It's no longer taught
but at one point it was. In fact, I took a psych course in the early 80s that covered Freud pretty thoroughly and gave him as much credence as anybody.

Pournelle's main thrust seems to be that ID gives us grist for falsifiable hypotheses to lead to a better understanding of evolution. I don't think that anyone really takes ID that seriously- at least, not anyone who has paid attention to the news lately, where a scientist conclusively demonstrated that a culture of bacteria had evolved by keeping a part of the original bacterial colony frozen for a bunch of years. (There are other examples of evidence of evolution occurring now as we watch, but that was the best one I could remember offhand.) But evolution as a whole is not proven- it's still theory, not 100% FACT. So giving kids something to debate against is a good thing, really.

Besides, if it's debated and found lacking, it would be perhaps the thin wedge needed to sow doubts into the minds of the more dogmatic fundamentalists. That in itself is a worthy goal!

EDIT: Yes, I'm just playing devil's advocate. I'm not doing this for the purposes of pissing people off, but for entertaining discussion all around. I'm not supporting or defending ID itself, just debating whether or not it should be taught as a means to get kids to think better.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 18 Jul 2008, 15:45, Reply)