The “Darwinian inquisition,” Intelligent Design, and Higher Education

Dangerous Idea has a series of posts about the “Darwinian inquisition” and some interesting and relevant posts about the ID movement. When I read about what is happening to Mr. Leonard and his PhD process I was very interested in knowing exactly what is going on there. I first read about it at Inside Higher Ed, where quickly said the following things, but here I have added some things I kept out of my post there:
First, it seems to me that this scandal is created by various heated issues that have less to do with the actual dissertation than is appropriate. Isn’t this an issue of education and not science? IF the question is about learning scientific theory, then there seems to be little need for experts in science unless the students were not taught science. No theory of origins is strictly science, not even evolution. However, I don’t really care if the controversial dissertation was examining the possibility of students learning evolution better if ID was taught or Sesame Street was recently viewed, the point is about the kids learning evolution anyway right? Isn’t this an educational issue? If the kids/people in the study actually learned more science, then why are the scientists so bent out of shape? Smells like fear and irrationality to me (which science might tell an interesting story about.)
Second, I don’t understand the heat generated by this issue (especially from people who are supposed be a part of the free market of ideas). Why not teach the controversy? When I took biology spontaneous generation was considered as the strongest competitor to evolution. I guess I agree with the ID people on this one. So, far this issue seems to be more heat than light.
Third, many of the comments label ID folks in the creationist camp (of the sort who actually look for rabbits in the Precambrian layer). However, I think this is a bit misleading because most of the ID adherents seem to be “old earth creationists” that do not fully reject evolution. Also, just because God is at the end of their theory doesn’t mean that the theory is unscientific. If this were the case we would be forced to throw out much of the science from history which has only been recently secularized — even Einstein appealed to God.
In the comments section following my post “Mike” characterizes the debate as is Christians are the ignorant, but politically powerful people trying to force their way into science. He says “There is no scientific concept of “equal time".” Is that what the ID people do? I think that they are actually making some claims that need to be addressed.
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