Frist Backs 'Intelligent Design' Teaching

Yahoo News reported Echoing similar comments from President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools alongside evolution. Frist, R-Tenn., spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design.

Sounds very reasonable to me. The Secular Humanists (atheists and agnostics) in charge of the public school will prefer to force their faith on kids, but they should be exposed to both.

"I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said. Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and intelligent design "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future." The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution,

Not true. ID merely says that an intelligent designer was using evolution as a tool.

implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation. Nearly all scientists dismiss it as a scientific theory, and critics say it's nothing more than religion masquerading as science. Bush recently told a group of Texas reporters that intelligent design and evolution should both be taught in schools "so people can understand what the debate is about." That comment sparked criticism from opponents, including Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, who called Bush "anti-science." Frist, who is considering a presidential campaign in 2008, recently angered some conservatives by bucking Bush policy on embryonic stem cell research, voicing his support for expanded research on the subject. Frist said his decision to endorse stem cell research was "a matter of science," but he said there was no conflict between his position on stem cell research and his position on intelligent design. "To me, I see no disconnect between that and stem cell research," Frist said. "I base my beliefs on stem cell research both on science and my faith."

TChris (TalkLeft) blogged Pandering once again to religious extremists

People who believe in God, and who accept the Holy Bible as His Word.

(perhaps to make up for his flip-flopping position on stem cell research), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist echoed the president today by arguing that "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools. Frist thinks students need to be exposed to "different ideas." Of course, some ideas (like "people are born with a particular sexual orientation") haven't made the list of ideas to which Frist thinks students should be exposed.

I suspect he might not mind, as long as equal time was given to the other theory, and that is that sexual orientation is a decision made by the individual.

Students do have access to “a broad range of … faith.” They can choose to obtain religious instruction from a variety of religions. They can expose themselves to as many religious ideas as their heads can hold, or as many as they choose to explore. But Frist isn’t talking about a course in comparative religion, which would objectively explore the differences between (for instance) Christian and Islamic faiths. Frist only wants public school students to be exposed to religious ideas that comport with his own narrow views

At least 80% of Americans profess to be Christian, so I would not say it is a very narrow view.

(or, more accurately, the views of the extremist voters he’s trying to court). There’s no question that the origins of “intelligent design” are found in religion, not science. Frist’s conflation of “faith” with “fact” and “science” ignores the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits government (including government-run schools) from endorsing any particular religious belief.

It does not say that. It says that the federal government cannot pick one particular church as the official church, like England has the Church of England, with the head of government also being the head of the church. They cant favor Baptists over Methodists, or one particular Protestant church (the Anglican Church) over Catholics (which is what England did).

Intelligent design is bottomed in religious belief, despite the efforts of its proponents to dress it up as science. If parents wants their children to be exposed to “intelligent design,” they should send their kids to a program of religious instruction.

Fine. Approve a universal federal voucher system where kids can go to any school they choose, and all tax money spent per student follows that choice. But dont insist on tax revenues to support a Secular Humanist program, regardless of whether the student wants that program or one involving faith.