In Reply to: Intelligent design as a course posted by Observer on April 01, 2006 at 21:51:56:
You bring up some good questions about the range of scientific theory being taught in science classes. I am familiar with puctuated equilibrium and panspermian theory--my primary exposure being National Geographic and the Science channel on cable TV. I agree they fill in a lot of holes.
I have to disagree with teaching ID in science classes. It isn't science, and it's unfair to ask science teachers to teach metaphysical philosophy when they seem to have a big enough problem with teaching scientific methods. My concern is that scientific method isn't being taught in the high school science classes and that the emphasis is on accepting or believing in theories and conclusions without knowing how to test those theories through empirical methods of observation and laboratory experiments. This is why people confluse ID with science, because science is being taught as a set of beliefs and conclusions rather than as a way of testing assumptions about reality. If anything, science education should make people more skeptical and less willing to swallow whatever an authority figure tells them--including an uncritical evaluation of Darwinian theory.