The strong influence of religion on President Bush is well-known, but it still is a surprise that he recently advocated the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution in public schools. In an interview at the White House last week, he told reporters, "I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught ? so people can understand what the debate is about."
Intelligent design is a theory, widely considered to be creationist pseudoscience by the scientific community, that claims an intelligent creator is responsible for life on Earth.
It doesn't directly oppose the theory of evolution, but disputes the idea that natural selection entirely explains the complexity of life.
There is no scientific basis for this idea. In fact, that's the whole point of it: It claims that science can't explain everything. Therefore, there's no way to prove it or disprove it until science does, in fact, explain everything.
Although this fact might be convenient for the longevity of the intelligent design theory, it also means that this theory has no place in public school classrooms.
The whole point of science classes is to teach children to look for empirical evidence and use this to make decisions. If they are taught that their investigations will eventually be fruitless once they reach a high level of complexity, what good is it to teach them at all?
There are a lot of crackpot theories out there - this isn't to say that intelligent design is a crackpot theory because, of course, it probably can't be disproved - so it won't do to teach students all of them. To do so would be to detract from the quality of their education in science.
It's fine to teach such things as intelligent design at home or at church. When it comes to public schools, only science should be taught in science classes.
As the leader of this country, we'd expect that Bush would keep his personal religious beliefs to himself in the interest of giving children the best education possible.
Hopefully he was not serious but merely pandering to his religious political base.
