I’m going to be in this silly debate on “Should Intelligent Design Be Taught In The Schools?” with creationist kook Jerry Bergman on 16 November, sponsored by CASH and the local Kook Central. The latest hangup, though, is that the creationists want to have a pre- and post-debate survey, and they plan to give the audience these questions:

I think intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in all schools, public and private.
Strongly Disagree Disagree Undecided Agree Strongly Agree

I think intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution by teachers who support it, without punishment.
Strongly Disagree Disagree Undecided Agree Strongly Agree

I think that as a minimum, the evidence against evolution should be taught alongside evidence for evolution.
Strongly Disagree Disagree Undecided Agree Strongly Agree

I’ve told them that that last question is simply unacceptable: it’s misleading, prejudicial, and begs the question. There is no evidence against evolution. If there were, I’d agree — teach it. However, until they can say something specific, I’m not going to let them get away with sneaking in a stupid loaded question to their audience ahead of time.

I explained that as is, I’d answer that question with “strongly agree”, because I think that evidence should be taught…but that I know they want to use it to pretend that there is some substantial support for teaching creationism, which is not the case.

Much waffling is going on on their part. I’ve put my foot down: cut the question out. They’re trying to weasel in some fuzzy alternative that will have the same effect. The first two questions are fine, they directly address the subject of the debate more specifically (that is, “Intelligent design”), but the last is just an open-ended bit of noise that they want to use to justify their anti-science agenda.

Dealing with these charlatans is aggravating on so many levels.