We don't make a practice of teaching science by presenting bad ideas and then showing they're wrong. And in any case, why pick this one bad idea among so many?
Have you ever taken a science course? How much chemistry do you think we'd get through in a semester if we did it by having a discussion over every concept? I find it amusing so-called conservatives are pushing this mushy, liberal, 'whole-science' approach to pedagogy, after the utter failure of 'whole math' and 'whole language', which also had students 'discover for themselves' the rules of math or language.
An additional irony is that scientists like Pinker, whose views are anathema here, and who is politically quite liberal (though not very liberal) is campaigning for the abandonment of such teaching methods, because they ignore how the brain actually learns things, and because they don't work. So we have mush-brained conservatives and hard-headed liberals; truly a world turned upside down.
No, it's been explicitly stated that it could apply to any designer
Sure; it's also been admitted that this is a prevarication. I'm simply taking people like Johnson at their word.
We have a myriad examples of known design. If elements of nature resemble complex items of known design, why not assume design?
We tend to interpret complex objects in terms of what Dennett calls the 'design stance'; seeing something, we ask ourselves 'what is it for?'. It's hardwired into the way we think, not the object we're looking at.
Why do you think it's a bad idea?
How much chemistry do you think we'd get through in a semester if we did it by having a discussion over every concept?
How much biology/chemistry/physics are we going through now in middle school/high school? How much global warming/gay gene/gender-myth pop-science crap is being foisted on students now in the name of science.
If we teach that there is a design to life and the universe, and a reason for our existence beyond chance, and truth is real and findable, we will have smarter kids and better scientists.
We tend to interpret complex objects in terms of what Dennett calls the 'design stance'; seeing something, we ask ourselves 'what is it for?'. It's hardwired into the way we think, not the object we're looking at.
Or maybe it's because they are designed :-)