] The buzz phrase most often heard in the institute's
] offices is academic freedom. "My hackles go up on the
] academic freedom issue," Chapman says. "You should be
] allowed in the sciences to ask questions and posit
] alternative theories."

[ There's a lot of language in this article about the ID folks talking about scientific equanimity, "understanding the full range of scientific views", and so on, but nothing I have seen points to ID being scientific in any way, shape or form.

Its central tenet is that there are structures in Biology that are too complex to be the result of Darwinian selection. They then make the fallacy of stating "therefore, there must be an intelligent designer." It's a fallacy because the conclusion is not logically supported by the assumptions.

And that's not the biggest issue, because science is based on repeatable, verifiable experiments. If you have none, then you aren't doing science. The statement that one theory is wrong, so my theory is right, based on no evidence, is definitionaly unscientific.

Even the "evidence" they cite is only, at *best*, demonstrative of areas where darwinism fails to completely explain a phenomenon. Again though, even assuming is that's the case, the failure of one system to explain something is insufficient to support the claim of another.

And for the record, that's not to say they're wrong, or shouldn't believe whatever they want, but it's just that, a belief. And therefore has no place in a discussion about teaching science.

Don't get me started on Gilder. He tries to cite newton, but neglects to mention that no one threw Newton out because of quantum mechanics. And that's his most cogent argument.

The bottom line, as Lawrence Krauss implies, is that biologists need to stand up. Forget your fears about lending credence to the opposition by engaging them. Dispell any implication that evolutionary theory and ID are even close to each other in terms of support. They may have couched the debate in the lingo of science, but the result will be teaching about God and His plan, as defined by the political Right wing. Fairness doesn't enter into it. -k]

Wired 12.10: The Crusade Against Evolution