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First of all, welcome to FR. The Brits and Yanks are best of allies and we appreciate being side-by-side with you as we fight for Western civilization and culture.

To answer your question, this issue is not at all a new one. In the 19th century, Edgar Allen Poe and William Wordsworth both wrote sonnets regarding the tension between science a non-scientific view of looking at the world.

The debate goes back even further to the pre-Socratic philosophers (termed "physios" that would be the phonetic spelling, sorry, can't type the actual Greek term). Essentially, the early Greek philosophers were termed what we'd call physics-thinkers because of their attempt to understand the origin and construct of all things that exist. This led them into some trouble as it brought up the question of whether things existed for all times (and thus perhaps there were no gods) or if they had their origin in somethings. Heraclitus is said by some to have been the first to elicit the theory of evolution with his "all things are in constant flux."

Much of the hostility in these arguments arises from a misunderstanding of the terms. The term "evolution" is thrown about recklessly as well as "creationism." When these debates start, I believe that those who support ID and believe that a god began life and the universe read the term "evolution" and think "Darwinian origin." Evolution is one thing, the origin of species quite another. Even those who support the most fundamentally Biblical view of creation can not deny such a seemingly minor change as the average height of mankind over the last two millennia. Is this not a form of evolution within mankind? Yet their hostilities arise because when they hear the term "evolution" they are mistaking this for the argument that all life started accidentally in a form of primordial soup. Thus it becomes not so much an argument of ID vs. evolution, but a worldview of whether or not God exists.

The debate has been a heated one for two reasons: 1. both sides believe they are 99% correct, and 2. both sides feel threatened by their 1% of uncertainty.

Regardless of what both the most devoutly religious and the most strictly scientific claim, neither side knows for certain how everything around us began. If the religious could know this 100%, there would be no need of faith, which is essential to the religious view that God wants us to make a free-will decision to believe in him. If the scientific claimed to know with 100% certainty on any topic, it would be undermining the objective and investigative perspective and the view of potentiality that is supposed to under gird their studies.

In America, the debate is hotly contested for manifold reasons. The religious feel that faith per se has been under harsh attack for a long time as part of a European export of cynicism and nihilism (their sentiment is illustrated in Blake's "Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau"). The religious in America, especially since 9/11 have begun to find not only their voice, but the platform from which to shout it to prevent the type of European hyper-tolerance of a bloodthirsty enemy from reaching our shores. The evolution/ID debate is one such platform.

The teacher's unions in this country combined with the Left have a death grip on public education (what you'd call state education). Their agenda is extremely hostile toward American tradition and especially the Judeo-Christian principles that most believe serve as the foundation to this great structure that is our country and culture. The argument that there is no religious underpinnings to our origin and growth is just a flat-out absurdity. Those who support ID not for religious reasons believe that the purpose of education is to open minds through exposure to competing ideas. Many evolutionists ridicule ID as not being scientific. The IDers similarly point out the weak scientific aspects of Darwin's theory of origin as rendering the two ideas of equal scientific validity. The religious and those who support ID want both to be taught in public schools in order to break the singularity of the public-school curriculum.

The religious in this sense are defending the forced funding of what they view as an education system pushing a secular worldview on each generation. They don't want religion taught in school, but they do figure that if some schools in California can force their students to wear head scarves, adopt temporary Muslim names, and 'live as Muslims would' as part of a class project, then there's little contradiction in teaching the possibility that all life may not be an accident, that there may be some'thing' out there that set everything in motion and designed it to perpetuate.

While the debate from the anti-religious liberal vs. the religious conservative perspective is no surprise, what is surprising is to see so many conservatives engaged in vicious arguments. From my experience reading these threads (I've stopped posting because of the vitriol) is that the contention among conservatives breaks down to two types: 1. the same type as listed above, the science vs. non-science view of the world and the 99-1% factor, and 2. libertarian vs. conservative ideologies.

Of the first, there are those who are conservative who either do not believe in God or, if they claim to, claim that he either did not start the world or, if he did, somehow started something that has grown beyond his control (a view I find contradictory). Personally, I believe in God, believe he created the universe and that he did design life with the ability to evolve, but to evolve each within its specified genetic code (to evolve within its species, not from one species to another). I believe my view is not only not incompatible but fits in with both my scientific and religious understanding of what Aristotle termed potentiality and actuality. Those who do not believe in any God, are simply at odds with any view of religious origin and perpetuation.

Of the second, there is a critical difference between libertarians and conservatives. While we are generally aligned on most current socio-political issues, there is an ideological difference that I believe will prove to be an eventual divide between the two ideologies. The difference is this: conservatives believe that a people should be free but that their freedom is not license, that if they do not voluntary check their actions and behavior, their freedom will be forcefully checked by the iron fist of government or by outright anarchy. In other words, we believe that we must voluntarily restrain ourselves so as not to encroach upon not only the rights of others but upon their peaceful existence. There's a reason why the police are known as officers of the peace. Their objective is to keep society peaceful, not only by enforcing the laws our representatives have allegedly enacted for that cause, but also by settling disputes and preventing encroachments. Libertarians on the other hand tend to believe in unrestricted behavior, regardless what it may cost society. A good example of this is the war on drugs. Many Libertarians believe there should be little or no constraints on recreational drug usage. Conservatives believe if that were allowed, the resultant spike in drug addiction and the potentially devastating effect that would have on individuals and society-at-large render it a behavior that should not be legal.

This critical difference is intensified when religious conservatives find their source of guidance, the prohibition of their actions rooted in Biblical principles. They become defensive not only because their view of a safe and peaceful America is threatened to wander like a ship with a broken rudder, but because they believe it is another assault on the religious element of American culture. Libertarians tend to see the religious influence -- God -- as another source of authority that ought not be restricting their freedoms.

So what we have, as far as I have been able to tell, is one of those rare arguments that become bitterly contested because each side sees in the argument elements of many other debates that have been coming to a head for decades. The issue is either the canary in the mine shaft or the tip of the iceberg, if you will. Folks, please do not reply to this post contesting points of the evo/ID debate. This post is about the debate itself, not either side. And in that regard, it is a generalization of many aspects of the argument and therefore it is not comprehensive.