Michele Bachmann: Schools Should Teach ID

The GOP came closer to making the teaching of intelligent design and the promotion of “academic freedom” a plank of their platform with the public utterance of Michele Bachmann, a GOP presidential candidate. According to Peter Hamby of CNN:

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann explained her skepticism of evolution on Friday and said students should be taught the theory of intelligent design.

Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota, also proposed a major overhaul of the nation’s education system and said state administrators should be able to decide how they spend money allocated to them by the federal government.

“I support intelligent design,” Bachmann told reporters in New Orleans following her speech to the Republican Leadership Conference. “What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don't think it's a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.”

The problem, of course, is that there isn't reasonable doubt on both sides. The vast majority of individuals working in the biological sciences have no problems supporting evolution, which has over a hundred and thirty years of hypothesis testing behind it, while intelligent design has no testable mechanisms at all. It is, perhaps, too much to expect Ms. Bachmann to know this. Yet another reason why politicians shouldn't be involved in the education process.