Evolution Vs. Creationism: There's No Debate

When Kansas held hearings on the "debate" between evolution and "intelligent design" (ie. the Bible), a curious thing happened according to the New York Times. Most major science organizations refused to take part. Their reasoning is sound, but I don't know if I agree. In short, the National Center for Science Education, top textbook authors and others said showing up would reinforce a lie.

1. There is NO debate in the scientific community on "intelligent design," which has had decades to inspire some research or findings and proven empty.
2. You can't debate faith -- the people arguing for intelligent design are not scientists, are unwilling to accept any other point of view and therefore will never admit they're wrong.
3. The scientific community has spent the last few decades appearing with these groups, taking them on scientifically, proving why their crackpot ideas hold no water and nothing changes -- so why appear?
4. It's a waste of time in a political arena -- in this case, they figured the board had already decided to rule it was an interesting debate and that kids deserved to hear about it in class. They were right.

Now I'm of two minds about this. NASA finally realized they had to weigh in on the basics of how man landed on the moon because crackpots arguing it was all fake had permeated society and they realized that well-intentioned teachers didn't always have the facts at hand to answer students' questions. Pretending idiots weren't out there (heck, the "hoax" even made it onto a primetime special on Fox) didn't make the problem go away.

In the same way, school boards all over the country -- well, at least in the South -- keep holding hearings and its scary to think the debate would be ceded to pseudo-scientists who can spout lots of complicated arguments that laymen aren't equipped to handle.

On the other hand, this really isn't a scientific debate, is it, so no one should need scientists to argue with these crackpots. Instead of getting into a discussion on evolution, maybe supporters of teaching science in science class should not play that game. Detail all the subjects that supporters of intelligent design would like to see dropped or challenged -- astronomy, biology, archeology, geology, physics, and so on. Once people realize it's not just one particular issue but science as a whole they want to attack, people might wake up. Show how many chapters of a typical science book they'd like to rip up. And trips to the local planetarium are now out of bounds? Hold on, board members might say. Maybe emphasizing that they are completely unwilling to ever change their views makes it a matter of faith, not science. Maybe emphasizing that not a single public university in the country teaches intelligent design as an alternative to evolution will get the point across -- why are you trying to teach kids something that is rejected at every non-Bible college in the country? Point out how not a single atheist supports intelligent design? (But atheists are godless, so who cares what they think.) Argue that fringe theories are NEVER taught to young students -- you teach them commonly accepted fact and if a fringe theory ever gains hold, then THAT will be commonly accepted fact. Yes, there are a lot of other ways to attack these foolish people. But I'm afraid that scientists simply dropping out of the debate will cede too much ground to the bad guys.

What do you think? Did the scientific community make the right decision in Kansas?