The several ton dinosaur in the room regarding this debate is the complete avoidance of the scientific process itself. Whether or not a theory is considered scientifically valid is not something a court can or should decide. There is a perfectly functional system of publishing, peer review..., etc. to determine what currently valid scientific theories are.

The problem from Mr. Thompson's side of course, is that their theories don't pass peer review and no respected scientific journal will publish them. I believe the proper action at this point is to review your findings, gather more evidence and publish again; to continue this process until you have a theory that can stand critical review by your peers.

Instead of following a simple and transparent method of validating a scientific theory that would make it automatically valid to teach in today's schools, they take the cowards route: They run away from science and its methods into the legal arena where skilled obfuscation, misdirection and significant amounts of money can be used to cover glaring holes in your arguments.

This trial should consist of a single question: Has the theory passed the standard tests of scientific review? If not, why are they wasting the taxpayers' money?!?

I am reading this article trying to wrap my mind around all of these perspectives and I find myself approaching both beliefs from a philosphical perspective. Neither is a proven concept and I think that both raise very important ideas and could really help teach students to think for themselves. Intelligent Design is not a science no matter how many ways you present it or show how Darwinism has not been proven. Critical thinking people who have learned to learn are what I want to see coming out of our school system. Lets teach them that there are many different ways to view beliefs on God and creation and have a class on that. It does no good to push religious dogma into science classes simply because there is no good proven idea on how man was created or life itself for that matter. It would be synonmous to having heaven and hell being presented in science because we have no proven scientific data on what happens after death.

If you believe in an intelligent designer, why do you have to believe in one who's an obsessive-compulsive creating every species from scratch, rather than just setting the wheels of evolution in motion and letting that create everything?

Intelligent design is just the same old fable with the serial numbers filed off, badly. If you want to teach children a story about magic apples and talking snakes, include it as literature or social studies, as it has bearing on both these fields of knowledge. But science? Even if you ignore the question of who designed the designer, any truly intelligent designer would have just created evolution and left it at that.

The science of Intelligent Design teaches us a lot about God and may revolutionize the world's religions. Wherever humans cannot explain complexity, God is at work.

We now know God created minature propeller systems in sub-cellular structures. Turns out God orchestrates many diseases, as well, actively mutating viruses to avoid cure.

We know God is behind black holes.

God killed all the dinosaurs and God built Stonehenge.

Significantly, God had nothing to do with the Bible. It was written by men. Nothing complex here.

God created the US tax code.

God hid the WMDs.

God is the mystery source in the Plame case.

God knows how Bush became President of the US.

- Brant Cooper

Mr. Slack's article is commendable for fleshing out Thompson's degree of committment to the ID concepts and the role his beliefs play in motivating the Thomas More Center to litigate this case.

But is that all there is?

I was hoping for some more insight into the underlying dynamics of pursuing this specific case at this specific time. Is it as simple as Thompson being a true believer in this cause, and damn the consequences?

It's inexplicable that the mainline ID movement would want to see this case litigated. Their hole enchilada is at stake in this. The case will turn on two central questions: Is ID equivalent to creationism and is ID not science? There must be somebody in the ID movement, some kind of inspector general type, rational enough to see their weak position on both of these counts.

One presumes they must also recognize that their general habit of debating on the basis of misinformation and circular logic tends not to fare well in a forum constrained by trial rules. The risk of exposure is high.

Of course, the greatest concern must be the consequences of losing this trial, which undoubtedly will setback for quite some time their long range goals of imposing creationism in the public school curriculum.

One has to wonder whether bloated ego, rather than careful legal calculations, is all that really underlies the defendants strategy in this case. One wonders to what extent Thompson is running a renegade operation, against the wishes of the leading prophets of the ID movement?

Mr. Slack's article does provide some clues to suggest Thompson is the type of attorney who wouldn't fright away from running a client off of a cliff if it would further elevate himself as a self-professed protector of higher principles.

They really should get around to renaming this thing the "Lost Cause Trial of the Century"

Science should be a body of provable, testable facts. Religion is a matter of faith and with faith you believe in something without provable, testable fact--or it isn't faith.

One can believe in God and in evolution. One cannot, however, teach about God in a public school classroom.

The Constitution was primarily written by men who were NOT avowed Christians. Many of them were Deists who believed in God, but not in a Christian God, so the statement that America is a "Christian" country is baloney. The Constitution separated church and state for a reason. Many of the colonists came to America specifically because someone else (a government) wanted to tell them who to worship and how to worship. It wasn't a tolerable idea then and it should not be a tolerable idea now.

We need to keep religion out of the classroom and let parents teach their children to believe as they wish.