That's the tragedy. The anti-science faction is being called "conservative." It's the very thing I've been ranting about on this website for years. This can destroy the growing Republican majority in this country, by making them appear to be a pack of idiots (as perhaps they are in Kansas).
As for a "public" debate, that's not how science is conducted. We don't vote on gravity, or on the value of pi. And we don't vote on whether evolution happened either. If Kansas wants to teach creationism, or flat earth, or any other silly thing, that's their business.
If the creationists have their "debate" all by themselves, with no one else present, it will have no more scientific importance than a convention of astrologers. Unfortunately, it may affect the quality of education in Kansas. Too bad. It's their state. Their choice.
I do not however believe that the Intelligent Design debate will become part of state and national politics unless the parties or candidates pick it up - despite all the MSM attempts to make it so.
And I also agree that science is not a negotiation - but that is not the object here, the object is what to teach the children. And on that point, the public is more evenly divided.
IOW, if large segments of the public reject happenstance in evolution theory then science has failed to make that point. Or perhaps that point cannot be made because it is false or ideological, which is my view on the matter.
Yes, but it is how politics is conducted, and deciding what to include in the curriculum is a political decision.
In a democracy, unfrotunately, everything is political. Scientists need to learn to play politics too. There's no excuse for sitting this out out.
If Kansas wants to teach creationism, or flat earth, or any other silly thing, that's their business.
It is our business. Kansas kids are your countrymen! That is why scientists have a duty, as good Americans, to fight this nonsense.
Yeah, the inventor of the MRI, Faraday, and dozens of other inventors and scientist and equivalent to astrologers because they don't believe in evolution.