This is a tremendous idea. It is not up to public schools to teach your children about personal supernatural beliefs that you hold. You have the right to have your child learn whatever you feel is right for them, but that's what private schools and the home is for.

Liz. Nice posturing yourself. If you show me the "missing link" fossil, then I will buy your science only philosophy. If you can explain how it all started...before anything, scientifically, of course...then I will buy your science only philosophy. Until then, as a "scientist", you would have to agree that the possiblity of "God" does exist as a theory which you cannot disprove. If you can't DISprove it, it is still possible. Why shut a possible answer out of the classroom simply because you can't get your brain around the concept?

It is just too bad that your science of evolution is completely unprovable. Evolution, not Intelligent Design, is a Pseudo-Science, but I do realize that your liberal brain probably can't comprehend that. Stick to playing violin and leave the tough issues to grown-ups.

to the posters above:
you are aware that even the Vatican has said intelligent design should be taught as philosophy and not science, right?

I can't disprove that monkeys will one day actually fly out of my butt, should we teach that in the classroom?

Stick to keeping your head up your arse and leave the tough issues to the rational-minded.

Kyle, I'd like to talk to you about the science of flying cows. I happen to believe that cows can fly and I'd like to have my belief taught in the classroom. I challenge science to DISprove my theory. Simply because they have no wings and no one has ever seen them fly, it could still be. You are missing the point here. This bill would not ban Intelligent Design from all classrooms, only from the science classrooms. Intelligent Design is not science, its belief and it doesn't belong in a science classroom.

Kyle, would you like to come to my house and feed my pet unicorn? What, you don't believe I have a pet unicorn? Well, you prove to me that I don't own a pet unicorn, and I will give you my magic pot of gold.

Wow, we just answered every question in the world. The answer is: god. How do electrons bind to nuclei? God. How does the body process sugars and give you energy? God. Who misplaced your car kesy? God. Wow, thanks Kyle. Now I know what I will do for my thesis disseration. My professors and advisors can't ask me a question that I can't answer.

"If you can explain how it all started...before anything"

This has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution explains how life diversified into different species, not how non-life became life.

"as a "scientist", you would have to agree that the possiblity of "God" does exist"

Most scientists would agree with this statement. Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God.

Evolution and God are not incompatible.

Wow. I never thought I would actually read a debate on the Badger Herald between college educated people as to whether or not Intelligent Design need be taught in Wisconsin schools. Because I always assumed that people even of true and strong religious beliefs understood that there is nothing intelligent or scientific about Intelligent Design. Oh well.

For essays on why Intelligent Design is scientific please visit:

http://intelligentreasoning.blogspot.com

"Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence." -- William A. Dembski

"Intelligent design begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Can objects, even if nothing is known about how they arose, exhibit features that reliably signal the action of an intelligent cause?" Dembski

Guillermo Gonzalez tells AP that "Darwinism does not mandate followers to adopt atheism; just as intelligent design doesn't require a belief in God."

Take the 3 hour ID challenge:

Watch the videos "The Privileged Planet" and "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" and then write an essay on why ID is religion and not scientific- based only on what you observed in the videos.

Guillermo Gonzalez, one of the authors of "The Privileged Planet" [I]was[/I] a (Carl) Sagonite. However the book refutes Sagan.
It was Gonzalez's paper "Wonderful Eclipses," [I]Astronomy & Geophysics[/I] 40, no. 3 (1999): 3.18- 3.20), that peaked the book's co-author's (Jay Richards) interest.
Gonzalez was part of a team of scientists working for NASA on a project trying to determine whether or not there is life "out there".
At least one peer-reviewed paper (G. Gonzalez, D. Brownlee, and P.D. Ward, "The Galactic Habitable Zone: Galactic Chemical Evolution", [I]Icarus[/I] 152 (2001):185-200) came from that scientific research.
The authors make predictions. For example if/ when we discover other complex life is found elsewhere in the universe, the many factors observed here will also be present there. And that life will be carbon based.

"The same narrow circumstances that allow for our existence also provide us with the best over all conditions for making scientific discoveries."

"The one place that has observers is the one place that also has perfect solar eclipses."

"There is a final, even more bizarre twist. Because of Moon-induced tides, the Moon is gradually receding from Earth at 3.82 centimeters per year. In ten million years will seem noticeably smaller. At the same time, the Sun's apparent girth has been swelling by six centimeters per year for ages, as is normal in stellar evolution. These two processes, working together, should end total solar eclipses in about 250 million years, a mere 5 percent of the age of the Earth. This relatively small window of opportunity also happens to coincide with the existence of intelligent life. Put another way, the most habitable place in the Solar System yields the best view of solar eclipses just when observers can best appreciate them."

"The combined circumstance that we live on Earth and are able to see stars- that the conditions necessary for life do not exclude those necessary for vision, and vice versa- is a remarkably improbable one.

