My Two Cents

This isn't a question I've actually been asked lately. But if I were, this is how I'd answer it.

Q: What's your opinion of Intelligent Design?

A: Evolution is the theory currently accepted by the scientific community concerning the origin and development of life. Notice that I did not say "the leading theory" or "the most commonly accepted theory". Evolution is not the most popular theory, not a leader among many alternatives. It is the theory. When serious scientists talk about how life in the universe come to be where it is today, they're talking about evolution. Nothing else.

Having said that, Intelligent Design is an concept with which I agree personally. There are some things that transcend science. But ID is not a scientific theory, and schools shouldn't be teaching it as such. If we teach ID in the same breath as evolution, we're doing both science and spirituality a great disservice.

Worse than that, though, we're doing our students a great disservice. If our kids are to have serious scientific discussions about life on planet earth, they need to be fluent in the language of biological science, a large part of which is evolution. Our kids need to know evolution—whether we personally believe in it or not. To demand less of our children is to sentence them to being dismissed as zealots and frauds for the rest of their lives.

That is all.