There's no research that indicates teaching the wrong stuff in science improves science knowledge or critical thinking. There's no research that shows teaching the wrong stuff works in any topic.

There's nothing philosophically wrong with the questions ID raises. There are deep scientific problems with ignoring evidence contradictory, or as in the case of Behe, missing the evidence in the literature search. And there is a moral issue about denying things well established as if no no one had ever noted them before, and fuzzing the act, as Wells does.

As an exercise in philosophical structuring, there is nothing wrong with wondering about things that are not. Philosophically a scientist can ask any fool question the scientist chooses.

Philosophically, there is no good reason that the Federal Aviation Administration in Denver shouldn't regulate pig farms in Colorado as a safety measure for Denver International and other commercial and military airports in the state. After all, if pigs could fly, they would offer no end of threats to commercial aviation, both from collisions with the animals themselves, and from their general fouling of the skies with material that could completely blind a pilot by covering the windscreen. Don't even think about sausage after a piglet's gone through a GE jet turbine engine.

So far, evidence is lacking that pigs do fly, or that pigs can fly, or that pigs ever will fly. Lacking that evidence, the FAA's regulatory case is weak. Some would say the case is silly.

And that's where ID is today. Philosophically there's nothing wrong with asking the questions. Morally, pragmatically, and philosophically, there are serious issues with ignoring the answers and insisting on a different reading.

The philosophical argument rests on there being evidence which simply does not exist, evidence beyond "but, doesn't it seem like a good idea?"

http://www.galilean-library.or...

The ID movement is going to run into trouble is they keep trying to get ID in the schools at the school board level, as they did at Dover. They’d be better off just trying to get it to be the case that individual teachers are allowed to teach ID as a topic if the teacher chooses to, as long as the teacher also covers all that’s required by the curriculum. I’d love to see a test case where a teacher was brought to court for doing that, when the teacher taught ID in a non-proselytizing way.

He is apparently unfamiliar with the MN teacher who got bounced for introducing ID concepts and some of Behe's writings. He lost his court case, and appropriately so, IMHO. For K-12, the local school board really should be where the buck stops. I disagree with the decision they made, but I think that is where the decision belongs.

That's why there has to be some involvement in the policy at least at the local school board level. Because if they aren't really interested in seeing the issue explored, it's highly unlikely they will support a teacher who could bring the wrath of the ACLU and the Federal judiciary down upon them.

I think Bradley needs to think that thru a little harder.

It would seem Expelled set the the blogger off. He didn't like it. After a few weeks, he stopped mentioning it, and went back to anything related to jihad, people in the West caving in the Muslims, looking around for fake pictures, and commenting on a lot of politics. Now he's started off with a vengeance against ID, or as he calls it, creationism (it would seem like Berlinski and Bradley Monton are closet creationists by Charles' standards). I guess the worst posts were less than a dozen posts trying to tie in Muslims and ID, a little guilt by association. Funny how I recall he didn't like Expelled linking Hitler and Darwin, but oh well. He's even thrown a few punches at the Discovery Institute (there was an article linking Muslims and DI as I recall, and evolutionnews.org responded). That's all I can say. It's fun that two of my blogs I read are now hostile towards each other. Must be what having kids is like.

1) It is much more probable that highly intelligent extraterrestrials exist than that God exists. (From his atheistic arguments)

2) It is probable that the first living cells were intelligently designed. (From Dawkins' willingness to accept this for the sake of argument)

3) Therefore it is much more probable that highly intelligent extraterrestrials designed the first living cells than that God designed them.

It seems to me what is important to Dawkins is avoiding at all cost, any violation of his core Darwinian story/gospel/metaphysic.

Yes, Dawkins does seem to be an ideologue.

Dawkins didn't exactly "embrace" that position

Yes perhaps "embrace" without any qualification is too strong. "Embraced it as a respectable scientific option as long as those aliens originally evolved by Darwinian means." might be better. It seems to me what is important to Dawkins is avoiding at all cost, any violation of his core Darwinian story/gospel/metaphysic.