This is because the medium we live is, on one hand, just thick enough to enable us to breathe and prevent us from being burned up by cosmic rays, while, on the other hand, it is not so opaque as to absorb entirely the light of the stars and block the view of the universe. What a fragile balance between the indispensable and the sublime." Hans Blumenberg- thoughts independent of the research done by Gonzalez.

Other G. Gonzalez papers that were the basis of the book (just skimming through the references):
"Stars, Planets, and Metals", [I]Reviews of Modern Physics[/I] 75 (2003)101-120
"Rummaging Through Earth's Attic for Remains of Ancient Life", [I]Icarus[/I] 160 (2002) 183-196
"Is the Sun Anomalous?", [I]Astronomy and Geophysics[/I] 40, no. 5 (1999):5.25-5.29
"Are Stars with Planets Anomalous?", [I]Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society[/I] 308 (1999): 447-458
"Impact Reseeding During the Late Heavy Bombardment", [I]Icarus[/I] 162 (2003):38-46
"Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets III: p Cancri Revisited", [I]Astronomy and Astrophysics[/I] 339 (1998): L29-L32
"Stellar Atmospheres of Nearby Young Solar Analogs", [I]New Astronomy[/I] 7 (2002): 211-226

Thanks to a very good "Dr." I just had a revelation-

Intelligent Design is today's "Green Eggs and Ham".

People don't like it because they won't even try it.

Here is the ID three-hour challenge:

Watch two videos- "The Privileged Planet" and "Unlocking the Mystery of Life", and then, if you can without lying, tell us why ID is not based on observation and scientific research, but is based on religious doctrines and faith.

A recent article in The State Port Pilot of North Carolina(Feb.22) reports that a proponent of intelligent design, Rev. Paul Veit (self-proclaimed "Dino Pastor" from Maine who travels the country promoting his cause) asserts, "I'm more interesting in saving your soul than I am in winning an argument." It apparently escapes Rev. Veit, but neither the God of my faith nor the United States Constitution has put Viet in charge of my salvation. If Veit's hubris reflects the insensitivity of other supporters of intelligent design, we should all worry about our wellbeing on this side of the grave.

To use the powers of government to pass science off as religion or religion off as science is wrongheaded. A free and thinking people do not need government telling them that their faith in God is nothing more than a scientific theory or that their scientific theories must conform to another person's religious beliefs.

Within his first encyclical since being elevated to the Chair of Peter, Pope Benedict XVI uses some words that echo the United States Constitution's 1st and 14th Amendment guarantee of freedom from State sponsored religion. In this moving epistle on the faithful leading lives within God's gift of love, Deus Caritas Est, the supreme pontiff writes, "The State may not impose religion, yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between followers of different religions."

Counter to this, some religious zealots are currently bent on pressuring local public school boards into requiring teachers to insert into their lesson plans a new certitude of these true believers, intelligent-design Creationism. They are free to believe what they will. However, this attempt to use government to promote their religious ideology should be troubling to all people who prize freedom of conscience.

State-sponsored proselytization is a greater threat to our religious freedom than it is a mistaken sally into the domain of science. Science has and will continue to weather all sorts of misdirected and dead-ended efforts, however our freedom of conscience may not fare so well. The override of this liberty would mark the entry of our nation into an intolerant period in which all sorts of intellectual and spiritual pursuits were subject to suppression.

Sam Osborne

Ughh...it's disappointing to see the Badger Herald being infiltrated by the IDists.

I'll make this real simple. ID is not scientific for many reasons but by far the most important reason is that it relies on the supernatural.

As we found out in the Dover trial, the designer of ID (the designer who is argued to be responsible for "molecular scale machinery") must be outside of nature (i.e. supernatural).

For example, in the decision, Judge Jones wrote:
"Defendants' expert witness ID proponents confirmed that the existence of a supernatural designer is a hallmark of ID. First, Professor Behe has written that by ID he means "not designed by the laws of nature," and that it is "implausible that the designer is a natural entity."" (P-647 at 193; P-718 at 696, 700).
There are many more examples if needed but the conclusion is that even the people who developed ID agree that the Designer is supernatural. Therefore, the design is dependant upon the supernatural.

So by applying the same design detection methodology as used in SETI or archaeology, ID requires the assumption that supernatural design is the same as natural design. How can we possibly make that assumption? How can we assume anything about the supernatural? This requires a 'leap of faith' assumption that supernatural design is the same as the design created by natural processes. No matter how much math and statistics Dembski or Gonzalez can dream up on detecting design, it still requires this 'leap of faith' assumption.

And for the record, I do believe in God and I'm a scientist getting a Masters in hydrology. The debate of whether natural processes (such as evolution) are supernaturally guided or unguided is not a question that science can deal with. Why is this so hard for people to understand? People who accept evolutionary theory are not inherently atheistic. There are people like me who are theistic evolutionists but understand that this is not a scientific stance.

ID died in Pennsylvania, it just died in Ohio, and I'm optimistic that this sad little side-note in our nation's history will soon be over.

Since Joe Gallien offered up some links for ID side, you should balance it with some good anti-ID websites such as:

www.pandasthumb.org
and
www.talkorigins.org