Or, maybe their little bully-ing pulpit. I remember my early ed with evo (middle school) when the growing human embryo was sited as evidence of the Truth of evo. Gills, like a mudfish! Amphibian vestiges! Resemblence to a primate! I dutifully hid my snorts. What does looking like something have to do with anything? What kind of evidence was that? I can draw a fish, but it won't swim. This was the same class that had the artist's rendering of the monkey (with a tail) progressing upward, through the Neandertal, to a guy in a suit who looked a lot like George Will.
Later, there was a real embryology class that didn't give a flip about the theory of evo--it was just straightforward, because the students needed to know about embryos rather than the ideology of the teacher. At once the irrelevance of the previous evo-obsessed teacher became clear. That embryo folded in half in development, folded inside itself. What would become one organ emerged and gravitated to its proper place--another crossed it's path. And the most amazing thing about organisms--it formed this communication system of chemicals, of hormones that told each organ how to grow and behave. Of all the marvels of life, this system of organs talking to one another, working together, is the most remarkable of all. All this, from a genetic program. It happens to every other fertilized egg--succeeds half the time. A dance of life.
Evolution was not discussed. People were too busy learning about life.
Well, why not? Isn't that what their "huge constituency" wants?
You don't have to say it - it's tolerably obvious to everyone, I'm sure, that even you understand it's not quite so immense a constituency as to be able to go it alone. Well, welcome to Politics 101 - that means compromise, somewhere, somehow, so that you can get at least some of what you want, rather than none of what you want. Promoting ID is a loser, so I recommend we toss it overboard.
Did you think they would, or did you hope as much?
Did I hope as much? Considering your performance here, you don't have the bona fides to question anyone else's conservatism. I'm here - we are here - to prevent that from happening, by preventing well-meaning but shortsighted conservatives from strapping this particular boat anchor around their necks.
Be serious for a moment. If I tell you that pouring gas on yourself and then playing with matches is a bad idea, that doesn't mean I'm hoping you'll do it. Instead, it means that your friend, who takes the longer view, is telling you it's a bad idea and you shouldn't do it. Why? Because I think it's a bad idea, and you shouldn't do it. Now, whether or not you choose to follow that advice is up to you, but please don't come whining to me when you go up in flames.
Gill slits, not gills.
Resemblence to a primate? We *are* primates. (Why do you think we modestly named it that?) I think you meant resemblence to other vertebrate embryos.
Did you get into the way the ear bones develop? They start in the jaw and migrate to the inner ear. Now where have I seen that before? Oh yes, the fossil record of reptile -> mammal-like reptile -> reptile-like mammal -> mammal.
Not as much as Haekel thought, but to some extent, ontogeny really does recapitulate phylogeny.