The debate is about the proper role of the teaching of religion.
For some reason Creatinists/IDers (CRIDers as I call them) believe that Creationism is an "alternate theory" even though it doesn't meet any of the scientific criteria as a "theory." It is like saying "angels hold planes aloft" is an alternate "theory" for aerodynamics.
Religion should be introduced as philosophy/theology/mythology. Now the other day I read where they didnt want to discuss religion in a phiosophy class and THAT was an attack on religion.
An analogy is the only way to get across the the thinking used by TOE advocates, because we don't have enough hard evidence in regard to origins or speciation to intelligently apply scientific principles.
The Theory of Evolution is like attributing the production of a sandcastle to the ocean because you observed the water creating the mote. Saying that the evidence only leads to the conclusion of Darwinian Evolution is like explaining the creation of a sandcastle by limiting oneself to natural phenomenon.
Two men become stranded on a remote island. As they explore the island they come upon a sandcastle with towers, buttresses and a drawbridge. The design of the castle is amazingly intricate.
One man comments, "It is amazing what time and the ocean can create. As you can see these small rocks and seashells on the shore must have got caught in eddies and swirled around and chiseled out that castle. There were a few palm leaves floating by that scribed out the little lines that look like bricks. We are alone here and there is no need to consider anything else.
The other man looked at him incredulously and said, "No, obviously that castle was created by another intelligent being with a clear intent of design, we are not alone. The engineering required to create the castle is far to sophisticated to have originated by purely natural means."
"Even though you have theorized that the available mechanisms could have contributed to some of the sandcastles features, when one views the integration required to create the complexity of the features, natural mechanisms fall short. Knowing what it takes to engineer features with the levels of integration evident in the sandcastles design, leads intelligent people who attempt such designs to admire the creator's success."
And life is many levels of complexity beyond a sandcastle. Self-correcting, self-healing, -- multiple inter-working systems like respiration, circulatory, musculature, waste management, fuel storage and retrieval, a veritable chemistry lab for dealing with unlocking energy from food, management of enzymes for unlocking the cell walls to allow passage of energy for use by the factories we call cells -- growth and the limits which keep replacement of dieing tissue from destroying the life form...
An attempt at denying God is making fools of our scientists. Science is entertaining and occasionally helpful.