I think this is one of the worst things I have seen in a long time. If I lived in Kansas and had children, I would relocate to another state. How could I help my child with their homework? How could I tell them that it was important to understand that there could be, maybe, an intelligent designer somewhere who could have, in some way, guided the development of reality as we perceive it? I mean, if we're dealing in possibilities, then do have to teach our children
everything that could possibly explain a phenomena, not only the ones we can reproducibly test and verify? Because I can explain gravity with tiny invisible flying hypopotami, that carry airplanes their back, and that pull some objects down the earth at acceleration of 9.81 m^2/sec. You make up any argument you want and explain anything you want; the question is whether you can test /reject / verify using the Scientific Method. I can not begin to imagine teaching biology, and having to try to teach some indistinct mumbo jumbo arising from the fact that we can't fully explain the procession of species/biological system via current evolutionary theories, therefore it is logically reasonable to assume that a deity must have had a hand in it. The fact that evolution is simply an idea, which does not completely explain every nuiance associated with it, is inherently implied in the term "the
theory of evolution." Intelligent Design / Intelligent Designer is an inherently theistic viewpoint; this directly implies religion/theology. That's what personified deities are: pieces / aspects of theologies/relgions. Period. End of story.
I have heard some good arguments around the fact that 14-15 billion years is a very short period of time for something as complicatd as human DNA to have arisen via a strict process of random/chaotic mutations, statistically; true. This does not necessitate a personified deity to explain it. It simply means that we don't understand everything about the processes that lead to the development of the world as we currently think we understand it. This was already well known, well stated, and inherent in the study/research in evolutionary development. If we thought we already knew it all, it would be a closed area of study. It is not. It has not been. And regardless of this ridiculous decision and the possible effects it could have on the study of biology in the US, it will remain an area of active research and investigation. I fear that there will be some places which undertake ID research; there already are. Places like the university that Pat Robertson works with
link.
I am disgusted.