1. I think the Dover policy was a clumsy misguided policy.
2. I do not think that ID should be a specified part of a national curriculum in science at present but I am in favour of a teachers freedom to discuss ideas about origins including intelligent design and to state their own views. Schools with a religious ethos may wish to explore the way in which science and religion interact in society with a more detailed look at the history of the conflict regarding evolution and the way in which developments in physics and cosmology and molecular biology have resulted in a revival of the design argument in the minds of some scientists.
3. I think that students need to be taught the theory of evolution and the evidence for it and should also be made aware of the areas in which the evidence is weak and where scientists do not have full and detailed explanations of how certain features arose. When we don’t know we should say we don’t know and not give the impression that evolution has a full and detailed explanation for everything in biology when it does not.
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"When we don’t know we should say we don’t know and not give the impression that evolution has a full and detailed explanation for everything in biology when it does not."
It always amuses me to see this assumption that science tries to 'hide' the fact that there are still things that are 'unknown'. If that were the case there would be a lot of unemployed (and unemployable) scientists out there. Thankfully the vast majority of them ignore the 'default supernatural explanation' and continue to look for rational natural explanations that real science demands.
Unfriutful attempts to explain anything natural doesn't invalidate the search for new understanding and automatically invoke the supernatural. An irrational explanation (ID) for anything that has yet-to-be-explained by mainstream science is more disingenuous than the initial assertion that science is trying to bluff the world. There is no shame in not knowing the answer to everything but if your worldview includes a fundamental belief in a higher being then that option is not available? That is why science and religion parted company a few centuries ago and that relationship should remain. They ask different questions.
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