Intelligent design advocates frequently say they only want to provide balance and to “teach the controversy.”

The problem is that there is no real controversy. Intelligent design is not accepted as science, in much the same way the holocaust deniers are not accepted as historians. Both intelligent design advocates and holocaust deniers fail to follow the established methodology in “their” respective disciplines.

Americans have come to believe that opposing views should be given equal time. But sometimes this valuable belief has been stretched to ridiculous extremes.

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Richard Cohen writes about the ridiculousness of C-Span wanting to “balance” a historian with a holocaust denier. Really. I’m not making this up. Go read.

As I read Cohen’s article, the analogy to intelligent design became clearer and clearer.