The fundamental error is the critics' erroneous conflation of ID with theology.
You might want to check with the people actually pushing ID - when they think nobody's listening, they admit that it's about religion.
Read the Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document". You'll learn that it is about theology, no matter what they sometimes claim.
"ID - when they think nobody's listening, they admit that it's about religion."
Exactly. And that is why it needs no mention in school. Religion is for the family. School is for learning science math, history, etc. And anyone who wants it in school needs to explain how they handle it when Westboro Baptist Church shows up for group prayer. There is no such thing as non-denominational prayer, and there is no such thing as ID science. It is religion.
I am not ignorant of what ID is. I have researched and discussed it here and elsewhere for years.
Read the Discovery Institute's "Wedge Document". You'll learn that it is about theology, no matter what they sometimes claim.
I have read that document. That such an innocuous document could reach the level of urban legend conspiracy is evidence of a very severe case of projection on the part of philosophically naturalist evolutionists. To say that ID is about theology makes about as much sense as saying that Big Bang theories are about theology.
If people cannot distinguish the metaphysical implications of a theory from the theory itself, or distinguish the motivation of a scientist from his theory itself then that's their own problem.
It's ironic that such criticism comes from proponents of a theory for which the leading lights most beguiling arguments have always been theological (or anti-theological) rather than scientific in nature.
From Darwin to today, metaphysical arguments against creation have been repeatedly used to prop up evolution. Darwin's:
“...These are strange relations on the view that each species was independently created...”, and, “...utterly inexplicable on the theory of creation...”are just two classic examples with innumerable variants in which observed similarities arn't being used to prove evolution, they're being used to refute a particular assumption about God. Such claims are not scientific, they're metaphysical.
Cordially,