Intellegent Creation an Oxymoron

Has the religious right hired a public relations consultant? Perhaps Rove is moonlighting, working his magic to try and give this essential group of Republican moneymen some kind of credibility.
No, not Rove, he wouldn’t come up with anything as dumb as ID. He certainly wouldn’t go to any great lengths to increase their power in opposition to his own.
The problem with Intelligent Design is that it is immediately suspect because of its very promoters. The biblical literalist, at least outside their own tight little world, is an embarrassment to human intelligence.
But let’s at least hear them out, look at what they are on about. One commentator has it that:

For about 150 years Charles Darwin's evolution theory has held sway. But a new American theory, intelligent design, is getting a lot of press as scientists and intellectuals rush to the barricades to dismiss intelligent design as little else than "creationism" rebadged.
Well for a start, this concept is not a theory. Whatever else it might be, and most of the options are cruel in the extreme, it has never been tested in any scientific or intellectual way.
Intelligent design (ID) is the newest, sleekest manifestation of the Christian right’s literal interpretation of the Bible. It essentially asserts that the universe, life and particularly human beings are too complex to have arisen through any sort of natural, undirected processes, and that they therefore must have had a purposeful, intelligent designer. Tim Peppin

Peppin goes on to say:

The bulk of the “evidence” for ID (indeed all of the evidence—only one paper on ID has ever been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, which was quite obscure) comes from attacks on the theory of evolution. It is tacitly assumed that if the theory of evolution can be demonstrated to be false, then intelligent design is the only viable scientific alternative.

… adherents of intelligent design exhibit what Dr Daniel Dennett calls the Philosopher’s Syndrome—mistaking a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity. If evolution is, in fact, a scientifically untenable theory, this does not make intelligent design true. It simply means that we must again search for a testable theory to explain our observations.
That, of course, does not stop those who still see intellect as some sort of commie plot. Debate broke out internationally on August 1 when the US President, George Bush, told reporters he supported combining lessons on evolution with discussion of intelligent design. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," Bush said.
He didn’t go on to explain how you properly teach a half thought out notion which lacks any kind of rational support.
Even poor, long suffering Australians have not escaped this idiocy:
Last month, the Australia’s federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, gave intelligent design ministerial imprimatur, telling the National Press Club he thought parents and schools ought to have the opportunity - if they wished - for students to be exposed to intelligent design and taught about it.
At least 31 states are taking steps to teach alternatives to evolution. A CBS poll last November found 65 percent of Americans favor teaching creationism as well as evolution while 37 percent want creationism taught instead of evolution.
Fifty-five percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form, the poll found.
Belief in a higher being, a creator god if you like is a personal position. However, that belief does not preclude acceptance of scientific fact. The two concepts can actually exist mutually, presupposing an intelligent creator.
A curious aspect behind the evangelic assault on the wider community is their essential rejection of their God’s powers and Christian grace. It seems these folks have little real faith in the power and method of their God, and would reject their ‘saviour’ as weak and irrelevant.
Christian zealots are so lacking in essential faith in their God that they seem forced to intervene to re-engineer society in their own image.
Teaching inane, unsupported and unsupportable concepts as fact does both the teacher and the taught a massive disservice.
Teaching should be grounded not in instructing what to think, but in teaching how to think!