The University of Michigan's Daily Wire writes that Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos has joined the ranks of ID by stating that he supports the teaching of Intelligent Design in the classroom. You can be sure that whatever else ails the state of Michigan (read: Ford and GM), the media will not let this one rest. The Wire quotes him as saying:
In the end, I believe in our system of local control. Local school boards should have the opportunity to offer evolution and intelligent design in their curriculums.
The democratic challenger, Jennifer Granholm, supports the teaching of evolution:
The theory of intelligent design has some interesting ideas, but there is no scientific evidence to support any of the ideas. It would be a great topic in a current events course.
Granholm also stated that the decision about whether to teach evolution or intelligent design should not be left to the local school boards. I concur.
This cuts to a fundamental example of cognitive dissonance in my own thinking. I have, over time, become a federalist in much of my political thought. I think that states rights have been de-emphasized in recent decades at the expense of an expanding federal government.
The problem is that you can't have patchwork science education. Certain ideas must permeate the entire educational establishment. All English teachers are required to teach the use of articles in a sentence. If one teacher decided he didn't want to do that, the students in his area would receive substandard education. The same is true of science.
At the moment, ID arguments rely on negative evidence--that is not how science operates. Science works from hypothesis to theory. ID has neither. Science teachers should teach the most up-to-date and heavily supported scientific theories, regardless of what they think of them.
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