Reply #11: Remember when we thought we lived among intelligent beings ?

[beam me up scottie]

I wouldn't have made this argument 20 years ago. At that time, school boards' interventions were far more restrictive. Science teachers were obliged to inform their students that the story of Genesis was literally true. But in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to that by declaring the teaching of creationism in the classroom a violation of the Constitutional insistence on the separation of church and state.

The Court decision spawned a more nuanced and sophisticated approach by anti-evolutionists: intelligent design. Intelligent design is not creationism per se. It holds that higher forms of life are so complex they must have been created by an unspecified higher power. The key word here is "unspecified." Many school board members who support an intelligent design mandate believe that higher power is Jesus. But they aren't forcing anyone to teach that in schools.