There was a debate last week hosted by the College of Communications at Boston University on the subject of whether Intelligent Design should be taught in public schools. Arguing for the affirmative were Ed Sisson, one of the attorney’s advocating for ID in the recent Dover School Board hearings, and William Dembski the leading theoritician in the field of ID.
Sadly, although I have an open mind on many of the views of the ID movement, I thought that the arguments of the affirmative side were largely hampered by painful incompetence. Overall I thought that the event illustrated with excruciating clarity the desperate failure of so much public discourse to move the state of public knowledge beyond entrenched pre-dispositions.
I am planning to provide detailed summary and assessment a little later, but in the meantime if you can bear it the whole thing (2 hours long) is available online in Realplayer format from this address:
http://realserver.bu.edu:8080/ramgen/a/v/av/greatdebate/gd110205.rm