[narby]

But for people who believe that there are influences other than naturalistic ones in the formation of life on the planet

If it rains today, did'nt God do it? But, isn't rain part of the scientific "naturalistic" world? What's the difference?

If a gene in a creature is modified by "chance", didn't God create chance itself?

Once, Christians explained that things fell to the earth because God willed it so. We now call that gravity.

God created gravity, just as He created evolution.

In the mean time, the fight over creationim is public schools saps the political capital we won last November. We need to spend such capital on the important things like supreme court judges and such. Fighting over creationism and ID will merely split the conservative base. Which is why the left is fanning the flames of ID, in the hope that we will end up fighting each other.

We need to keep our priorities straight. Teach anything you want in church. But leave science to decide what goes into science classrooms. Religion and philosophy (which is what "ID theory" is) doesn't belong there.

[microgood]

What's the difference?

I do not know about you, but it makes a difference to me whether we evolved from a centipede or came here as a humans. I am funny that way.

But leave science to decide what goes into science classrooms.

I don't know about that. Since you can never take the human out of science, and all humans have an agenda, we need to keep an eye on this. After all, science ain't what it used to be. It is highly political now and so are most scientists(global warming, spotted owls, epidemiological studies, etc.). The age of science being a pillar of truth died a couple of generations ago.