The other creationist in West Bend

Mpeterson has a letter from one of the other creationists in the running for the West Bend school board:

Intelligent Design simply allows that religious beliefs are not necessarily incompatible with known science.

No, "intelligent design" is simply creationism on a molecular scale. And in fact its best known proponents accept that humankind is descended from non-human ancestors, which is ultimately what offends the more traditional creationists the most.

And the really hard-core creationists — the biblical literalist, answers in Genesis, six-thousand-year-old universe contingent who must necessarily imagine the Deuteronomist keeping brontosauruses as pets — have no use for "intelligent design" whatsoever. To them, it's a heresy, or at best, an impure political expediency.

Rather, it is evolution — either the fact of or the scientific theory of — that allows that religious beliefs are not incompatible with science. Because evolution doesn't say anything about religion at all.*

I would question whether these candidates even know what the claims of "intelligent design" are, in spite of their apparent endorsement of its being introduced to the science curriculum.

Mightn't that be an important consideration?

While they certainly have a right to teach their own children intelligent design's creaky "god of the gaps" arguments, they clearly don't have a commensurate right to present them to other people's kids through the coercive instruments of government administration.

* Evolutionary psychology may, but that discipline isn't at issue here.