They're teaching their version of ID. Them being modern right-wing fundamentalist christians. The holy trinity, genesis, adam and eve, and all that crap.
I for one think they should focus more on the thirteen creator gods of the maya. Or possibly the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as I saw evidence of Him in my burrito yesterday. But no, they are as censored as any other potential ID theory.

spaghetti in a burrito? Eww

Certainly not. There are plentiful examples of brilliant theist scientist, not least of which was Newton himself (although he did not believe in the trinity).
The problem arrives when ID advocates try to plant uncertainty into scientific facts. Like the fact that the earth is about 4.54 billion years old. Not 6000. Some scientific "theories" are simply facts, others are as of yet theories, at various stages of confirmation. There is no black / white picture.
In the case of Newton and his laws of motion, well, he couldn't possibly have known there was more to the picture since he did not have the means to measure the effects of particles travelling at near-light speeds.
We can show through fossil records how eyes evolved from the first simple light-sensitive cells in multiple directions into the multitudes of different eye designs that are found in nature today. That is pretty strong evidence of evolution. There was life before eyes - it couldn't see, but as it turns out seeing was rather an advantage.
What? The definition of a fact is that it is not open to interpretation. Like the fact that 2+2 = 4 in the base 10 arabic number system. It is not 5, you can't interpret one of the 2's as a 3. Only those theories which cannot yet be wholly validated (under the rigor of validating a scientific theory) are still open to some form of interpretation.
I know some crackingly intelligent religious people, with whom I've had very interesting discussion over certain matters, this one including. They all have one thing in common though; they are not fundamentalists, they don't take things literally, and they have a great respect for and understanding of science. Not one of them doubts that evolution is anything less than "the real thing".
After all, there are other aspects which are far more challenging to explain within the limits of current scientific theory. Like; what is this universe business anyway? Even as a non-theist and a scientist, I'm not sold on the big bang theory for example.
The theory of the big bang is actually a much better target for this kind of discussion than that of evolution. The only reason evolution is targeted is that it is so "high profile". The goal is obviously to get more of one side's agenda into the curriculum at the expense of the other.

I think that evolution is also such a focus for this debate because fundamentally religious people often see humanity as being the most important aspect of the universe, essentially 'chosen' by whatever god they happen to believe in. The rest of the universe, no matter how awesome in its scale and complexity, is basically just a huge viewing gallery from which god can show off its creations.
I personally love the fact that we as a species are small and insignificant in the context of the universe as a whole, but many religious people I have known are horrified by the thought. Their response is often to assume that I see no deep purpose to life, or that I must be morally bankrupt without some imagined father figure looking over my shoulder.
I always answer that if an electron could think, it would see the beauty in the simplicity of its existence as a part of the universe.

Only for very large values of 2. ;) Math proofs can be so much fun to play with. :D

This is a great thread, and a lot of good points made.
I grew up in a deeply christian society, with morning scripture readings in the public radio and compulsory christmas service attendance through the school, but i didn't really notice much of that annoying overly pious judgement being forced upon me by certain people until recently, with a fundamentalist christian party in politics and lots of discussions about alcohol and homosexuals and what not.
But being 20 years old now, and going through lots of different relationship with God(i've never really been "devoted") it seems to me that atheism is like a stubborn teenager, and indeed it seems to be the trend for 15-year olds here.
I considered myself as atheist five years ago, but I find that I actually have gotten some sort of belief back. Or rather, I believe in the doubt, because it most likely will be an endless discussion, but I don't really like the idea of clinging too much to the atheism thing, because you might lock yourself in, and close your eyes to some aspects of life. quite like Lobsang1979's post.
Lobsang1979: "I try to keep as open mind as is humanly possible these days, as opposed to clinging to singular examples of scripture as proof against vast collections of tried and tested scientific theories and methods."
But then again, i suppose if someone asked me what i believed in, and I said "I don't know yet" it would seem as if I hadn't given it much thought either way.

Hey Floydinizer - Welcome to GOG. I tend not to get involved with these threads but wanted to say thanks for the post. I never knew were the Faroe Islands were located and now I do. By the way does the name reference your interest in a certain band?

Thanks for the welcome, a bit odd beginning my forum participation on this thread but I couldn't think of anything to say on the "introduce yourself" thread :p
But yes my name refers to that certain band :p
yes, but I hope I didn't portray my country as religiously or morally oppressive, because I actually really like it here, and although there is a lot of christianity embedded in our society, there's no power-hungry force behind it... it's just tradition, I guess.
I like to think of the Faroe Islands on a global scale as the "village" of nations :p

This thread has changed my opinion of many of you, and not in a positive way.

Which is why many people consider it bad form to discuss religion or politics in polite company :)

Because you all managed to keep a pretty much civilized discussion on controversial topic throughout a long discussion with just a few little exceptions. You bad, bad people.

How so?
or to translate into wikipediaese: [citation needed]

I could start to take it woefully off topic, within a page we could be talking about a neverending battle in the far future between giant robotic scorpions and cybernetic zombies

Okay, let's get down to the point here. This is not a religious chat area. This is a gaming site. While I find that posts in here can sometimes be amusing, what needs to be understood is that there are other forums available for these sort opf subjects. This is meant to discuss gaming.

*looks at the subforum heading*
"General discussion"
Hmmm....