Check out the comments to one of Dan Gillmor's blog entries for a fascinating and thoughtful discussion of the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate. Dan was a cool fellow at Stanford CIS this year.

If you haven't heard of it before, Intelligent Design is a movement to recognize that life in general, and the human body in particular, are so complicated that they couldn't have arisen from chance alone -- and hence there must be a God who designed them. The truth of the theory aside, the thing that bothers me about the theory is that it is not scientific, and thus for all intents and purposes has no limits. Do you think that one day there will be some detail that pops up that will cause ID theorists to say "gee, we were wrong, let's find a better theory?" Didn't think so, because a framework like that can justify anything. After all, who are we to know what God is thinking? On the other hand, all it would take to change or even disprove the theory of evolution is one solid piece of contrary evidence (and big surprise, that hasn't happened yet.) To me, Intelligent Design is basically Creationism wrapped in a prettier package and snuck in the back door, and to the extent it is promoted for that reason, it should be barred from schools.

In fact, the only upside I can see is that ID and Evolution are not necessarily incompatible, which is not the case with strict Creationism. In fact, I am totally okay with a God that works in a sort of deistic, behind-the-scenes manner with regard to say, causing life and evolution to arise in the first place. But decide for yourself.