09.05.08
Palin and ID
But Cory makes a second, watery charge:
Pretty soon all McCain-Palin will have left to run on is moose burgers and creationism. And at this point, nothing could be more ironic than a McCain campaign touting “intelligent design.”
The claim here is that Governor Palin is an advocate of teaching creationism in public schools. Now this is a matter of some importance to me. I am opposed to creationism in the public curriculum, and likewise I oppose intelligent design theory. On the other hand, I know from experience that students who favor the Biblical creation story over Darwinian evolution get much more interested in the discussion of evolution when the two stories are brought together in the classroom. Governor Palin suggested in a debate that there was no reason the two “theories” could not be taught together. I think that was a risky suggestion. It needs to be made clear that evolution is what is being taught in science classes, because evolution is science and the Biblical story is not.
However, Governor Palin pledged not to push for teaching creationism in public schools. Is there any evidence that she did push for that? Did she encourage legislation to put intelligent design on the curriculum? Has Governor Palin said anything at all about “intelligent design theory”? I have seen no evidence of anything like this. If you have to put words in your opponents mouth, that’s a pretty good indication that you haven’t got the goods.