Replies

"Why the call to battle? "

Because education is under attack.

"What is really "under assault"?"

Rational thought.

"Why the fear over children hearing all theories?"

ID isn't a scientific theory.

"(Because now and probably forevermore, the origin of life as we know it is all theory)"

Theory is the highest level that is attained in science.

"When (at least since the Enlightenment) has religion seriously threatened or impeded science?"

When it tried to get itself hustled into science classrooms under the guise of ID/creationism.

You would have been right in tune with the 17th century Church when it prosecuted Galileo. Same arguments.

Unfortunately the suit started at Dover does not restrict its hostility to the science classroom, but to the entire public school curriculum, including classes in philosophy, which are constrained by threat of lawsuit from mentioning "science" or using science teachers in any discussion of creation. Even though science continues to make discoveries that support aspects of Creationist/design theory.

Then, the lawsuits spun form Dover now also turn on any teacher who is not qualified to teach "science"...for teaching any subject in any class that considers ID....because ID has scientific as well as philosophical implications.

Many of us were born at night, but not last night. And we recognize the underlying agenda is not regarding the purity of science education, but the total elimination of "ID" from any subject taught in any public school, by harassment of curriculum developers by and through the courts.

Sadly under the militant constraints sought by ID opponents...Einstein could not have been a public school instructor in cosmological theory or he would have been under threat of prosecution.

"When (at least since the Enlightenment) has religion seriously threatened or impeded science?"

What? you don't want to deal with the Dark Ages? Any Islamic State does this and the stated goals of Creationists/IDers to eviscerate science because it's too inconvenient for their interpretation of the bible will lead to same.

A Theocracy of any type will kill science and rational thought and set back mankind a thousand years.

It has been my experience as both a scientist (registered professional geologist with over 20 years experience) and a part-time high school science teacher that the real threats to science in education are MTV, video games, drugs, parent apathy, a culture of ignorance, the NEA, blatant liberal bias in textbooks, and student disinterest. Beyond that, bureaucrats with liberal agendas in agencies like EPA, NOAA, and Fish and Wildlife are doing incalculable harm to science daily by forcing real scientists to reach, or at least espouse, conclusions that are based on philosophy and not scientific endeavor.

By contrast, I've never seen any threat to the science of geology caused by ID OR creationism, however misguided any of their efforts have been.

It strikes me as very odd that real threats to science, and there many more than I've listed, aren't raising near the furor that ID is. Why not spend your time and effort tackling the far more serious threats? Your assertion that "education is under attack", presumably by proponents of ID, ignores the far more serious ways that education has been rendered almost useless by a know-nothing, incompetent generation of bureaucrats.

Finally, since we find religious practice is and has been nearly ubiquitous in human cultures throughout history, it is obviously a product of the evolutionary process. Have you considered the ramifications of manipulating evolution in such a way that this aspect of it is put at risk? Doesn't that mean that you're "playing god"?