Posted on: August 17, 2011 9:01 AM, by Ed Brayton
Now that Rick Perry has officially announced he's running for the Republican nomination for president, the Texas Freedom Network looks at his long history of promoting creationism in public school science classrooms.
"Recognizing that evolution is a theory, and not claimed by anyone to be more than that, the governor believes it would be a disservice to our children to teach them only one theory on the origin of our existence without recognizing other scientific theories worth consideration. Intelligent design is a concept that is gaining greater traction because it points to a notion that most people believe to be true: that we were created by an intelligent being who designed the human race with great detail and complexity...."
Ah, the tried and ridiculous "evolution is just a theory so we should present all theories" argument, which is convincing only to those who are ignorant of what the word "theory" means. If you think a theory is a wild-assed guess, this argument sounds compelling. If you know what the word actually means, it is revealed as utter nonsense.
Evolution is one of the strongest theories of science. For the past 150 years it has been enormously successful at predicting the nature of new evidence and has shown enormous explanatory power over a dozen fields of science. Intelligent Design explains nothing and relies on misleading arguments and "god of the gaps" reasoning. They are not equivalent in any way.
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/08/rick_perry_the_creationist.php