| That Guy said: Throwing the idea out there as an intro elective class is a good way of getting people to work on it. * CREATION o Flat Earthers o Geocentrists o Young Earth Creationists + (Omphalos) o Old Earth Creationists + (Gap Creationism) + (Day-Age Creationism) + (Progressive Creationism) + (Intelligent Design Creationism) o Evolutionary Creationists o Theistic Evolutionists o Methodological Materialistic Evolutionists o Philosophical Materialistic Evolutionists * EVOLUTION Summing up these theories is a 10-week course in itself. If you get the students involved with it, then guess what? In 5 years then maybe they will turn into grad students and will publish papers on evidence that they find. You need to get the ball rolling somewhere. Offering an elective course on ID hardly gives it any sort of legitimacy. Some schools offer a Simpsons Class; no one ever criticises that, do they? I'm not asserting that its a required course along with math and physics. I'm just saying that if people want to learn about it, let them, just as long as they understand the limitations and criticisms. I don't understand why you're so against even giving people the chance to investigate ID. How else are they going to look into it? TV? AIG? VGChartz? |
1. Yes, people DO criticize Simpsons-type classes, though those are typically not classes ON the Simpsons (or other pop culture phenomena), so much as a course that uses the them as a scaffolding on which to hang a course on more legitimate matters (like philosophy).
2. It absolutely does offer ID legitimacy - that's why the ID people have been fighting tooth and nail to get ID into a classroom. Moreover by offering a college course, you are giving academic credibility to the topic by saying that it is worthy enough to earn credits towards a diploma, which is academic legitimacy.
3. Who's denying them a chance to investigate ID? For the curious lay people, we don't deny them the chance to investigate conspiracy theories, but we don't reward them for it and say it is has academic merit. For the "serious" researchers, there is plenty of money out there for anyone who has an idea for someone to test ID. Oddly enough, no one is going for it (all that money is being used for PR purposes instead). Even the leading ID proponents have failed to design experiments that test their idea (the lead culprit, Michael Behe, was - the last I checked- investigating the role of centrioles in causing cancer, an idea that has nothing at all to do with ID).
