A chance to be a pro-science activist!

I don't see that put perhaps it is. What it is not like is your analogy.The civil war origin question may not have enough evidence to select very well between different ideas. That is, there may be no leading candidate based on the now available evidence. That would suggest presenting the whole package for review.In the case of the debate between evolution through neo-Darwinian mechanisms and evolution through the same mechanisms with the occasional intervention by another unidentified force there is not the same level of compariable evidence.As for Gaian theory I don't see that as an alternative at all. It is simply a different view of the wider environment in which evolution is playing out. It is perhaps, but only speculatively, another selective pressure on all living things.When only one theory exists as a well developed theory with evidence for it and ongoing work and other ideas are speculation founded on little or no evidence and those other ideas have had their weaknesses clearly pointed out without adequate reply then only the one theory should be taught in a context of limited time and resources.It may well be that on advanced study one might wish to understand the history of the various ideas and what is being said. It is hard to find the time for that in a high school curriculum. Compared to the breadth of the subject evolution itself is barely being taught. Cerainly that should be beefed up before going off into speculations.

What we teach when depends on the time and resources available. I presume we are talking about the high school level where resources are restricted indeed. I will continue to talk about it in that context.As another bit of context setting I presume we are agreeing that it is necessary to teach that evolution has occured and some details of that. This is, as I understand it, agreed to by the ID proponents.I think that some subset of the ID proponents also agree that much of that evolution can be well accounted for by neo-Darwinian mechanisms. It seems that would also be taught then. I'm not aware of any ID proponents who don't implicitely agree with this but I have not read all that much of it.That leaves the individual cases that ID proponents are speculating about. I am not aware of the more recent cases they wish to use now that the earlier set of them have been refuted.The problem is that there appears to be no evidence for ID. Even if there was some it is swamped by the totality of evidence for Darwinian evolution and with limited resources that is what you'd be left to teach as a background for any other teaching.As for the list of scientists who support ID I would not comment until I had seen their reasons: the evidence and the logic applied.I have read some of Dembski's material (IIRC) and the work of his that I did read was deeply flawed and I have yet to read any work improving on that. Perhaps you know of something.As a side note. Any further discussion of this should probably be taken to an ID thread. This message has been edited by NosyNed, 03-22-2005 09:29 PM

Rather than clutter this thread further let me take this to an existing or new ID thread. Give me a bit of time.

I already added our ID discussion to the end of what seemed like an appropriate thread. Message 122

Perhaps a bit more depth in your response or no resonse would have been better?