[Ol' Dan Tucker]

That's fine, but in the meantime, the current evidence is that there is about as much chance of abiogenesis happening naturally as there is that a wall full of Egyptian heiroglypics were formed by random erosion.

Apples and oranges. We're not talking about the origin of life.

Perhaps not--at our current level of technology. :) However, if the spiritual world has an objective reality, perhaps within a hyperdimensional universe, then we should not rule out the possibility that science and religion will eventually overlap a priori, which is the current trend.

Until it's scientifically provable, it does not belong in science class. Period.

I agree. Look at my first couple of posts on this thread. Personally, I don't care if ID is taught per se (not because I don't think that it's scientific, but because I recognize that it's in its infancy), I just want certain known lies about evolution to be removed from the textbooks, and I want an honest admission given to the students that there is currently no viable theory for how abiogenesis could have come about by accident or natural law. As it stands, the primordial soup nonsense is still being taught as fact as of this year.

Evolution does not address the origin of life. It only states that all life evolved from a common ancestor.

If the evolutionist side of this debate were completely honest in the classrooms about what they do and do not know and about what they can and cannot prove, teaching ID as a counter-point wouldn't be an issue.

Evolution does not address orign of life.

ID says there is no evolution, only creation.

ID cannot be a counterpoint to evolution because they deal with two different aspects.

In fact, ID, as I understand it, says that animals do not and did not evolve. It says that all animals were created by God with absolutley no changes to their physiology between the time of their creation and now.

[Buggman]

We're not talking about the origin of life.

Then you're not even paying attention to my posts, since that's been all I've talked about since I first posted on this thread.

Evolution does not address the origin of life.

Technically correct, but political baloney. The fact is that the supposed origin of life--in particular, the rather amusing myth about the primordial soup--is taught as part of evolution in current high school textbooks. The fact is further that evolutionists of a non-theistic bent believe and have promoted natural abiogenesis as part and parcel of evolution. Many of the evos here on FR have done the same. You only started making a distinction when you started getting killed in origin of life debates, as I also addressed up-thread.

Further, if evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis, why do the evolutionists constantly paint the theory as being at odds with ID? ID does not discount a certain amount of evolution--it is concerned primarily with abiogenesis and with the development of certain organ structures that do not appear to be able to be constructed piecemail while still being useful to the organism.

Richard Dawkins is quite honest about what he thinks evolution is about:

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
--The Blind Watchmaker, p. 6

Obviously, Dawkins expects to find in Darwinist Evolution an origin for life that does not include God, and he makes no distinction between Darwinist Evolution and the question of abiogenesis. Ergo, once again, those on the evolutionist side are being disingenuous, trying to have their cake and eat it too.

ID says there is no evolution, only creation. . . In fact, ID, as I understand it, says that animals do not and did not evolve. It says that all animals were created by God with absolutley no changes to their physiology between the time of their creation and now.

You are either too uninformed to have this conversation with, or are being deceitful. What you are describing is Genesis-based Creationism, not ID. ID posits only that abiogenesis and perhaps the advent of certain organ structures requires a Designer; many IDers believe that after the first life forms or perhaps after the Cambrian explosion that natural evolution took over from there.

The two theories are actually entirely compatible and complimentary, dealing with the origins of life and the development of life respectively. Mind you, I'm still not an evolutionist as you would define it, but I don't ask that Genesis be taught in a science class either.

What I do require is that evolutionists be utterly transparent and honest about what they can prove and what they cannot if they're going to use my money to teach their current, admittedly prevailing scientific theory in the classroom instead of teaching known hoaxes or even unproven suppositions as proven fact. That means no drawings from Haeckel, no peppered-moth photos, no "missing links" invented from the discovery of a tooth that turned out to be from a pig, and no glossing over the problem of abiogenesis by telling the kids a nice myth about the primordial soup and a bolt of lightning.

Fairy tales about bolts of lightning creating life belong in the literature class under the heading of Mary Shelley, not in the science class.