What is taught is schools is certainly relevant to the ID debate. Indeed, that's where much of the controversy lies.However, recent messages are wandering into questions of constitutional law. It seems to me that these are drifting too far from the topic.For the purposes of this thread, I suggest going by the conventional wisdom as established in recent practice including recent court rulings on the church/state issue.If you want to further debate what should be the proper reading of the constitution, please open a separate thread on that (maybe a thread in Coffee House).Thanks.

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Cool off time. If you want to discuss Church/State issues, start another thread.

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Do not reply to church/state separation issues here

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It would be on topic to discuss whether the purpose of ID was to get around separation. The question of whether the courts have misapplied the separation issue is very different, and clearly off-topic.A separate thread could be opened for discussing such issues.

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A little clarification is appropriate here.The topic was ID. The OP already raised the question of whether ID is an attempt to get around restrictions due church/state separation issues. Discussion of that is on topic.The thread started to go astray in the second half of Message 3, when that message argued that the constitution was being wrongly applied.In my opinion, ordinary discussion needs to be tolerant of a little digression here and there. Thus Message 3 was not necessarily a problem. Likewise, I did not see a serious problem in Message 6, since that was a rebuttal of the second half of Message 3.Shortly after that, it became clear that the thread was being dominated by discussions on constitutional interpretation. It was clear by then that it had gone beyond an allowable digression into being seriously off-topic.In summary, my view is that minor digressions can be tolerated. Major digressions (those that come to dominate the discussion) are a problem and should be avoided. Those who feel a strong need to continue with a digression should open a separate thread.

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