They have to say that it does (wink, wink). How else are they going to do an end run around the Constitution?
One does not have to do an "end run" around the Constitution to favor a policy that respects people of all faiths, including atheists, in public schools. Nor does one have to do an "end run" around the Constitution to argue in a court of law against the establishment of purely atheistic science in public schools.
You posted: They have to say that it does (wink, wink). How else are they going to do an end run around the Constitution?
Reply:
Agree. In my view, separation of religion and government is good for both society and religious institutions.
The ID mindset is superstitious in nature. There are many people who are happy to see science and rationalism debased, because they hold to views about psychic phenomena, UFOs, appearances of the Virgin Mary in weird places, astrology, dowsing, predictions of Nostradamus, hidden codes in the Bible, reincarnation, a heaven/paradise after death, and a hundred other non-rational beliefs. The fundamental issue is a rational, healthy outlook on the world, with joy in its beauties and sadness for what some people sometimes do vs. a supernatural outlook, in which gods intervene willy-nilly, some people have "hidden psychic powers", and happiness is determined (or pre-determined) by weird un-understandable forces that do not stand up to rational inquiry.
The evolution/development of modern understandings of disease and medicine is a powerful statement of the value of science, unencumbered by 2000-year-old beliefs. In Biblical times, nobody knew about sperm or ova or the circulation of the blood or about germs or about physics or geology.
The notion of ID dismisses everything learned--at considerable human effort--in the 2000 years since.