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ID may be crock, but the sort of 19th century brand of darwinism that’s taught to children (i.e, before they get to college), is well known to be equally uncientific nonsense that no serious geneticist or biologist accepts today. The paradigm today is punctuated equilibrium, which frankly, is nothing like the sort of simple-minded “survival of the fittest” doctrine that hacks with education degrees foist on children.

Survival of the fittest isn’t even a darwinian notion, it’s a social idea taken from Herbert Spenser, but I digress. Punctuated equilibrium suggests that a) evolution takes place at the cellular level primarily—not the level of the species; and b) that “evolution” is a reaction of cells to external events such as disease, viruses, comets, etc. Only when you get massive external change does a species “evolve”, or rather mutate. Those mutations that survive pass on their genes, those that don’t die out.

Despite the efforts of academia, the reality is that conceptually speaking, at least, punctuated equilibrium is not incompatible with creationism. And I would not equate creationism with ID—the former is a legitimate religio-philosophical construct, while ID is basically an attempt to take such a construct and force it into a scientific framework. “God in the gaps,” as such a theory is known in religious studies ciricles, is poor theology and poorer science.

Anyway, those who design the curriculum of public schools are blissfully unaware of the fact that pure darwinism is as passe as marxism.

Anyway, those who design the curriculum of public schools are blissfully unaware of the fact that pure darwinism is as passe as marxism.

"Darwinism" is a pejoritive created by ID'ers. People do not call themselves Darwinists. Darwin was a pioneer more than 100 years ago. Of course he is passe. He was also right as far as he went. We now have the ability to study DNA directly. It demonstrates that Darwin and Spencer and good ol' Strata Smith were right. Life does evolve.

I am a serious Biologist and I accept Darwinian evolution, as did Gould and Eldridge; neither of whom I think would recognize the travesty that you presented under their banner of “punctuated equilibrium”. Punctuated Equilibrium is more an explanation for how evolution is reflected in the fossil record than anything having to do with cellular processes happening that supposedly supplants evolution of a population.

I also taught Science in high school and college, teaching evolution three times as a Substitute (I cant imagine WHY a teacher might want to take the ONE day they covered the subject in the entire curriculum OFF! LOL!(also twice the one day they talked about Jesus in History class)). I taught them about natural selection of genetic variation and touched on Molecular Evolution and genetic “clocks” to establish phylogenetic trees. It was a CLEAR reflection of what I had recently been taught as the most current work going on in the field.

Your description of PE is confusing. From the time of Darwin's book in 1859 until 1972 the evolution supporters were greatly troubled by stasis in the fossil record followed by burst of new species. This was a problem because the early concept of gradualism was in direct conflict with the fossil record. It took 103 years before someone (E&G) attempted to explain the problem in the fossil record. In 1972 they coined the now famous PE theory in a attempted to explain the problem of gradualism, stasis, and the lack of accumulation all in one theory. Naturally this theory has lead to great debate in the scientific community, some agreeing and some disagreeing. The debate may have reached it apex in 1990 with work of Dr. Charlesworth combining PE with gradualism. Because PE is an unprovable theory the debate continues in the academic community.

the sort of 19th century brand of darwinism that’s taught to children (i.e, before they get to college), is well known to be equally uncientific nonsense that no serious geneticist or biologist accepts today.

That's not true. Mayr's book What Evolution is (2001) presents exactly the same darwinism as that found in Newman's Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics (1920's) which is the same as the dog-eat-dog nonsense of Huxley, Spencer, and Darwin. And no, you can't write off Mayr as a know-nothing: he was a Darwin medalist.