I think I see where they're going with this. If they point out the "weaknesses" of evolution, some kid is going to ask, "then what's the alternative?" And, well, they can't very well ignore a good question like that now can they? I also wonder where from they intend to draw their list of weaknesses. Are these weaknesses that scientists agree are problems, or are these Creationist talking points that aren't actually unaccounted if you go any more recent than Darwin?

I dunno, I don't have a problem with pointing out weak points in any scientific theory. It gets people to ask questions and leads to answers. I do think that this kind of thing ought to be reserved for college or graduate-level classes so the students have enough background to really think critically. Otherwise it's just a wink and a nudge to not believe what they're being taught.

Strengths: Scientifically viable.

Weaknesses: If you believe it you're going to Hell and you don't want to go to Hell, do you?

They should do this for lots of subjects, not just science. Grammar, for one.

Standards for grammar?

Strength: Provides for a consistent standard of communication, minimizing the likelihood that ideas will fail to be conveyed in a comprehensible manner.

Weakness: It done takes a bunch of time getting all them words fixed up straight in all that proper fancy writin'.

There is no doubt whatsoever that creatures change over time, that new species arise and old ones go extinct. The evidence that this happens is staggeringly huge, enormous beyond comprehension. It's visible in every field that looks back in time. At the very least, it's in archaeology, geology, taxonomy, and as an extension of taxonomy, genetics. There's probably more fields that I can't think of just now.

You could spend your entire life reading, and not even touch a thousandth of the evidence pointing toward change over time and the gradual increase of creature sophistication. This is fact. It's not open to debate.

The Theory of Evolution, on the other hand, is our best explanation for why creatures change over time. Like all theories, it's a guess, and it's subject to change. But, so far, it's the only theory that covers all the available evidence. Creationism doesn't even try.

There is no weakness to the theory itself, and while individual bits of evidence aren't always that solid by themselves, taken in aggregate, they're incredibly powerful. The remaining central question, and one that has scientists very puzzled, is abiogenesis: how did life come from non-life? We can see, overall, a line pointing back in time, with simpler and simpler and simpler creatures, but we have no record of the process that created the first bit of self-replicating life. The very simplest life of all, the very first time it happened... that's a mystery. And it may remain one for a good long while yet.

Other than that -- there's no controversy in the scientific community about overall evolution, just details. There's just too much evidence. It's like arguing that there's a controversy over things falling down when you drop them.

And just when you thought those Discovery Institute yahoos were on the ropes...

So this crap will be picked up and it will go to the courts again only to be ruled Creationism in disguise.

It's just sad that Americans are so ignorant of the scientific method that they don't understand what a theory is and that if evolution had any "weaknesses" it would no longer be considered a viable theory. I mean all that has to happen for someone to uncover a single example, like a mammal fossil in a Cambrian zone, and everything would have to be completely rethought.

That's what they're really terrified of. Science will explain away their god.

We could do this for hours.

Air

Strengths: You can feel it.

Weakness: You can't see it.

They do exist, but one is science, the other is religion trying to pass itself off as science.

While science probably couldn't explain away God, it can explain away things that have been attributed to God. Just because science hasn't figured out how life began on Earth, it doesn't mean that it won't, just that it hasn't yet.

I suggest we all read The Tao of Physics again.

Read up in intelligent design again. It claims both the how AND the why.

Science doesn't want to prove or disprove God. It's just trying to explain the world around us.

Exactly!
I have no problem with people believing that God created life on Earth, because we simply don't know how life originated as of yet. But that's not Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is the "theory" that since life is so very complex, it must have been designed to be that way, which implies that there was a designer. Now, evolution can exist within ID, as the means that the designer uses to ensure their design is met, but that's not what ID proponents tend to want. They usually want ID taught in science classes as an alternative to natural selection; that the reason species change is because they were designed to, not because they developed inherent characteristics to better suit themselves to their environment. They don't want mutation and chance to be the reasons behind evolution; they want it to be God's Will. It makes me wonder how they'd feel about it if a group of humans evolved past them...would they accept that as part of the Designer's plan?
Edited for spelling.

Intelligent Design could be taught as part of a philosophy course, but I still cannot see where anyone thinks it holds up to be taught as science.

I mean, doesn't philosophy already cover the exact same area as intelligent design?

I don't think that's completely true. It's entirely obvious that evolution happens; creatures change over time, and the Earth is billions of years old. This is Rock-of-Gibraltar level fact. But, until we have an explanation of how life came from nonlife, the theory of evolution is incomplete. I don't think anything is served by pretending otherwise.

The theory being incomplete doesn't weaken the validity of the evidence. That evidence exists, period, and creationism simply doesn't work to explain it. No other theory I've encountered does, in fact.

Evolution is our best explanation. It's a damn good one, but it's not done yet. Few things in science ever are.

Yep, except for those two version of genesis in beginning it's all about where we're going... not how we were formed from clay and ribs or anything like that.

Look, you may see it as a parable, you may see it as whatever it is that allows you to see God in science, but the fact of the matter is that ID proponents don't. They're all about rejecting evolution, that's it. They'll use every dirty trick they can think of, every con-artist ploy they can get away with, all in an attempt to eject evolutionary theory from the nation's science classrooms and replace it with a literal interpretation of literalist Christian creationism.

What they believe, and what you believe, are not compatible.

That, and they'd certainly win a Nobel and like go down as one of the most famous scientists in history right up there with Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and Darwin. Hardly incentive to "go along with the conspiracy", as some creationists contend.

People don't want to believe their existence is random.

Darwin never intended to propose how life began. He had a theory behind how things change to adapt to their environment. Answering where biological material first came from is an entirely different matter.

And what if life came from other life? Or from an omnipotent being? Or it came from the primordial soup? This has no effect on Darwin's theories nor modern evolutionary theory.

But isn't that eventually a question that evolutionary biology has to eventually ask and answer?

What caused the evolution from non-life to life? How did something go from non-living to living? It wasn't living, so how could it have reproduced with mutation? It's a very interesting question that I'm sure plenty of Evolutionary Biologists would love to find the answer to, and I'm sure there are some working on it as we speak.