Michael Behe was cross-examined by Eric Rothschild, plaintiff's attorney in a trial against the Dover (Pennsylvania) Area School District, which last year passed a curriculum policy that requires ninth-grade biology students to be made aware of intelligent design as an alternative to evolutionary theory. There are innumerable reasons why it's as bad an idea to teach intelligent design to science students as it is to teach them phrenology. But I didn't realize until today that teaching of intelligent design could do more to undermine religious belief than teaching of evolution.
Look at this exchange between Rothschild and Behe:
Behe agreed that was true.
Rothschild paused.
“Is that what you want to teach school students, Mr. Behe?” he asked.
As part of a curriculum making students aware of intelligent design, Behe said, “Yes, I think that's a terrific thing to point out.” (Behe insists proof absent, York Daily Record/York Sunday News, 20 October 2005
So Michael Behe, one of the leading proponets of intelligent design, tells us that when teachers teach intelligent design, they should teach that the intelligent designer might be dead.
Scientists in general and evolutionary biologists in particular understand that the empirical techniques we use to understand the natural world don't allow us to make any assertions about whether or not God exists. Here we have Michael Behe telling us that teachers should tell their students that the asserting that the designer might be dead. Which is the greater threat to religious belief?
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