The latest strategy in the anti-evolution, anti-science movement is something called "intelligent design." It's espoused by a handful of folks with Ph.D.s after their names, not to mention the know-nothings' champion, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum. It boasts its own "think tank," a right-wing law center to defend it and textbooks with all the trappings of real science.

But it's a fig leaf to cover another naked attempt to teach the biblical account of Adam and Eve in the public schools, which is unconstitutional.

The prime example is just up the road in Dover, Pa., near York. Two weeks ago, school administrators (science teachers refused to do it) read a statement to biology students that the theory of evolution "is not a fact," and touted intelligent design as an "explanation of the origin of life."

The American Civil Liberties Union has, of course, filed suit. We can only hope that the courts will again affirm that in public schools, we don't teach religious beliefs. We teach science.

Yet we have taught science so poorly that vast numbers of adult Americans don't understand the difference nor the dangerous ramifications of their ignorance.

Proponents of "intelligent design" use scientific-sounding jargon to argue that the structure of life is so "irreducibly complex" that an outside force had to create it. They're careful not to name that force God - a ploy to circumvent repeated Supreme Court decisions against teaching creationism. (If not God, who? Maybe it was aliens, they smile.)

The Dover case is the first to posit "intelligent design" as a theory equal to the theory of evolution. Given the widespread scientific illiteracy among Americans, "ID" proponents could very well pull it off. They already have succeeded in persuading a significant number of Americans that there is a scientific controversy over evolution when the controversy is all political. Evolution is the scientific consensus for how life came to be.

Yet in most states - most recently in Georgia - at least a few school boards continue to make a distinction between the "theory" of evolution and fact, revealing how little they know about scientific concepts.

Stupidity, alas, is contagious: Polls show that a third of Americans don't believe in evolution. Another third believe creationism ought to be taught alongside it. Can they possibly understand the predictable results of this naive attempt at fairness?

Do they take their children to the doctor? Why? Modern medicine is built on the truths of evolutionary biology. By contrast, "intelligent design" can't be scientifically tested or used to predict how cells will behave. It's faith called by another name...

Are anti-evolution parents prepared to have their children shut out of careers in a host of sciences, from biology to chemistry, geology, zoology, archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, or atomic physics - or to undercut the scientific advances that extend their lives and reduce their pain?

To argue that evolution is a "theory, not a fact" is to misunderstand the basics of the scientific method itself. That, in turn, misunderstands the underpinnings of modern life: why airplanes can fly, how germs cause disease, how to protect ourselves from natural disasters.

Without the scientific method, we can't test drugs for efficacy, food for disease-causing bacteria, or determine whether the "Star Wars initiative" actually works. All the better to manipulate data to conform to political ideology or religious belief.

Maybe that's the religious right's real, not-so-intelligent design for American society.

By Carol Towarnicky,  Daily News,  Feb. 01, 2005