'd love to see that curriculum taught in school. Really, I would.

But then, science classes generally would benefit from any sort of historical context at all, something that is currently lacking almost completely.

The author of the ID/Darwin piece knows about educated Greeks and their views on the roundness of the Earth, and of at least one pretty good guess as to its size. The Flat-Earth Society, however, only disbanded within his lifetime. Also, it's not bad faith to write or teach error; it's only ignorance.

More important, under the current teaching regime in the US--as reported in the New York Times, as quoted in the AAUP's Academe--"55 percent of all Americans believe that evolution is wrong. And of all registered Republicans, 68 percent do not believe in evolution."

So things aren't going all that well for school curricula that encourage "cram and regurgitate": the regurgitation is too thorough. Bringing in history of science and its philosophical background and implications might do some good.

Oh I agree completely that we need more historical context in science classrooms. We need it in history classes, too. :-) My point is that you have to be careful which contexts you use, because many of the popular ones are just as wrong as what you're trying to disprove with the contextual argument.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I think it's "bad faith" (can we toss that term around a bit more?) to label all proponents of ID card-carrying members of the Religious Right, or to say they're trying to Trojan Horse creationism into the schools.

Certainly, people like this do exist, but my read of the situation is that many of ID's proponents -- more prevalent in the rank and file, not the "leadership" of the "movement" -- are simply Americans naturally inclined, as most calm Americans are, toward political moderation.

They are reacting against the supposed atheism of the scientific community. Never mind who started this war; you can make a very strong case that religion itself fired the first shot (trial of Galileo, etc.). The fact of the matter is, science has been used to "debunk" so much of traditional religion, and those who loudest trumpet the virtues of science, generally college-educated and liberal, seem to be the same who loudest denounce, or at least ignore, religion and faith.

Many Americans react unfavorably to the notion that they may spend several hours each Sunday, and perhaps a few more minutes each weeknight, trying to instill religious beliefs into their children ... only to see it "opposed" by the science teacher in his 45 minute Monday lecture.

It's telling that most supporters of ID seem to want to see it taught alongside evolution, not instead of it.

The solution, as I see it, is to attempt to clarify the line between fact and faith: for the public, and the scientific community, to state clearly that the textbook concerns itself with what happened, not how it was caused to happen.

To be sure, advanced scientific studies have every right (and responsibility) to take up the question of whether the prime-mover theory is correct, or even possible; but this is outside the bailiwick of a sixth grade classroom. Acknowledging that, I think, would put many minds at ease.