Think debate is over science? Think again.

Two years before I was born, Isaac Asimov, the grandmaster of science fiction, penned… Two years before I was born, Isaac Asimov, the grandmaster of science fiction, penned ‘#34;The ‘#39;Threat’#39; of Creationism,’#34; his defense of thought, reason and science.

‘#34;To those who are trained in science,’#34; he wrote, ‘#34;creationism seems like a bad dream, a sudden revealing of a nightmare, a renewed march of an army of the night risen to challenge free thought and enlightenment.’#34;

In his lifetime, Asimov accomplished many things. He even managed to stave off the widespread misinterpretation of his work. That misinterpretation would occur only after his death, in the form of a Will Smith big-screen debacle.

All of his cultural accomplishments aside, Asimov did not crush this army of the night. They have risen again, under the motto of intelligent design. Intelligent design is the belief-dressed-as-science that purports that evolution is insufficient to explain existence’#39;s complexity, and therefore, some intelligent being or entity must have designed life as we know it.

The movement’#39;s main fuel is an attack on evolution, not a support of its own conjectures. In this way, the aims of the proponents of intelligent design seem little different from those of fundamentalists and creationists who came before them.

In Cobb County, Ga., the district’#39;s school board recently decided to appeal a federal judge’#39;s decision that stickers, which labeled evolution as a theory and not fact, be removed from biology textbooks.

The judge’#39;s decision was a victory for common sense. The sticker supported a common misconception that is often preyed upon by evolution’#39;s opponents. A theory is not a vague notion. It is not a guess. It is not the folly of an atheist’#39;s daydream.

A scientific theory is a set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena. Theories have to be tested repeatedly or accepted widely, and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

Suddenly being just a theory doesn’#39;t sound so bad. Repeatedly tested? Can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena?

Intelligent designers — which sound like the hosts of a show on Home ‘#38; Garden Television — and creationists alike hope that the average American will hear theory and think hokey. They distort the meaning of the word and pass judgment on the theory of evolution with no concrete evidence to disprove it.

We should certainly test all of our theories. By searching for ways to falsify them, we strengthen them and better our understanding of the world. But nowhere in the scientific method (at least as far as I can remember) does it say that a theory is false until proven true, because theories like evolution can’#39;t ever be proven absolutely true. They can only be tested, and retested, and refined until we have the best possible explanation for a natural phenomenon.

There’#39;s another thing about theories that anti-evolutionists don’#39;t want you to remember: Evolution isn’#39;t the only theory out there. The theory of relativity is a theory. Gravity is a theory so reliable we call it a law. Cell theory is a theory.

Historically, people have contested these theories and through their opposition they helped refine our bank of knowledge, for the better. Challenging theories with experimentation and scientific inquiry is essential for progress. Evolution should not be above reproach, but it shouldn’#39;t be singled out and repeatedly attacked without reason.

Why aren’#39;t the Georgian textbook defilers challenging all the books with theories on atoms and gravity? Where was the outcry of parents when teachers dared to teach that the cell is the fundamental unit of living matter?

The answer is that they didn’#39;t care. And they didn’#39;t care because they don’#39;t care about science, not really. They care about protecting their religion and defending it from any other way of thinking that contradicts the word of faith.

The secular sect of the intelligent design movement may be less fanatical than their fundamentalist brethren, but they are no less wrong, wrong in methods, motives and facts.

They claim to be scientists while fueling ignorance of scientific terms. Many of the theories they support, unlike evolution, cannot be falsified and are therefore insufficient.

The cries of righteousness from the anti-evolution crowd are drenched in hypocrisy, but even still they will not go away on their own. They will not dissolve upon their own cockeyed nature.

It must be the stated mission of all thinking people to blast down ignorance as a tool of the fundamentalist. The alternative is to fall prey to Asimov’#39;s army of the night, to one day look around and find ourselves in a sea of believers, living in darkness.

Adam Fleming urges you to read ‘#34;I, Robot,’#34; rather than see the movie.