Is teaching Darwin's Theory and Intelligent Design in the classroom a good idea? It depends, on which class it is in, if it is in a Biology class than no, if it is in a Critical Thinking course than yes.
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory that has stood up to hundreds of years of testing. Due to this fact it actually holds a lot more weight than people believe. The main reason people think less of evolution is because it is called a theory. But what they do not understand is that a scientific theory in order to survive must pass all of the test that scientist perform. So a scientific theory that has stood up to two hundred years of testing holds a lot of power.
Intelligent Design is not structured the same way and therefor can not go thought the same process as the Theory Evolution. The reason for this is that it makes the argument that life is to complicated for natural selection so it must have been designed; this is solely based on observation, making it extremely hard to test. Also in resent years Intelligent Design has been linked to creationism an idea about how the world was created. Along with this Intelligent Design has also been linked to specific religion, Christianity in which the idea of creationism is upheld.
Being linked to a religion as well as being untested gives all the more reason why Intelligent Design should not be taught in a biology classroom. But this should not detour it from being taught in a philosophy themed courses.
