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Edweena wrote: This kind of chicken-heartedness on the part of our educators will only hurt our country further in the competition for jobs based on advanced education. If we decide that the scientific method should be jettisoned whenever it doesn't confirm somebody's personal religious beliefs, we will be left in the dust by countries such as India and China.

wallcrawlr asked:
Clarify: Are you saying that Indians and Chinese have no personal religious beliefs?? That doesn't make sense. >

No, I'm saying that in China and India they are simply teaching the most fruitful scientific theories in geology, biology and astronomy. They don't confuse the issue with meta-questions about Ultimate Causes, nor do they express disdain for scientists and the scientific method. They search for scientific answers to scientific questions, and leave questions about spirituality to individuals. They do not try to deprive their children of knowledge about the theories that currently provide the platform for the most advanced research in the areas I mentioned above. That is why they will perform better than us in a global, information-based economy if we avoid controversial science in the classroom to keep various religious minorities happy.

Its proponents are trying to inject Intelligent Design into the wrong place in American lives. They're confusing religion and science. A belief in Intelligent Design is quite compatible with Darwin's theory of evolution, and the theory of an old earth, because they are trying to answer different questions. Intelligent Design addresses the questions of "why" and "who." Scientific theories address the question of "how." It is not helpful to answer the question of "how" with "It was a miracle." There is no place to go then, but to church. We can go to church but we also need to go to the laboratory to learn how viruses evolve and how vaccines can be targeted at viruses that haven't even appeared yet.

The problem in America is that some people want the Bible to be accepted as the answer to "how" as well as "why" and "who." As far as I know, the people of China and India have not tried to replace scientific theories about "how" with any of their scriptures. Of course China practices horrible persecution and discrimination against Christians. They could learn a lot from us about tolerance of different religious beliefs.