Vatican chimes in on Intelligent Design (Page 2)

I know it is long but if this topic intrests you please read and give me some feedback! 

Okay so I have followed this thread and now I have a question for you strongly opinionated out there.  I teach high school science in small conservative community where I have had parents tell me that I can not teach evolution to their children.  I have no problem teaching evolution to them and I do present the information as our textbook outlines it (I believe it to be conservative as far as evolution theory goes).  Now here is my question; every year I have several students who bring up intelligent design and it leads to great discussions with my students, is it wrong from me to present information on Intelligent design in order to correct misunderstandings and involve less informed students in the discussion.  I present it as a theory created by scientist (The Discovery Center is full of them) but we then discuss why it cannot be considered science (they do not present a testable hypothesis).  I love this topic because it creates a lot of debate in my classes and causes students to evaluate their beliefs and arguments.  As a science teacher and Christian (Methodist) I have no problem presenting both.  This leads me to my second point/question, should teachers stick to curriculum or be allowed use teachable moments to foster critical thinking.  I don't teach an ethics class, but when we cover Genetics we do an entire unit on ethical science and struggles of law makers and society.  Do I need to leave this out just because it is not science? 

See...I think in that context...where a student asks a question, it's fine. Discouraging discussion is never a good idea, in my opinion. It sounds like the way you handle it is very appropriate...putting ID in the context of science and relating how therefore it's not really appropriate to discuss it in a scientific setting.

Let the kids ask the questions about ID, but don't put it in the curriculum.

Don,

I'm thinking of all the ignorant parents who insist that teaching Evolution teaches that there is no god. These same parents - when they find that the Philosophy class teaches a POV that clearly states there is no god - do you think they will be as liberally minded as you are?  Do you really think a Philosophy class would fly with these parents?

A retired catholic science teacher told me he views all of these polls that say that majority of americans do "not believe in evolution" as an indication of the failure of his career. 

Until recently, I don't think I ever crossed paths with "creationists."  As I do not have children, I haven't thought too much about the debate about what to teach, and figured that those debates only took place in churchy places.   Now, I guess I live in one.

I was just told by a lady I know that "anyone who believes in evolution or the big bang or any of that is just insane.  you might have came from monkeys but I didn't."   As her entire family makes its living from the mining industry and therefore on the backs of geologic study, I found this nearly offensive.  I just told her that faith and science are different things.  She went on to talk about god took "un-ordered matter" to form the earth a couple thousand years ago, and that she believes that dinasaurs walked, just not on earth, because they are not noted in the bible.  

I was flabergasted.

I have think that people of her faith must make excellent science fiction writers.

Oops - double post...