This is welcomed, even if I disagree with their positions on most of the salient political issues of our time.
Conservatives Against Intelligent Design (CAID) was founded to give a voice to Republicans, Independent Conservatives, and Libertarians across the country who stand opposed to the teaching of ‘intelligent design’ and other forms of creationism in the classroom. In recent years Republican legislators at all levels of government have authored, sponsored, and voted for various anti-evolution bills with perceived immunity, confident that those who vote for them are creationists like themselves. CAID is intended as a wake-up call to these legislators, to remind them that the teaching of evolution is not a partisan issue, but rather one of the separation between theology and science.
CAID holds that there is no conflict between evolution and religion because each speaks to a different level of understanding and to a different level of explanation: Namely empirical versus metaphysical. Neither threatens nor invalidates the other. However, by their very nature alternative theories like ‘intelligent design’ rely on the supposition of a metaphysical creator and therefore stand outside the domain of rational empiricism. Science–being based upon the latter–has no room within it for theological supposition; therefore such theories must remain outside the science classroom, being more suitable for discussion in philosophy courses.
Darwinian evolution has continued to gain empirical and theoretical support in the nearly 150 years since the original publication of Origin of Species. Although scientists continue to debate the specifics of evolutionary pattern and process, these represent attempts to refine and clarify extant theory rather than supplant or disprove either evolution or natural selection as the dominant mechanism of change.