[A. Pole]

Should churches start examining criticisms made of them made by scientists?

Many churches do, and it is not illegal yet. But you miss the point, the churches are owned by the believers. The public schools are owned by the public and not by the courts or by barking moonbats. It is school boards and local taxpayers/parents who should make decisions.

[Revolting cat!]

Fine reasoning (your post #7), even if the responding Darwinists are up to their old trick of changing the subject. It's not what ID is or isn't (and this cat doesn't have a monkey in this fight), but who decides what our children learn (or more often nowadays what they're are preached) in the schools we pay for. No "the end of America", as one Cassandra above warns us, is not going to come from teaching Creationism, it'll come from teaching fanatical secularism.

For proof of this argument, I highly recommend reading in today's WSJ the review of Christine Rosen's book "My Fundamentalist Education". This woman was taught that the world was created in 6 24 hour days, and that all the dinosaurs drowned in the Great Flood. Yet, she survived, and wrote a book about it.