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Originally Posted by Kipper is King

I think the idea would be just to allow discussion on the idea of intelligent design in general. You are right that getting into the beliefs of specific religions could get a bit messy in a public school. But even then, if the discussion can remain civilized, it should be fair game. It's reasonable to present it as an alternative angle on how all this stuff came to be. Students are then more informed, and can make up their own minds as to what they think.

No. If you're going to do anything, teach creation stories from various cultures in social class or a comparative religion class. But you do not teach Intelligent Design in any fashion any more than you would teach the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a class about world religions.

The only proper context to teach Intelligent Design is if it's being taught as what it is, a tactic of some groups to get around the laws of separation of church and state and get religion taught in the schools.

Ultimatly, science is not anti-religion, and religion is not anti-science. They can co-exist.

So say you, and so say I, but the proponents behind ID disagree with you.

And again, while creation narratives may seem to sound crazy, it's not as if the Big Bang people are certain of what they are talking about. No one was around obviously to witness the birth of the universe. From that standpoint, a big explosion of sorts seems just as crazy and unlikely. Someone could have done it. Moooooniverse!

The Big Bang is far more certain than any other proposal. Keeping in mind what the Big Bang actually says; the Big Bang doesn't claim that something came from nothing, it simply says at at some point in the past the entire universe was very very small and very very dense, and then expanded outwards. And that's exactly what all the observations support.

It's very typical for people arguing against evolution and the Big Bang to argue against their incorrect assumptions of what those theories say, and not what those theories ACTUALLY say.