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Columnists Need Schooling on Textbook Definition of ID

Mark Franek had a piece in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer showing off his ignorance on intelligent design. Here’s his attempt to describe ID:

“The basic tenet of intelligent design takes about five seconds to teach – the mechanisms of life are so complex that they could have only been orchestrated by a supreme power – but the implications of this belief are better taught and served in a religion or philosophy class, or better yet, in a place of worship.”

He’s right, his definition of ID would be better suited for a religion class. But, that’s not the standard definition of ID and is in fact a definiton that we reject outright.

Also interesting is this comment:

“I can’t prove the existence of macroevolution in a commentary, but I will bet one year’s teaching salary on the hunch that biology teachers in the Dover area will quietly sidestep the requirement that they teach intelligent design.”

This is similar to one point I’ve made before which is that this is one reason we don’t think it would be a good idea to mandate ID because teachers don’t know what the theory really is about and wouldn’t know how to teach it. So, they would likely do what he suggests here, ignore it. Or worse, they’d do like Franek does and make up out of whole cloth their own definition and description of the theory and teach that.

Robert Crowther, II

Robert Crowther holds a BA in Journalism with an emphasis in public affairs and 20 years experience as a journalist, publisher, and brand marketing and media relations specialist. From 1994-2000 he was the Director of Public and Media Relations for Discovery Institute overseeing most aspects of communications for each of the Institute's major programs. In addition to handling public and media relations he managed the Institute's first three books to press, Justice Matters by Roberta Katz, Speaking of George Gilder edited by Frank Gregorsky, and The End of Money by Richard Rahn.

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