But that’s never stopped me before

The debate about Intelligent Design in school classrooms amuses me. I’m completely incapable of seeing either side as a threat to, well, anyone.

Maybe the problem is that I just don’t understand either side, so I’ll explain my interpretations of each side:

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Evolution

As I understand it, the major idea of evolution is this: random mutations and selective breeding combine to change species over time. Those who believe in evolution as origin of species believe that the human race (and every other species in existence) is the end result of many, many years of chance mutations that happened to be successful enough to reproduce and, therefore, remain in the gene pool.

Intelligent Design

See up above, where I used the words “random” and “chance”? Replace that with “Divinely-guided”, and you’ll get the basic gist of ID as I understand it.

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Assuming that I’m correct in explaining what proponents of ID are actually saying, I come to the following two conclusions:

1. Intelligent Design doesn’t belong in a biology (or general science) classroom, because it is philosophy, not biology (or any other science).
2. Intelligent Design is not a threat to atheism, nor is it a disguised attempt at forcing kids to be Christians

Here’s a third conclusion for you. Intelligent Design is, scientifically, the same thing as Evolution. Let’s say I flip a coin, and it comes up heads. I might say that it came up heads because God intervened and made it do so. You might say it came up heads because of random chance. Our argument on that point doesn’t change the scientifically variable fact that the coin is heads-up. Why it is heads up isn’t science, at least not when you’re talking about abstract (or, at least, unprovable) “whys” like chance or God.

I don’t get why this issue gets so many people as riled up as it does. It’s not life and death. It’s not even important in the grand scheme of things. I certainly wouldn’t get up-at-arms if a history class digressed into a brief explanation of how computers worked, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t be particularly taken aback if a history class didn’t digress into that, either.

Can someone please tell me why (mostly) rational people like Dean Esmay and Scott Adams, neither of whom have ever given me any reason to believe they’re particularly religious, are being attacked simply because they aren’t completely opposed to Intelligent Design in the classroom?