I think you’re confused. They are all too silly, but no one can afford to teach that in high school because there’s not enough time to teach important things.

“ID is a theory with clear claims and explanations.”

You seem to be just plain ignorant.

Okay. By why talk as if the issues were peculiar to “intelligent design”?

Nick Bostrom assigns the ideas that we are living in a simulation around a 20% chance of being true. Unless there is a compelling counter-argument (resulting in assigning a much lower probability), intelligent design needs to be taken seriously.

http://originoflife.net/intelligent_design/

Want to claim that intelligent design is unscientific or disproven? Those are the hypotheses you need to address – not a load of outdated, historical claptrap.

Robin wrote

What I can’t endorse is the paternalism of teaching an elite academic norm that intelligence design, ghosts, UFOs, etc. are too silly to even consider, in order to correct a public biased to think these options excessively likely.

“Silly” and “flat wrong” are not synonyms.

The “paternalism” of teaching excellent science is so that students learn … well, excellent science.

Intelligent design has been considered, and demonstrably failed. In the end it offered no explanation at all. By the late 20th century, after the failures of natural theology and “scientific” creationism, it had been boiled down (by current ID proponents) to

Sometime or other some agent(s) designed something or other, and then somehow or other manufactured that thing in matter and energy, all the while leaving no independent evidence of the design process, the manufacturing process, or the presence (or even the existence) of the designing and manufacturing agent(s).

One can cover that in about 60 seconds, leaving the rest of the class period for genuinely productive activities.

Kitcher’s analysis is dead on: He calls ID “dead science” and its proponents “resurrection men.” My undergraduate students read Paley and Cuvier (the latter in translation), and then go on to Darwin and then on to the modern synthesis, thence to molecular biology and genetics and finally evo-devo. So they see how intelligent design tried and how it failed. But that’s a semester-long college course dedicated to just that topic. Try it in a secondary school in a one-week unit taught by the assistant football coach.

The Royal Society is opposed to creationism being taught as science. Some media reports have misrepresented the views of Professor Michael Reiss, Director of Education at the Society expressed in a speech yesterday.

Professor Reiss has issued the following clarification. “Some of my comments about the teaching of creationism have been misinterpreted as suggesting that creationism should be taught in science classes. Creationism has no scientific basis. However, when young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis. I have referred to science teachers discussing creationism as a worldview’; this is not the same as lending it any scientific credibility.”

Phew.

The lessons that kids will learn from watching adults argue diplomatically over a scientific issue is more valuable than having them all on the evolution bandwagon.