The central tenet of intelligent design seems to be based on hubris.

To accept intelligent design we must accept that humans have reached the limit to what they can explain through the life sciences, and that whatever questions remain must find their solutions in a belief that one or more intelligent designers used magic to make life the way it is.

In other words, we are the ultimate pinnacle of human intelligence and no one past, present or future could be smarter than us.

If we can't figure out the solution, then the solution will be forever beyond humanity's reach and study, and only a magical "designer" can provide us the answers for our unanswered questions.

Not that intelligent design wants us to believe it is a faith-based religion. It refuses to speculate on the nature of the designer. So we are free to believe that in the ancient past little green men landed their flying saucer on Earth and "designed" all life-forms as they exist now.

You have to wonder how enthusiastic the support would be towards teaching kids that aliens are responsible for designing humans. Yet intelligent design does not exclude the possibility of magical aliens designing life on Earth.

That these fanciful explanations are not taught in universities, that they do not appear in peer-reviewed scientific literature, that there is no way to test for the existence of an "intelligent designer" or the "magic" used to create life, advocates of intelligent design find

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comfort in conspiracy theories.

Brainwashing seems to be the current theory, though the motive behind it seems rather vague. It would seem to be almost a crime against children to send them on for higher learning if they are to be brainwashed in the process.

Thanks to intelligent design, kids can be inoculated against Darwinian brainwashing by being taught that maybe supernatural little green men used magic to create humans.

In Dover, Pa., and Kansas, Christian fundamentalists are trying to push intelligent design into the classroom. In California, Christian schools are trying to force the University of California to give equal merit to creation-taught students as they give to evolution-taught students.

If successful the day might not be far off when faith healers are graduating out of medical schools with licences to practice medicine.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, science continues pretty much as it has for the past century or two. Unlike the advocates of intelligent design, the rest of humanity is pretty much convinced we're not the epitome of human intelligence, that humans can be smarter than us.

The rest of the world still recognizes the role evolution plays in our fight against disease, helping us to stay on top of the illnesses that plague us.

If intelligent design advocates wish to take America out of the race for cures by stifling the teaching of evolution, just as the anti-abortionists have stifled research into stem cells, I'm sure the competition in the rest of the world won't mind too much.

The funny thing is, if we assume some mystical, unexplainable method used by supernatural aliens to create life on Earth, can't we assume that the mystical, unexplainable method is, in fact, evolution?

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